Theological, Cultural and Educational Reflections

Colin Renfrew: Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind

Images of books and authors August 2024

ANDREW PRIDEAUX. JOB, ENDURING HOPE

and PATRICK O’BRIAN, MASTER AND COMMANDER

Andrew Prideaux

Patrick O’Brian: Master and Commander, p/b, London, Harper Collins,2002

Patrick O’Brian was a distinguished and prolific C20th English writer fluent in French, Spanish and Catalan. Married to Mary, mother of Count Nikolai Tolstoy, O’Brian was an autodidact and wrote many short stories, reviews, translations and novels. He translated Papillon from French to English, wrote a biographies of Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks and famously wrote twenty novels about the Royal Navy and the Napoleonic wars.

In brief Master and Commander, the first of his naval novels, tell the story of the impoverished Lieutenant Jack Aubrey who gains as his first command the sloop Sophie, a small but highly manoeuvrable ship. He persuades his newly found doctor friend Maturin to join him. Together they go to battle against their French and Spanish opponents during the C18th Napoleonic Wars and remain together for an additional nineteen novels!

Not being a lover of boats, ships or maritime warfare of any sort I found the first three chapters of this book demanding to say the least and unreadable to say the truth. His key character Jack Aubrey is clever at sea but makes himself ridiculous on land. His friend Maturin is thankfully, an excellent support.

Gradually and unwillingly I began to make sense of this story and to endure it rather than enjoy it. In my edition, the author’s notes indicate that all the military and and seaborne battles and skirmishes are taken directly from the Naval Chronicle and the Admiralty papers in the British Public Record Office. I found this encouraging, knowing that the events really did happen! I did note that O’Brien makes no attempt to lionise his hero and Jack Aubrey’s ineptitude in public events and willingness to bed the wives of his superiors, I am guessing, is simply demonstrating the normal routines of C18th British sea going morality!

I love to read but I have to say I will not live long enough to read the other nineteen or so volumes in this series by O’Brien. Just finally, towards the end of this story, I did find myself identifying with what C18th warfare in the world’s oceans might have been like and what a debt is owed to those who lived that life. 4 stars but never again!

Andrew Prideaux: Job, Enduring Hope, Sydney, Aquila Press, Reading the Bible Today Series, 2024

The Reading the Bible Today series has been built around Australian commentators presenting their wealth of Biblical insight on paper. Andrew Prideaux’s commentary on the Old Testament book of Job is the latest in this series. Covering 383 pages Job, Enduring Hope is no small read and his 390 footnotes demonstrate Andrew’s careful attention to the Hebrew text and his interaction with a remarkable number of modern and ancient scholars who have written on the Book of Job.

A central value of the Book of Job for readers is the pastoral benefit to those who struggle in life for whatever reason including perhaps illness or other tragedies or harmful events in their lives. Christian folk can travel along comfortably with their love for and faith in God but they are not immune from traumatic events and tragedies which can shake them way off their runway.

They, like Job, begin to seriously wonder whether God is all he is supposed to be and indeed whether he is any help at all or even is God actually there and if he is why has he allowed these things to happen to me. This is certainly Job’s situation as he cries out to God in despair and indeed in anger.

Uniquely in the Bible, Job is not a Hebrew, but comes from the land of Uz, outside God’s covenant people of Israel. Nevertheless Job remains a God-fearing man who’s life and commitment have constantly been given over to the worship and service of the God of Israel.

In the opening narrative Satan challenges God with the idea that Job only serves and worships God because of his comfortable and wealthy lifestyle. Satan suggests that if these things were taken away Job would no longer worship or be commiteedqo God but would reject him in his misery.

As the story unfolds Job loses his home, his wealth and his family and he himself suffers a horrifyingly destructive skin disease which makes him an outcast from his society and a horror to behold even to his wife who calls on him to turn against God.

Job is supported in his despair by three well-meaning friends who offer him plenty of advice with turns out to be meaningless for Job who is looking for at least a statement or a conversation with the Lord God but nothing comes.

After the failure of the three friends Job is confronted by the young Elihu whose brash and confident rebuking of Job’s desire to speak with God humiliates Job even further. Job deigns not to even comment on Elihu’s words which to him are irrelevant. Job knows he has been loyal to God and cannot believe this traumatic hurt and chaos in his life.

Finally, through a huge storm, God does address Job directly with a powerful account of his creation and sustaining of the universe in all its complexity. God does deal with Job’s trauma but he is humbled and encouraged. He quickly learns to recognise that, difficult though his situation is, God has a purpose for his world and his people, even in those things which, like his suffering, seem to make no sense at all.

Job’s faith in God and his understanding of God’s sovereign purposes had been sincere but he needed somehow to acknowledge the deeper mind of God and his purpose and to trust him no matter what trials come!

God opens Job’s eyes to the wonder of creation and a reminder of his own smallness. He gains a sense that, even in his misery, God’s power and love are for him and with him in his loss and that even though it is a mystery to him why he should suffer, he must trust God to take him through it. His view of the world and God needed to be enlarged.

In return God vents his anger on the three friends who has spoken so wrongly about Job. Indeed they are only restored because Job intercedes and prays for them. God also restores Job’s place in the world a hundredfold.

The story of Job requires careful reading and deep thinking. Readers of this commentary will find many useful insights and a thoughtful and fresh understanding of this remarkable and significant component of Scripture. This is a commentary to be read carefully and thoughtfully and it will return rich spiritual encouragement.

Patrick O’Brian: Master and Commander

Andrew Prideaux: Job: Enduring Hope

Saul Bellow: Henderson the Rain King, p/b, London, Pan Books Ltd.,1959 (1962)  

Jewish author Saul Bellow sits high on the list of America’s finest writers.  Henderson the Rain King is an extraordinary roller coaster of a novel based around a wealthy Middle West playboy, highly decorated for his achievements in World War 11. Henderson is a man of unusual physical strength and heir to a very substantial income thanks to his hard working and highly sucessful father.  Henderson knows he should be doing better with his wealth and also knows he should be more faithful to his wife and children but struggles to succeed in either case.  On a whim he ends up in Africa and fortunately teams up with a faithful and honest African sidekick called Romilayu. 

Any attempt to summarise Henderson’s activities in remote parts of the African continent would defy any serious attempt. As usual with Bellow’s novels the heroes antics and activities are interlaced with philosophical thoughts and quotations from both well known and obscure philosophers and writers. I have to admit that there were times in this demanding novel that I was severely tempted to throw the novel away as a load of rubbish but being a determined novel finisher I stayed with it and have to admit that the clever finale made the book impossible to put down. 

I have the greatest respect for Saul Bellow’s writing. I would, however, put this novel further down the list than most of his novels.  4 stars.

Paul Lynch: Beyond the Sea: London, One World, 2019.  

Challenging story by well regarded Irish author Paul Lynch about two men, one an experienced fisherman and the other a volunteer, who venture out to sea against the advice of other fishermen due to the promise of very heavy seas. Inevitably their small craft is embroiled in a storm of fearful dimensions which drags them far away from land in any direction after their motor seizes. 

The remainder of the story describes their horrific battle with life and death as they drift mercilessly at the hands of a vast ocean with minimal food and water and with virtually no hope of rescue. The centre of the novel hinges on the relationship between Bolivar the experienced fisherman and Hector his untried assistant. 

This short novel keeps the reader alert with the very different character of the two protagonists creating an unstable and difficult relationship between the two men. Paul Lynch retains the reader’s interest with this tension between the two men and the reader becomes persuaded that no-one will survive this adventure.

One piece of philosophy stands out in the novel on page 163.  Bolivar remarks Man gives birth to his own problems. I see this now. The world has always been silent.

Although my wife found this narrative repetitive and boring I personally enjoyed the tension between the two men in their attempts to stay alive. I have to say this story did nothing to change my long held view that sailing around in the ocean is a very dangerous pastime indeed and one that in 75 years I have never tried! I am less persuaded that the world has always been silent.

4 stars.

Amor Towles: A Gentleman in Moscow: p/b, London, Windmill Books, 2016.  

Outstanding second novel from Towles who for over twenty years was an investment professional but now devotes himself entirely to writing. In a remarkable tour de force Towles tells the ‘history of  Moscow’ from pre-Revolutionary days to the elevation of Khrushchev in 1958. He has achieved this with an extraordinarily light touch because the central interest in the story is not the history of Russia but rather the invented complex life of Count Alexander Rostov, born in St Petersburg in 1889 and at the start of this novel narrowly escaping death by firing squad for the poetry he wrote. Instead Rostov is condemned to live permanently in a small apartment in the famous Metropol Hotel. 

Also living at the hotel at that time was an adventurous young child named Nina who has studied and flitted around every inch of the hotel and who became a partner in crime with Rostov as they formed an unlikely friendship and spying partnership. Eventually Nina goes off to school, grows up and marries and has a child  but the two meet again at the Metropol briefly because Nina’s husband has been condemned to five years hard labour in Eastern Russia. Nina appeals to Rostov to take care of five year old Sofia until she can find a place to live and support herself somewhere near her husband’s imprisonment. 

The second half of the narrative describes the challenges Rostov faces in supporting Sofia as she grows up at the same time as he has a significant role to play as chief of staff of the restaurant at the hotel, responsible for all major events. Towles weaves a magical story of the Count’s upbringing skills and his organisational skills whilst at the same time coping with the constantly changing and highly dangerous ever present enemies of his wealth and power. 

This is an exceptional novel in many ways. There is humour, sadness, danger and complexity of every sort in this narrative which runs at a pace impossible to put down, as one critic styled it “utterly mesmerising”.  I entirely agree.   5 stars and rising.

Books Read May 2024

Rachel Mead: The Art of Breaking Ice: A Novel, p/b, South Melbourne, Affirm Press, 2023

Exceptional story of Nel Law, the first Australian woman to travel to Antarctica, joining her husband Phil Law in 1960-61 initially as a stowaway. In 1965 Nel founded the Antarctic Wives and Kinfolk Association of Australia. 

Phil Law was a visionary Antarctic leader, Director of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) from 1949 to 1966. He established Mawson, Davis and Casey stations an lead expeditions that explored over 5000 kilometres of coastline and approximately 1,000,000 square miles of territory as well as establishing world-class scientific facilities in Antarctica. 

Nel Law was a talented Australian artist with a solo exhibition at the Leveson Street Gallery in Melbourne. Rachel Mead has access to Phillip Law’s papers which were donated to the Australian National Library including diaries, reports, press cuttings and scrapbooks including material about his wife and also Nel’s own diary.

Having said all this Rachael Mead reminds us that her novel is a fictional account of Nel’s first journey to Antarctica and the outline of Nel’s interactions with the various events and individuals in the novel is purely fictional.  The result is a thought provoking and entertaining novel which keeps the reader on edge constantly throughout. It is difficult to contemplate what it would be like for just one female working and painting amongst a team of some 300 men for over a year. Rachel Mead has given us an impressive account of what that first experience might have been for Nel Law.   5 stars. 

Saul Bellow: Herzog, p/b, Ringwood, Penguin, 1967 (1964)

Canadian/American Saul Bellow who died in 2005 was born of Russian Jewish parents. His many widely read novels have placed him in the highest order of American literature winning the Noble Prize and the Pulitzer along with many other literary awards. 

Bellow’s Herzog, about a world weary academic unhappily in love and with a penchant for writing, but never sending letters to a vast array of academics and writers alive and dead, is a remarkable novel, impossible to put down.

The erudition and intensity of Bellow’s writing challenges the reader to follow up his remarks made in several languages as well as feeling left behind by his knowledge of just about everything that matters about the world and human life. In Herzog the reader finds humour, sympathy, sadness, amazement, empathy, wisdom and so much more. This is a rare book I once read as a teenager and again now in my 70’s and enjoying it even more now than I did then. 

Herzog had many girl friends and two failed marriages and as the novel draws to a close he is perhaps getting ready to marry a third wife.  Saul Bellow ought to know about these things as he had five marriages himself!  Herzog is a novel to read far more than once because each time you read it a whole new set of ideas opens up.   5 stars. 

BOOKS READ MAY 2024

Tom Nancollas: Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastness: p/b, London, Penguin, 2018  

Dramatic history of several of the most famous British lighthouses, written by building conservationist Tom Nancollas. These histories contain some of the most horrific events of loss of life that could be found outside war zones or perhaps some of the appalling loss of life due to tidal  waves or massive floods. This highly detailed work has the potential to be boring to all but genuine lighthouse enthusiasts but Nancollas manages to surprise us with a series of unlikely events and a lively set of personalities. The interlude Blackwell is a highly technical chapter of the history of lighthouse development which most mere mortals will struggle with but engineering experts will love.

The lighthouses studied in detail are Eddystone near Plymouth, Bell Rock near arbroath Scotland, Haulbowline near Carlingford Lough Ireland, Perch Rock at the mouth of the River Mersey in Wirral,  Wolf Rock off Land’s End in Cornwall, Eddystone off Looe in Cornwall, Bishop Rock, 32 Miles of Lands End in Cornwall, and Fastnet off West Cork in Ireland. The final chapter is a plaintive call to make sure we never lose these beacons in the sea which have done so much to save the lives of so many. 

I struggled with this book initially, not being of a technical bent but gradually the horror of lives lost at sea and the remarkable achievements of those who managed to plant lighthouses in the middle of the ocean gradually took me over. The engineering, courage and determination of these men (and they seem to have been all men) is quite astonishing. Nancollas brings meticulous detail to his account and lightens the complexity with humour and insight.  4 stars.  

Trent Dalton: Boy Swallows Universe, p/b, Fourth Estate/Harper Collins, New South Wales, 2019. 

Australian journalist Trent Dalton’s breakthrough novel has been a sensation in Australian publishing earning plaudits galore in Australia and internationally. Set in south Queensland the story centres on the early and young adult life of Eli and August whose separated parents are both loving and caring but also deeply heroin addicted. The boys live originally with their mother and her lover Lyall in a run-down end of town and later with their father when their mother is jailed and Lyall is murdered.   Lyall cares for the two boys but also likes a drink and works for a major drug player resulting in his death. 

The novel describes their inevitably hectic journey into adult hood including their school days and their dreams. Their role model Slim has done many years for murder but does provide a balancing wisdom while he lives. Both boys have talent but their unsettled lifestyle leads them into deep waters, especially when they tangle with the legendary Brisbane drug dealer Titus Bros.  The writer’s emphasis is on Eli but his silent brother August also provides an unusual and wise support. Lyall eventually achieves his lifelong goal of becoming a journalist but his background and knowledge of the drug scene leads him into very deep waters at the same time as he falls in love with the much older journalist Caitlyn Spiers. 

This remarkable novel never stops to draw breath and leaves the reader constantly hungry  and finding it very difficult to put the book down. For a first novel it is a tour de force, constantly challenging and surprising the reader but also bringing a real depth of character as well as the reality of the impact of the drug scene sweeping many parts of Australia. It is a long time indeed since an Australian novel has made such an impact. 5 stars and rising.

William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury,Intro: Richard Hughes, p/b,  Ringwood, Penguin/Chatto & Windus, 1982 (1931). 

Traumatic account of the gradual falling apart of the American Compson family which included the very seriously disabled congenital Imbecile Benjy, now thirty years old, and still passionately devoted to his sister Caddy.  The family survives in a poverty stricken environment, with increasingly unwell adults, ineffectual and poorly treated negro servants and a defiant rebellious niece. In spite of their poverty the mother is devoted to and deeply influenced by their Pentecostal church.  Nevertheless the  father who regularly cheats on his boss and anyone else he can, has  amassed a fortune of $3000 which he has kept from the family.

There are two Quentins in this story, the first Quentin, a brother of the father, commits suicide at Harvard University and this complex story takes up the whole of chapter 2. The second Quentin is the rebellious niece who runs away from the family with her boyfriend and maybe or maybe not with the $3000, the final answer not being clear. 

Richard Hughes’ preliminary notes provide sufficient information to enable a determined reader to make their way through Faulkner’s complex narrative and I for one am glad to have read this story.  Every family and every individual has challenges, hard times, anger, defeat, love, acceptance and happiness and everything in between. Faulkner’s whimsical narrative is reminding us, if needed, that sound and fury are a part of all or our lives, and we all have our emotions, our wins and losses, our loves and failures at various times in our life on planet earth. The trick is to keep on keeping on!

Tony Payne: How to Walk into Church, p/b, Sydney, Matthiasmedia, 2015.

This little booklet is surprisingly full of good advice for practising Christians. It is written not so much for newcomers to a church because when you think about it, the first time you attend a particular church there can be a hundred different reasons for why you are there and just as many reasons why you might or might not continue to attend that church.

On the contrary this book is written for regular church attendees whether you are a weekly, fortnightly, monthly or yearly attendee.  As someone who has regularly attended church all of my life I found a surprising amount of good advice in Tony Payne’s little monograph. 

One key issue is the irregular attendee. That this is a major issue is very evident in many churches and let’s face it, irregular attendance springs from the set of priorities in our own life. If we are easily tempted to give church the flick, it’s because we prioritise other activities like sleeping in, having visitors, going away at the weekend, just doing other things on church day etc. Payne makes the point (p.37) that if we’re not there, we can’t love people, we can’t talk to them and encourage them, we can’t gather with them to listen and talk together, or simply genuinely share in their friendship and perhaps their challenges or problems.

A second key issue is Payne’s suggestion that we should prepare for church by using our brains, for example, by preparing the readings beforehand (p.41) but also being alert and ready to care for folk you know to be in need or having a hard time or who are shy or who simply need encouragement. Being alert to what is said also really shows that it is a rare service that doesn’t give you something to chew on about your own walk with God.

A third key issue is to come to church prayerfully. It stands to reason that if we we are already thinking negative thoughts when we first walk into church the experience is not going to improve! Again often it is what happens with interactions after church that counts whether in caring for new comers, good conversation during coffee after church, or simply being aware that a particular person is needy or is upset. 

The above are only three issues that stood out for me in this booklet but Payne has some very wise advice and useful suggestions and he has done it all in a book that takes about thirty minutes maximum to read! I warmly commend this book.