The Devil is a Gentleman
A couple of weeks ago, I finished J.C. Hallman's new book, The Devil is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe (Random House, 2006). Loved it. Hallman started the book when, out of curiosity, he attended a Vietnamese mass commemorating those who had died during the Vietnam war. A long-lost cradle Catholic, Hallman had gone partly because he found the church's statue of Christ compelling. The eyes were gouged out and replaced with glass replicas. "...they gave the statue an eerie presence..." Much later, he said, he learned that people who come back from war or exile or other bad things "turned their backs on abstract conceptions of God...They resurrected a personal God, brought him back to life. They gave him eyes that looked real" (p. xiii). Hallman soon embarks on a very personal, very historical, very odd exploration of America's "religious fringe." He seeks out a UFO cult in southern California, checks out Scientology, goes to a druid rite and a witches' convention, travels along with fundamentalist Christian professional wrestlers who "wrestle for God," and even attends a Satanic mass, among other groups he visits.
What I found really interesting about the book was the respect Hallman offers for each and every religious variety, regardless of how kooky it seems to outsiders. EarthGoat interviewed him and asked him about how he managed to do this. Hallman had this to say:
" Some of these groups are pretty odd, you can't get around that. But there's something about the world, and about these belief systems, that makes them attractive to people -- they have adherents. I wanted to get at that, to portray these people in such a way that you began to get a sense of what was potentially attractive about them. Partly, too, it was a technical problem: Can you describe a Christian wrestling match in such a way that a sophisticated, skeptical reader came to care about the outcome?" (http://earthgoat.blogspot.com/2006/06/j-c-hallman-interview-devil-is.html)
As it turns out, this was a deliberate choice, one made out of respect to Hallman's mentor, the very dead William James, who wrote a book in the late 19th century called Varieties of Religious Experience. James held strictly to a doctrine of "pluralism," which meant that he believed it was necessary to respect everybody's religious experience. James evidently deeply wanted a mystical experience, perhaps one of the reasons he became a psychologist. Oh, and the other thing about The Devil is a Gentleman--it is also a biography of William James. So if you ever wanted to learn something about the brother of Henry James....
Bookslut also interviewed Hallman. You can access it at the following link:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_07_009358.php
What I found really interesting about the book was the respect Hallman offers for each and every religious variety, regardless of how kooky it seems to outsiders. EarthGoat interviewed him and asked him about how he managed to do this. Hallman had this to say:
" Some of these groups are pretty odd, you can't get around that. But there's something about the world, and about these belief systems, that makes them attractive to people -- they have adherents. I wanted to get at that, to portray these people in such a way that you began to get a sense of what was potentially attractive about them. Partly, too, it was a technical problem: Can you describe a Christian wrestling match in such a way that a sophisticated, skeptical reader came to care about the outcome?" (http://earthgoat.blogspot.com/2006/06/j-c-hallman-interview-devil-is.html)
As it turns out, this was a deliberate choice, one made out of respect to Hallman's mentor, the very dead William James, who wrote a book in the late 19th century called Varieties of Religious Experience. James held strictly to a doctrine of "pluralism," which meant that he believed it was necessary to respect everybody's religious experience. James evidently deeply wanted a mystical experience, perhaps one of the reasons he became a psychologist. Oh, and the other thing about The Devil is a Gentleman--it is also a biography of William James. So if you ever wanted to learn something about the brother of Henry James....
Bookslut also interviewed Hallman. You can access it at the following link:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_07_009358.php
Labels: J.C. Hallman, pluralism, pragmatism, religion, The Devil is a Gentleman, William James
posted by Jessica Somewhere in the States at 5:29 PM
2 Comments:
Jessica,
Thanks much for the kind comments on my book...they sent me looking further into your blog and the amazing story there. It made me all the more flattered that you took the time to read the book...
Thanks again, J.C. Hallman
Hey, I'm impressed you found my comments, buried as they are in a plethora of blogs. I was really amazed by your book. Wish I'd written it myself. Maybe someday... :-)
Post a Comment
<< Home