"Mouth to Mouth" by Antoine Wilson

Your flight overseas has been delayed. You’re sitting in the waiting area, and you hear name called. You remember a friend by that name – Jeff Cook – in college, but it’s been years. Then you see him walk to the gate agent, and you know it’s the same man.  

You meet, you talk, and then he invites you to the first-class lounge. And there he tells you a story of what’s happened to him since college. And he starts with the event that changed everything, when he saved a man, a stranger, from drowning by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. 

 

Jeff didn’t know the man’s name, but he’s able to find out. He can’t explain why this becomes so important, but he needs to know who this man is. He tracks him to an art gallery, a very high-end art gallery, in Los Angeles. He occasionally follows the man when he leaves, and he discovers the man is having an affair. And then Jeff walks into a receptionist’s job at the gallery. And he never tells the man who he is or how he knows him. But the man recognizes something in Jeff 00 himself at a younger age.

 

Antoine Wilson

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson is the story of Jeff Cook, told by a nameless narrator about whom all we know is that he’s a writer. It is a story about art and artists, the retail art world, an interest that becomes almost an obsession, and contemporary relationships. It is an unusual, almost strange story, leading to a conclusion that is hinted at but still surprises, or shocks. And it’s a story about how different people would answer the question, what happens when you save someone’s life?

 

Wilson is the author of two previous novels, The Interloper (2007) and Panorama City (2012). His writing has appeared in numerous literary publications, including The Paris Review, Story Quarterly, Best New American Voices, and others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s received a number of awards and recognitions, including the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin. Wilson has taught writing at UCLA, Stanford, University of Iowa, University of California at San Diego, and the Otis school of Art and Design. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.

 

Mouth to Mouth will never allow you to think of the art world in the same way as might have before reading it. It also shows how interest and obsession can almost become identity. It's a riveting read.

House of many rooms

After John 14:1-14 

This journey we’re on,

this path we walk,

leads ultimately

to a house. That’s

the first surprise,

because a city might

be a destination, or

a country, but 

a house, one that

accommodates all

of us? It is a house,

indeed, a house

of many rooms,

each room,

each place,

prepared ahead

of time, in advance,

long before

it’s needed.

 

Photograph by Sigmund via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 5, 2022

James Joyce’s Ulysses turns 100 years old this month. As Terence Killeen explains at The Irish Times, because it had been serialized before its publication as a full-length novel, it was already notorious. That notoriety kept the novel from finding a publisher. That is, until the American woman who had opened a little bookshop on the Left Bank of Paris called Shakespeare & Co., decided she would publish it. 

 

Stuart Gibbs at CrimeReads talks about the “sleuth youths” – children detectives – who inspired him as a child and a writer. For those of us in an earlier generation it might have been the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

 

Which news program draws the most Democrats in the 25-54 age group? If you say Rachel Maddow, you would be – wrong. Would you believe Tucker Carlson at Fox News? Lindsey Ellefson at The Wrap has the story (surprised me, too). 

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

On Epic Stands, Great Men, and the Church Catholic – Michael Haykin at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Every Corner is Crowded – Seth Lewis.

 

Let’s not gloss over the faith of Black figures this Black History Month – Allen Reynolds at Urban Faith.

 

Poetry

 

The Irony of Fate: On the mystery of John Ashbery’s posthumous work – Ryan Ruby at The Nation.

 

Robert Frost: Imaginative Conservative – R.V. Young at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Encouragement – Emily Bronte at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

The fireplace – Aaron Cornett.

 

Unspoken Sermon – John Blase. 

 

Read More Puritan Poetry – Ed Simon at The Millions.

 

British Stuff

 

The East London Group & Photography – Spitalfields Life.

 

True England: Two Thousand Years in One Thousand Words – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

At God’s Convenience – Spitalfields Life.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Henry James & the Great War – Stephen Miller at New Criterion.

 

Bleak House by Charles Dickens (a few thoughts) – Tony Messenger at Messenger’s Booker.

 

Who Killed Christopher Marlowe? – Alan Judd at CrimeReads.

 

News Media 

 

Manipulation 102: How to Spot Media Manipulation and Block its Effects – Bruce Ashford at Christianity for the Common Good. 

 

Life and Culture

 

Decolonizer heal thyself – Patrick Porter at The Critic Magazine.

 

O Holy Night - Gentri

Painting: Juliet Fox, daughter of Richard Fox of Surrey, oil on canvas (1931) by Alfred Lambert (1902-1970). 

To build a tower

After Like 14:25-33 

To build a tower,

a house, or fortress,

you begin with

an idea, a dream,

a conviction, but

then you do what

must be done,

practically, and

tally the cost.

Without knowing

the cost, you may

start and not finish,

you may be forced

to substitute inferior

materials or turn 

to cheaper craftsmanship,

and your tower, house,

or fortress will not

weather the inevitable

storm. That’s the cost

of diligence, the cost

of discipleship, and

that’s why you count it

beforehand, because

not knowing will destroy

what you build.

 

Photograph by Victor Malyushev via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Front Page News" by Sadie Gordon Richmond

A fashion model is found dead, strangled and mutilated. Detective Chief Inspector Lawrence Forrester and Detective Sergeant Rebecca Palmer of Scotland Yard do what police officers usually do – they start interviewing family and friends, because the perpetrator is most likely someone the victim knows. That entry to the model’s flat was apparently by house key is another sign it’s someone who knew the victim.  

But as they investigate, the case gets increasingly murkier. The victim wasn’t well liked, even by relatives; she had a penchant for stealing her friends’ (and her sister’s) boyfriends. She treated her own boyfriend badly. And she was familiar with a number of London’s more unusual clubs.

 

Sadie Gordon Richmond

Front Page News by Sadie Gordon Richmond is the first of six London Series mysteries by the author. It’s a well-written police procedural, with several sub-plots involving the investigating police officers and their families. Forrester’s wife is seriously unhappy with the hours he keeps. Palmer’s boyfriend and fiancé is the lead in an up-and-coming rock band, with a cocaine problem Palmer doesn’t know about and a self-harm problem that she does know about. 

 

The story has some unusual twists, and not in the orthodox mystery or crime thriller style, in that it doesn’t have a fully resolved ending. The author has a note at the end of the book explaining that the story will pick up again in Book 5, which suggests that the series has been developed as a whole story. Some indication of that might be advisable at the beginning. It’s an interesting and entertaining story, with solid and interesting characters. But there is a sense of being left hanging.

 

Richmond is an editor who lives in London. 

"How to Study the Bible (for Beginners)" by Dan King

More than 40 years ago, as a new Christian, I took a series of courses offered by my church through the extension service of a Bible college. It was one of the most valuable things I could have done. My courses included Old Testament Survey, New Testament Survey, and Bible Study Methods. Our final exam in Bible Study Methods was to discuss one verse in the Gospel of John: John 11:35. It happens to be the shortest verse in the entire Bible: “Jesus wept.”  

What I learned in those courses have lasted a lifetime. 

 

When Dan King began a new position with his church, the first thing he focused on was how close his students were to the Word of God. That led to a series of lessons on Bible study. And that led to a primer, How to Study the Bible (for Beginners). King has three goals in his teaching and with this book: build a stronger understanding of the Bible, learn how to read the Bible intelligently, and “fall in love with the Book.”

 

Dan King

The book starts at ground zero – the basic questions in his church’s catechism. What is the Old Testament? What is the New Testament? Why do we call the Bible the Word of God? He moves into evidences for the Bible being inspired. An overview of the Old and New Testaments follows. He reviews the three types of Bible translations (literal, dynamic, and free), explains how to do a Bible word study, considers rules for interpretation, and then outlines what a basic Bible study is like. He also provides a number of resources.

 

King is the author of The Unlikely Missionary: From Pew-Warmer to Poverty-Fighter. He’s also the co-author of Activist Faith: From Him and For Him and a contributor to Finding Church: Stories of Learning, Switching, and Reforming, Making Space: Welcoming God’s Presence, and Soul Bare: Stories of Redemption. He serves as the director of Family Ministries at St. Edward’s Episcopal Church in Mount Dora, Florida, and founded and operates Fistbump Media, a digital marketing agency. He lives with his family in Florida.

 

How to Study the Bible (for Beginners) is aimed at young people and people new to faith. But it has value and application for all Christians, no matter where they are in their faith. It’s a guide, it’s a reference manual, and it’s a reminder of just how much value there is in studying the Bible.

Robert Hudson: What Thomas Merton Had on His Record Player

Robert Hudson tells a story of two men who never met, except on the turntable of a record player, but who together captured a moment in American culture. 

In the summer of 1966, Thomas Merton was confessing to his abbot at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky that he’d been having a love affair with a nurse young enough to be his daughter. It was a crisis of both vocation and faith. And folk singer Bob Dylan, who would experience a motorcycle accident in July, the details of which are still debated, was making a major shift in his music with the release of the album Blond on Blonde, the third entry of a trilogy that included Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan would not be heard from for a year.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.