Tag: The Calamity Club

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” —Romans 11:33

I enjoyed a few weeks off from writing this article to focus on other things. I was able to complete my work for next year’s Bible study and outline a new book project. But I also spent time reading and being still to think. I’ve often said it is an effort to separate our thoughts from the normal daily things that fill our minds. It takes time to think at a new level and in new ways. I’m always amazed by the thoughts and ideas that God introduces when I set aside the average moments and make the effort to think with God and seek his thoughts. Those God-thoughts came in some unexpected ways this time!

Over my break, I read two novels that were excellent, in completely different ways. God used both novels to make me think differently about many things and to stretch my worldview. He gave me answers to the divisions in our culture, and each book also produced (or gave me) some new ideas. 

Two novels that can make a reader think

The first novel was The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, and the second was Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. You’ve probably heard of Kathryn Stockett. She wrote the now-famous novel, The Help, which also became a popular movie. She fell off the radar, however, and lost her contract with her publisher, because it took her fourteen years to write her second novel. She said she just couldn’t write anything she felt had value during those first years. Then, she created and came to know her fictional characters. Stockett credits the dialogue and circumstances we see in The Calamity Club to each of them. A book review in The New York Times is titled, “A Raucous Tale of Found Family by the Author of ‘The Help.’” That is an accurate description of the characters Stockett came to know and write about.

Most people have never heard of Allen Levi, a seventy-year-old lawyer, judge, musician, and now author. Theo of Golden is his first and only novel. A Wall Street Journal article was titled, “Theo of Golden Broke Every Rule in Publishing. It’s an Unprecedented Bestseller.” The article describes the novel as, “a nearly 400-page story of an old man who travels to a fictional Southern city where he mostly sits on a park bench.” Theo of Golden is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. It became a national bestseller simply because so many people shared it with their friends.

Great novels have great characters

I have enrolled in several writing seminars over the years, and the fiction-writing classes I attended always emphasized the importance of “character development.” Great novels cause you to engage with and care about the characters. The characters have to be interesting and believable, and the reader has to be drawn into their lives. Kathryn Stockett’s description of “getting to know” her characters and allowing them to write the dialogue was fascinating. Both novels featured rich character development. But the authors had very different purposes for their characters. As a result, the two novels create different worldviews for the reader.

I listened to a Southern Living podcast with Kathryn Stockett, where she described the thoughts that eventually led to her characters. She said she was inspired by history to write a novel about “the underestimated women” of a particular period. Fair warning: The New York Times was accurate to use the word “raucous.” I actually questioned some of the language and subject matter in this book until I read the epilogue at the back. I realized the book, while very one-sided, was based on historical facts. Let’s just say “the church” is not appreciated in this novel, and the street savvy of the characters is how they overcome oppression from people and politics in their lives.

Allen Levi’s characters were as diverse as the line at the coffee shop where the story begins. His novel isn’t limited to a particular period or a specific category of people, and as a result, Theo of Golden offers a broader view of the world. According to the Wall Street Journal article, Levi created his characters from “people he’d encountered over decades in his multifaceted career.” His novel doesn’t deny the difficulties and differences in the culture but points to the strength of people who embrace those realities. His characters learn to value others and extend grace to those around them. Levi wouldn’t allow the book to be listed as a “Christian” novel because he said that would limit his audience. The church is valued in his novel, but only when the Church, the true family of God, becomes people who are careful to live with biblical values.

Two different worldviews created two different novels

I read The Calamity Club first, and a couple of days later, Theo of Golden. I enjoyed both novels as well-written stories, but was struck by the very different approaches they took to their worldviews. I grieved the historical realities described in The Calamity Club, and it was a window into the way our culture still needs to improve and grow. The racism of the past was evil and, truthfully, is still evil today. Racism has always existed in our world, and it always will because it is an aspect of our sin natures. People are different, and unless our values reflect God’s, we will fail to understand how to love and serve others. 

The Calamity Club teaches that a person’s success depends on their ability to out-smart and out-wit those around them. The characters are rather one-sided, as the New York Times articles described them: “portraits of good and evil, of rich and poor, of women with class and those who can’t afford it.” The men in this novel seem “universally pathetic” and “comically impotent in more ways than one.” The women, in contrast, use the men’s weaknesses to justify their own behavior, and their strength and cunning are what enable them to overcome the odds. The New York Times described Stockett’s characters as “cartoonish,” but the end result is a story of “hell-raising entertainment.” I found those words both accurate and sadly true. 

Theo of Golden takes a very different approach. The characters develop slowly in this book, and the reader gets to know them slowly, much like we come to know people in our own lives. One quote in the Wall Street Journal article said, “Reading this book, you feel like, ‘If I just sit down with my neighbor and talk to them, I can effect change,’ and that’s a very powerful message.” Katie Couric did a podcast with the author, Allen Levi, and said, “To have this gentleman who just exuded kindness and compassion was like an antidote to all the tumult and vitriol in the world.”

Both novels were “good reads” with very different outcomes. If your current worldview is “us against them,” Stockett’s novel will likely be your preference. If your worldview is biblical, you will probably enjoy the complexities, the quiet values, and the realities described in Levi’s book. Reading both novels back-to-back provided a very accurate account of why worldviews clash in our world today. 

Both novels reflect and reveal truth. The question is, which novel do you want as your example for living in this world today?

We need to think as Isaiah 55 teaches

I want to close this article with the words of Isaiah 55. The entire passage is the best biblical conclusion I could write for each of us. That passage encourages us to submit our own thoughts to God. The two novels speak to human strength and weakness, and each of us has both. Isaiah 55:9 is God’s advice for our thoughts. God told the prophet, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

It was wonderful to have a few weeks to think with God. There is a quiet in my soul as a result. God used two extraordinarily different novels to broaden my worldview and to recommit me to the pursuit of God’s thoughts. His are the only perfect ideas in this world. God’s ideas have the power to change our world. That could be the theme of Theo of Golden.

I encourage you to read both novels, back-to-back. (Remember: The Calamity Club is “raucous” and NOT Christian literature.) It is the stark differences between the two novels that make them real and important, and that speak to the divisions in our world today. I honestly think God can use most anything to turn our thoughts to his. We can’t make a difference unless we care about everyone. I think that is the tale of two novels. Theo of Golden is the novel that best explains how caring can become the Christian’s way of life.