Category: Culture

[NOTE: A lot of folks in other countries see the site at unsual hours, and I didn’t want this week’s special event to get buried under other posts and be less visible over the weekend, so I moved the two relevant posts to the top. This should also make it easier for folks who want to participate but who couldn’t read the story during work hours. For an explanation of what we’re doing see here.–ja]

Through and Through

by Tim Powers

ALREADY when he walked in through the side door, there were new people sitting here and there, separately in the Saturday afternoon dimness. The air was cool, and smelled of floor-wax.

He almost peered at the shadowed faces, irrationally hoping one might be hers, come back these seven days later to try for a different result; but most of the faces were lowered, and of course she wouldn’t be here. Two days ago, maybe—today, and ever after, no.

The funeral would be next week sometime, probably Monday. No complications about burial in consecrated soil anymore, thank God . . . or thank human mercy.

His shoes knocked echoingly on the glossy linoleum as he walked across the nave, pausing to bow toward the altar. In the old days he would have genuflected, and it would have been spontaneous; in recenter years the bow had become perfunctory, dutiful—today it was a twitch of self-distaste.

There were fewer people than he had first thought, he noted as he walked past the side altar and started down the wall aisle toward the confessional door, passing under the high, wooden Stations of the Cross and the awkwardly lettered banners of the Renew Committee. Maybe only three, all women; and a couple of little girls.

They never wanted to line up against the wall—a discreet couple of yards away from the door—until he actually entered the church; and then if there were six or so of them they’d be frowning at each other as they got up out of the pews and belatedly formed the line. silently but obviously disagreeing about the order in which they’d originally entered the church.

Last week there had been five, counting her. And afterward he had walked back up to the front of the church and stepped up onto the altar level and gone into the sacristy to put on the vestments for 5:30 Mass. Had he been worrying about what she had said? What sins you shall retain, they are retained. Probably he had been worrying about it.

As he opened the confessional door now, he nodded to the old woman who was first in line. The others appeared to be trying to hide behind her—he could see only a drape of skirt and a couple of shoes behind her. He didn’t recognize the old woman.

He stepped into the little room and pulled the door closed behind him. They wouldn’t begin to come in until he turned on the red light over the door, and he needed a drink.

Continue reading “Through And Through”

Okay, I’d like to call this first meeting of the JimmyAkin.Org Literary Club to order.

(Bangs gavel several times. Waves it threateningly at one member of the crowd, who quickly settles down.)

Our story today is "Through and Through" by Catholic fantasy author Tim Powers.

If you didn’t do your homework and read the story (or if your time zone prevented you from doing so–drat these global forums!) then kindly read it now. It’s the post just under this one.

To prevent spoilerage, I’m putting my own remarks on the story in the below-the-fold part of this post. Please feel free to add your own remarks on the story and the issues it raises in the combox, and I hope you’ll enjoy this first-ever meeting of the JA.O Literary Club!

(NOTE TO OTHER BLOGGERS: If you like the story and the discussion of it, you might invite your own readers to join in!)

Continue reading “JA.O Literary Club Meeting #1”

Just an announcement that we will be having a special meeting of the JimmyAkin.Org Literary Club tomorrow.

This will be our first meeting, and I’m pleased to say that I have secured the Internet reprint rights to a short story by the renowned Catholic fantasy author Tim Powers.

The story is titled "Through and Through," and it is heavily Catholic-themed. (You’ll be surprised at how much!)

I read the story and thought it would make an excellent text for the JA.OLC, and Mr. Powers was kind enough to allow me to reprint it so we can all read it.

Here’s how it’ll work: Tomorrow at a bit after midnight (Pacific Time), I’ll put up the story, but it’ll have the combox turned off so that folks can just read the story. Then, at about nine a.m. (again Pacific), I’ll put up my review of the story with the combox turned on so that folks can add their own reviews, thoughts, discussions.

Hope y’all enjoy the story, and I hope to see you at the first-ever meeting of the JA.O Literary Club!

If Uncle Screwtape had thumbs, he’d be giving The DaVinci Code two thumbs up.

"Now, Wormwood, before you object to my calling this book ‘non-fiction’ — since it is technically classified as ‘fiction’ — let me say that it is essentially non-fiction, at least as far as our purposes are concerned. That’s because it’s principle delight for our side is that in the tacky plastic shell of some below-average ‘fiction’ the book parades as ‘fact’ a veritable phalanx of practical propaganda and disinformation that would make our dear Herr Goebbels (Circle Eight, third spiderhole on the right) jade green with envy! Souls by the boatload are blithely believing almost all of the deliciously corrosive non-facts that are congealed everywhere in it, like flies in bad aspic, and it is that precisely which most recommends this glorious effort as worthy of our dedicated and especial study.

"But where to begin in describing to you its myriad delights? First, a brief synopsis of the plot: a museum curator is murdered by a fanatical albino Christian bigot (nice opening, no?); the curator’s granddaughter and an American ‘symbologist’ (don’t ask me, I haven’t the time) try to find the real killer and are launched on a wildly implausible and fantastically cryptical search for the proverbial Holy Grail, all the while chased by angry gendarmes and the aforementioned unhinged albino. In the process they (and the lucky reader) discover that: the Church is murderous and evil; the Bible is a hoax; Jesus is not divine, but merely a married mortal and an earnest proto-feminist (!); there is no such thing as Truth; and oh, yes… is the truest kind of prayer. Can you stand it? A virtuoso performance, no? It’s as if the author’s somehow squeezed all of hell into a walnut shell. And oh, yes, one more historical ‘fact’: Leonardo DaVinci’s homosexuality was ‘flamboyant’! Do tell."

GET THE STORY. (Warning: Put down the coffee mug and clear the throat first. JimmyAkin.org takes no responsibility for the state of your keyboard, monitor, or respiratory system if you read this while drinking or eating.)

(Nod to Mark Shea for the link.)

I’ve read a number of Screwtapian musings by writers attempting to channel C. S. Lewis, but this is the first one I’ve read of which I think even Lewis himself would approve. Eric Metaxas nails Screwtape. Read the whole thing.