The Inquisitor's Tale by Adam Gidwitz

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This book is a Newbery Honor Book, so it fits with our rather unsystematic exploration of Newbery winners and honors. I’m not quite sure how to describe this book, as it is unusual, to say the least. Let’s start with this: the book is definitely an example of Magical Realism. So there’s that. But it is more than that, and unusual for more than that too.

As the title suggests, The Inquisitor’s Tale is a bit of a nod in the general direction of The Canterbury Tales. Most of the book consists of a series of tales told at an inn. However, these are not a bunch of unrelated or loosely related stories, but one story, told by a series of narrators who witnessed various parts of the story. Oh, and telling the tale of what went on in the inn is the Inquisitor (whose identity doesn’t become clear until near the end of the book.) So that is one way to look at this book.

Another is that it is a collection of Medieval legends retold in an imaginative way. After all, very little of the story is truly “original.” Gidwitz borrows ideas liberally, but weaves the threads into a single story. 

The story itself is of three children from disparate backgrounds who are thrown together by circumstance. And also a venerated dog come back from the dead.

The first child is Jeanne, a French peasant girl. The dog is Gwenforte, a greyhound who saves Jeanne from a snake, but is killed in the mistaken believe she has harmed Jeanne. The peasants of the village venerate Gwenfortet as a saint for her heroism, and decorate her grave. Then, an inquisitor is sent to stop this idol worship, and things start to get magical - and scary for Jeanne. The incident of the holy dog, minus the resurrection, is based on real events.

The second child is William, who is based loosely on Guillaume D’Orange, a real person who later became legendary as a kind of monkish Paul Bunyan. In this story, William retains his large size and superhuman strength, but becomes the illegitimate child of a crusader and an African woman. William is abandoned at a monastery by his father after his mother dies in childbirth, and William is raised as an oblate. When we meet him in this book, he is on a mission to deliver books to Saint Denis for his superior.

The third child is Jacob, a Jewish boy recently escaped from the destruction of his village. (This incident is also based on an historical event.)

The children are thrown together by chance, and end up fleeing together as Jeanne is sought by the inquisition, Jacob is trying to find out if his parents survived, and William has his books to deliver. Along the way, they meet some memorable characters, from Michelangelo di Bologna, a giant monk who may be the villain - or not - to King Louis IX and his mother, Blanche of Castille, to Mamaluke, the good hearted but slow witted knight. Their adventures include historical events such as the mass burning of Talmuds by Louis, as well as legendary ones like the curing of the Dragon of Deadly Farts.

This second story is the one my kids thought was the most hilarious. But it isn’t original to Gidwitz. Rather, it comes from, of all places, a collection of tales told about the saints. Who says the Middle Ages were dour?

On the one hand, there are humorous moments like this. On the other, there are some really serious topics in this book. Religious and class prejudice pervade Medieval society, and all three children are looked down on as a result. Religious persecution is addressed without softening the blow at all. People are burned to death, books are burned, villages are burned. All in the name of religion.

There is also an extended examination of the Problem of Evil. I appreciate that Gidwitz doesn’t talk down to the intended audience on this. Or worse, lecture and pretend that he has a solution. There is no solution, just a combination of questions and potential partial answers. And that is okay! No person, religious or not, should fear this question or gloss over it. Humans have pondered this since the dawn of civilization. Gidwitz presents two contrasting views. The first is that of Job, where the answer is merely a question back: “where were you?” The second is that of the troubadour, who theorizes that life is like a beautiful yet tragic song. The bad things that happen are not beautiful, but the song itself is, and both the good and bad that happen are necessary for the beauty of the song of life.

The book has a rather modern sensibility, rather than a Medieval one. The author (although not always the characters) is aware of the evil of prejudice, of religious persecution, of sexism, and of superstition. As one of the characters puts it, part of being a saint (in the general sense) is to fight for good and kindness and love, and against the forces of hate and ignorance. (Hey, we could use a bit of that right now in our present time, yes?) Gidwitz gently argues for religious tolerance (also pointing out teachings in the Talmud similar to those of Christ.)

My kids liked this, but I will warn that there are some pretty intense scenes. Some children might find things scary. (And, adults should find this stuff scary. Humans can be so dreadful to each other.) This is a book full of humor, but not particularly lighthearted in its themes. But it is, like the famous cheese which gets a scene, strong and complex, and a lot like life itself.

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I strongly recommend reading the Author’s Note at the end. Gidwitz explains how he came to write the story, and indicates where the various legends and tales that are incorporated came from. 

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The audiobook is read by a full cast, including the author. I approve of this approach, and thought the Listening Library version was excellent. 

The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

Source of book: Borrowed from the Library

This book was recommended by my friend “Hester,” who wrote about it here. The book is the story about how math found the planet Neptune, and predicted a planet between Mercury and the sun, which turned out not to exist. Instead, the difficulties presented by Mercury’s orbit eventually led to the development of Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity, and a revolution in how we think of space and time. 

The marriage of math and astronomy dates back millennia, with the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese of particular note. As long as we have gazed at the heavens, it appears, we have attempted to make sense of what we can see. The Ancients are sometimes unfairly maligned by people who do not know their history. A great example of this is the claim that it was Columbus who proved the earth was round. Actually, the ancient Greeks not only knew the earth was round, but calculated its diameter to an astounding degree of accuracy given their technology of measurement. Likewise, theories of heliocentricity date back pretty far before Copernicus - they just weren’t widely accepted until later.

So, the planets have always been known, and it was clear that they all followed a similar path in the sky (what we call the ecliptic.) Their paths were also regular and predictable. However, given the limits of human eyesight, only five (plus earth) were known.

With the acceptance of heliocentricty, and Newton’s insight into the mathematics of gravity, the eliptical orbits of the planets were eventually calcuated.

Credit for the discovery of Uranus goes to the Herschels, a brother-sister team who spent years mapping the sky while looking through a home-built telescope. Eventually, they found an object that moved, and didn’t resolve to a point under magnification like a star. It was either a planet or a comet. Further observation and calculation established the orbit of Uranus.

Except there was a problem.

The orbit didn’t fit the math. Something was wrong. Was it Newton? Or was there something affecting Uranus’ orbit.

In one of the most famous scientific triumphs of all time, Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier calculated the orbit and mass of Neptune based purely on the anomalies of Uranus’ orbit. When he finally convinced an astronomer with a powerful enough telescope to look in the correct place, boom! There it was.

Le Verrier then turned toward the problem of Mercury, which likewise had difficulties with its orbit. As measurements had grown more accurate, it was obvious that Mercury too was not obeying Newtonian physics properly.

But despite Le Verrier’s calculations and many attempts at spotting something, anything that would affect Mercury’s orbit, nothing could be found. (This book describes at length the process of searching near the sun during eclipses - which sounds really cool.) There should have been something there, but there wasn’t. At least if Newton was correct.

It would be later that Einstein, working on his own theories about the union of space and time (analogous to matter and energy in being dimensions of the same basic substance), realized that relativity would indeed affect the orbit of Mercury. In fact, because Mercury was closest to the sun, a rather large mass, it would be affected more than any other planet. Newton’s laws of planetary motion and gravitation weren’t exactly wrong, but they were incomplete.

(One recommendation I give to anyone wanting to understand the difference between being wrong in an absolute sense and being just relatively more or less wrong is this fantastic article written by Isaac Asimov. Hat tip to my cousin the professional math geek for sending it my way years ago. It is a great rebuttal to those who claim that since science has gotten things wrong in the past, that we should never trust science when it conflicts with, say, religious dogma. Yes, Newton was wrong in a sense. But he was more right than those who came before, and what is certainly NOT going to happen is that science is going to suddenly decide that the universe revolves around the earth.)

I’m a sucker for books like this, which give the fascinating history of science. I have loved science as long as I can remember, and have devoured it since I was a kid. (I still own the Growing Up With Science encyclopedia set that I read cover to cover several times as a kid. I also recommend David Macauley’s The Way Things Work as an excellent resource for kids.) Just in the last few years, I have particularly enjoyed Sam Kean’s books on a variety of scientific subjects, Thomas Suddendorf’s The Gap, David Weintraub’s How Old is the Universe?, and Phil Plait’s Death From The Skies. Actually, my subject index has a whole category for science, if you want some great suggestions. For the history of science - including a lot on the Herschels - I highly recommend The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.

There are a few lines in the book I want to mention. The first is from the introduction, which points out that science doesn’t advance in the idealized way that it is often thought to. Old theories are often held onto longer than they should be. The reason for this is that a “powerful, or a beautiful, or perhaps simply a familiar and useful conception of the world” will not be abandoned until two factors are in place: an utter compulsion (the theory fits so badly that it can no longer work), and a real alternative. This second is crucial as well. Newtonian physics weren’t perfect - but they worked for almost everything - certainly anything we needed to engineer here on earth. (At least until we invented GPS, which requires that the software account for both special AND general relativity…) And, until Einstein formulated a theory that worked better, it was no use to just jettison an imperfect theory altogether. This is really the problem that Young Earth Creationists cannot acknowledge. While we have an imperfect and incomplete understanding of geology and astrophysics and evolutionary biology, what we do have fits the observable evidence far better than the theory of a 6000 year old universe. It isn’t enough to just point out gaps and flaws - you have to formulate a viable alternative theory that accounts for the evidence better than what we have. And no, “just so stories” do not count.

Another interesting passage was about Einstein’s difficulties in getting observations to test his theories. Because he lacked the time away from his day job - and the experience and equipment for observations - he sent some professionals to Crimea to observe an eclipse. On the one hand, the weather didn’t cooperate. On the other, this little conflict called World War One started, and made the politics of getting his assistants back to Germany quite difficult. (It ended in a prisoner exchange.) So let’s just say Einstein wasn’t a fan of war.

“That man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them.”

He also had misgivings about technology - something the 20th Century proved too well to be true, not so much about technology itself, but humanity’s proclivities toward violence.

“Our whole, highly praised technological progress and civilization in general can be likened to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.”

It is easy to see how he might say this in the middle of what was by any measurement a senseless and horrific war, and one which would lead to another in a couple of decades.

One final bit which really made an impression on me was this one:

Science is unique among human ways of knowing because it is self-correcting. Every claim is provisional, which is to say each is incomplete in some small, or, occasionally, truly consequential way. But in the midst of the fray, it is impossible to be sure what any gap between knowledge and nature might mean. We know now that Vulcan could never have existed; Einstein has show us so. But no route to certainty existed for Le Verrier, nor any of his successors over the next half century. They lacked not facts, but a framework, some alternative way of seeing through which Vulcan’s absence could be understood.

The author here is mostly right. He is right about how humans are functioning now. But there is some history here which is beyond the scope of the book - and his point here.

Once upon a time, science and religion were more intertwined. At one point, priests were scientists, and the cutting edge of science was furthered by religion. However, as Petr Beckmann points out, there is a tension here, because science takes work, whereas mumbo-jumbo is cheap to produce - and people tend to pay the same for it.

But as a consequence of the intertwining, religion has sometimes been more like science, where all knowledge - including theological knowledge - is provisional, acknowledged to be incomplete (perhaps “through a glass, darkly…”), and subject to revision upon further exploration and investigation. It was a humility about our knowledge which is completely lacking in modern Evangelicalism, which truly believes it knows everything there is to know about everything.

One of the things I did this year during my lunch breaks was listen to Christine Hayes’ excellent lectures on the Old Testament. (The open course is essentially free from Yale.) One of the points she made early on was that in the Ancient Near East, religious texts were considered authoritative, not because they were unchanging - but because they were changeable. It was the very nature of an authoritative religious text that it would be revised and reinterpreted to suit changing information and cultural needs. That is why the stories of Israel’s history in Samuel/Kings differs so widely from that in Chronicles. Different time period, different theological perspectives. It is why there is argument and discussion of different issues from interracial marriage to the meaning of life just within the Old Testament, to say nothing of the conflict between Old and New.

In this sense, religion was at various times - and could be again - a form of human knowledge that resembles science and in a good way. If knowledge is again less ossified and subject to revision and reinterpretation based on new discoveries about the universe, about human nature, about societies and culture, it can too become self correcting, rather than a perpetuation of the injustices and prejudices of the past. A little humility about what we know, don’t know, and especially how we use our (lack of) knowledge to help or harm others.

Anyway, with that digression, I recommend this book for some fascinating history and as a starting point for thinking about what we know and how we know it.

A Wind In The Door by Madeleine L'Engle

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

Last year, the kids and I listened to the first book in this series, A Wrinkle in Time, which, oddly, I had never read as a kid. They rather liked it, so we decided to listen to the next one. 

The book continues the story of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin; but sets off into the microcosmos rather than the macrocosmos. Charles Wallace is growing sick, and his mother (and a doctor) believe there is a problem with his mitochondria. Meg and Calvin, along with a cherubim, Proginoskes, and the school principal, Mr. Jenkins (who is most certainly not an expected participant in this adventure), have to go pass a series of tests, and go inside one of Charles Wallace’s mitochondria to save him - and the universe.

Like the first book, the story is more than a story. It contains layers of metaphor and speaks to universal ideas. Without getting too deep into the plot, L’Engle’s core belief that love is the strongest power in the universe - and the core of what is good. It is love alone that can - and must - conquer the forces of evil.

Likewise, L’Engle identifies the root of evil as what in our world we would call dehumanization. (For the books, which contain both extraterrestrial and supernatural beings, “dehumanization” would obviously be too narrow of a term. Perhaps un-being is a good one.) At various points, the supernatural characters insist that war is always insanity. And I must agree with that one. The very concept of a “just war” assumes that it is necessary because someone else started it - the just war is to end the threat. In this universe, the forces of evil are responsible for wars (and all suffering) because they act to destroy, and to turn groups against others. (This is why Hitler gets a prominent mention.) In another great line, the connection is made explicit when the forces of evil try to convince the (fictional) creatures within the mitochondria (which are real) to rebel and seek power and glory at the expense of the others. That this will lead to an imbalance that will destroy not just the mitochondria, but the larger organism - and thus every part of said organism - is lost on those who wish to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others.

I believe that L’Engle is correct that we are all interconnected, and when harm comes to others, we all suffer. I also believe that the evil throughout the ages, from the legend of Cain and Abel through the horrors of war over the last hundred thousand years, to the present re-invigoration of tribalism, hate, and racism all has the same root. The desire to win by causing others to lose, to be preeminent, to dehumanize the “other.” “[A]ny man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” as John Donne put it.

This does seem rather relevant right now, when the forces of White Supremacy and Nationalism are newly emboldened. “We are the only ones who matter.” The more things change...

L’Engle uses an interesting concept to illustrate the idea of love, and that is through “naming.” To be named is to exist, to be, and to be as one’s true self. My children are loved in a sense because I have named them. And to continue to love them, I must identify them by name, as individual beings beloved. To be unnamed in that sense is to cease to exist. But L’Engle insists that once named, always named.

This also ties back into A Wrinkle in Time, where L’Engle also notes that what evil desires is conformity. The idea of interconnection is not in tension with individuality, actually. To be is to exist both as one’s unique self (and none of us are exactly alike), and in reference to our interconnectedness to each other. When we cease to be unique, we also become replaceable, like cogs in a mass manufactured machine. If one breaks, just swap another in.

Not so with true being, where one’s “faults” are important too. One of the tests Meg has to pass is to correctly identify which Mr. Jenkins is the real one. It ends up being his faults and weaknesses that give away which one is real - and also the only things that Meg can readily love about Mr. Jenkins. Indeed, it is through his weaknesses that she is able to see him as fully human - as being.

These books are a bit unusual, particularly as literature aimed at older children and young adults. They are not “easy” in the traditional sense, and much of the action takes place in the mind. That I would enjoy this sort of thing is no surprise - I find the psychology of characters to be the best part of many books. But my kids also liked both of these books, even the younger ones.

In the audiobook versions we have listened to, the author herself has read them. That is always an interesting experience. I wouldn’t say L’Engle’s voice is the best I have heard. It is deep and a bit raspy. But she also reads her books with great pacing and expression. Not as highly expressive, but low key expressive. I have come to enjoy her reading, which is why we got the second book with her as the reader, rather than the other option.

I find these books (so far) to be interesting in their ethical implications as well as the imaginitive use of science. A few things on the latter are a bit dated - which is to be expected with all science fiction. But in general she does her research. Just one particular thing to mention is that mitochondria are indeed believed to be the result of one creature ingesting another, and the two learning to live as interconnected organisms. If this is true (and there is good evidence it is), then our bodies are in a manner of speaking, not entirely ours. As it is, humans contain more bacterial cells than human cells in their bodies, our DNA contains insertions from viruses, and within our cells may be hundreds of “foreign” organisms which are necessary for life, and yet not quite “us.” It is a crazy thought, and also sobering. We are interconnected in ways we do not fully understand.

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If you want, my friend “Hester” blogged about this book too. Her blog on books and stuff is worth reading, as is her old blog on Christian Patriarchy.

Was It Worth It? My Post-Election Prediction

This was my post on Facebook the day after The Narcissist Who Shall Not Be Named was elected. 

Since that time, me and my family have left both our long time church (for hate group related reasons) and Evangelicalism as a whole. We have not attended church since. I know of a number of others who have left. In many cases, we are those who have spent literally decades in dedicated service. The reasons we left our church were specific to that situation. The reason I am not inclined to try again is that politics have poisoned things, and the benefits do not seem worth the risk.

Actions - and votes - have consequences. I’ll be here (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) to remind you all of that.

#wasitworthit?

#whitenationalismisnotachristianvalue

#socialdarwinismisnotachristianvalue

#misogynyisnotachristianvalue

#seriouslywasitworthit?

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If you want, here are my posts before and after the election. Sadly, it has become obvious that Le Toupee and the GOP were not joking when they promised to exclude immigrants and refugees, retaliate against civil rights protesters, gut healthcare for the poor and disabled, and generally implement the KKK platform of the 1920s.

Looking Away From An Assault: An Election Tale

Aftermath: A Way Forward For Those Of Us Who Still Believe In Basic Human Decency

And also:

Since When Is Exclusion of Immigrants a "Christian Dream"? 
Hate Groups And Why They Matter
Why Young People are Leaving Evangelicalism


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Update November 16, 2017:

Miguel de la Torre wrote this outstanding piece for Baptist News (of all the unlikely places.) I feel like I could have written it myself.

The Death of Christianity in the United States

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2018 update:

In just the last year, it has become even clearer that a major priority of white Evangelicals is to stop brown-skinned people from immigrating to the United States. Many people I know - and some I am related to - have lined up to defend even the most heinous of Trump's policies, including the separation of children from their parents (often permanently), stripping citizenship from US citizens if they can't prove that the midwife who delivered them didn't lie, and more. In short, Evangelicals seem determined to prove that they are the cruelest people in our nation. This makes me achingly sad.

Also: still haven't attended church since we left. 

Update 2024:

It has now been more than 7 years since or family participated in organized religion. Having spent this much time away, I understand that while there are things I miss, those things would no longer be there for me.

Most white “Christians” in this country are all-in on open fascism, and I cannot feel safe around people like that, so church is pretty much a non-possibility. At this point, I cannot envision a scenario that will bring our family back to church.

PRRI just released its 2023 survey, and religion – particularly white Christianity – continues to decline. “Unaffilliated” is now not merely the largest group, but larger than all white protestant groups combined.

Those two things are related: as white Christians see their power and privilege (and their right to abuse others in our culture) decline, they are lashing out in fury and hate and desperately seeking to restore their power. At the same time, their embrace of fascism drives more and more from their churches and religion.

2025 update:

 

Nearly 9 years since we left organized religion. And we are clearly not the only ones. The United States has had a precipitous decline in religion - and it really is the Trump Effect in action.  

 

Additional interesting information from the latest Pew survey:

While the decline among young people has leveled off for now (probably because most of the Trump Effect is already apparent) young people remain far less religious than even 10 years ago. The claims of a "revival" among young people isn't supported by the evidence. Furthermore, while the gender gap has narrowed - traditionally women are more religious than men - this isn't because men have become more religious, but because women have become less so. This is particularly apparent in young people.