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Readings

by Rick Dietrich

Books of Books

There is a ton of stuff in Robert Detweiler and David Jasper's Religion and Literature: A Reader (Westminster John Knox Press, 2000). The problem is that it comes in two thousand quarter-pound units. The book contains, as advertised, selections from more than seventy sources -- but in less than 180 pages.

There is a guilty thrill in picking up a book that tells us on its cover that here we'll meet "Augustine of Hippo, Samuel Beckett, William Blake, Jacques Derrida, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther, Thomas Merton, John Milton, Flannery O'Connor, Ovid, Paul Ricoeur, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Paul Tillich, Mark Twain, John Updike, Simone Weil, Elie Wiesel, [I'm out of breath.] and many others." Hey! I've heard of these guys. And when I'm done -- I will have heard of these guys. The meetings are so distant and brief.

Granted, you are introduced. But, I imagine, it's something like being the Queen of England. As the line approaches, the Lord High Whisperer (the one with the guest list) tells us: "Northrop Frye, madam, born 1912, died 1991. Anatomy of Criticism (1957). The Great Code (1981). All about literature, you know -- the first is. About the Bible, the second one, the key to Western culture, and so on. From the provinces." And we shake hands with Mr. Frye as he moves on.

Frye is a good example of Detweiler and Jasper's method. He is introduced and "placed" in a paragraph. A book of 260 closely argued pages is represented in one.

The fiction writers fare no better than the critics. Moby Dick gets a page and a half. The poets come out best, if only because poems can be quoted in full, shorter poems, that is: John Donne's "Batter My Heart," George Herbert's "Love," Emily Dickinson's "Title divine -- is mine!" On the other hand, we get only a few lines more than a page of Paradise Lost (out of well over 7000 lines, 71 lines in two snippets).

The book is unhappily designed. The style chosen for the selections is odd and difficult to read. There is a complete table of contents, but there is no index.

All of these problems (with the exception of the design) result, however, from taking on a difficult, if not impossible, task. The last century (1901–2000) loved anthologies. It produced thousands upon thousands, too many of which are on my shelves. Anthologies attracted us -- and will continue to do so -- because they promise us entrance into places we cannot otherwise go. They are much like travel writing in that way, or guides like Frommer's or France on $5 a Day. Thus, I don't have time in a lifetime (especially one as busy as mine) to live a year in the land of William Blake, but I can visit there -- at least, I can see pictures of the main sites -- thanks to Norton.

The best anthologies are, however, relatively narrow in scope and still huge. Consider Rollins and Baker's The Renaissance in England, which contains only non-dramatic prose and verse of one century -- over a thousand pages long with ten pages of index and eighty glossaries. Another favorite of mine is David Richter's The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, well over 1600 pages with 35 of index, and containing, for example, the complete text of Horace's Ars Poetica.

Compare how Richter treats Jacques Derrida with what Detweiler and Jasper do with him. The latter offer two paragraphs of introduction and barely over a page from, admittedly, a brief work, The Gift of Death (116 pages). Richter provides an extensive introduction to the movement that produced Derrida (or, that he produced), as well as an introduction to Derrida himself, and the complete essay "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences" (from The Structuralist Controversy).

Admittedly, Richter's aim is somewhat different from Detweiler and Jasper's, which is to provide a textbook for students in religion courses. But I don't think they've done that. If I taught from this book, I would need to supplement it heavily. On the other hand, the book does help the teacher think about how to introduce the field. It is well organized, with chapters on "The History of the Field [of Religion and Literature] and Theoretical Issues," on "The Interpretive Tradition of Literature and Religion," on "The Language and Literature of Worship," on literary structures and genres, on "The Great Themes of Literature and Religion," among others. The chapter introductions are well written and helpful. The suggestions for further reading, at the end of each chapter, are excellent. But, again, there is just not enough stuff here. It's like trying to make a meal of salt and pepper.

Westminster John Knox needs to start over. "Religion and Literature" is not a narrow topic. The press needs to give Detweiler and Jasper freer reign and considerably more resources, especially more space: fifteen hundred pages, plenty of room for an index (or indexes), and a hardcover would be a start. If you're going into the anthology business, you need to think big.