In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the makings of a kickass drama series for primetime television in America many generations hence. At least that’s how I liked to imagine pitching it (but of course didn’t in the end) when beginning to develop the idea for said series this past summer, one inspired by certain stories, characters, and themes in the Book of Genesis. In the interest of intellectual property, that’s all I can or should... Read more
Since I’ve been blogging here at Good Letters I have been contacted by several friends who knew me back when I was a Baptist. My friend Heidi asked, “Are you a universalist now?” Cliff wondered if I was, “denying or seriously doubting Jesus’ claim to be God.” Another asked if I was “still a believer,” and yet another frankly labeled me agnostic. These friends are seeing my musings after many years away—thanks to social media. Their own journeys seem to... Read more
I found myself in this strange conversation this week…. Interviewer: Do you recommend The Master? Jeffrey Overstreet: Not yet. I need time to reflect on a film as challenging as this one. I need discussion. I need to see it again. Reviewing movies is a tricky business. It’s like recommending a pair of shoes to an audience. The shoes may be well-made, but people may dislike their style or misunderstand their purpose. Even the best shoes will only fit certain... Read more
Not yet a month into the semester, my students and I move cautiously around one another like two parties in an arranged marriage, still unsure of what kindnesses or cruelties the other is capable. They are in remedial English and suspect they are not natural writers; I am a novice instructor and suspect I am not a natural teacher. Secretly we each hope the other will prove us wrong. I leave my house in the morning two hours before the... Read more
The arrival of so many small children at the tiny train station at Hattenheim could not have gone unnoticed . . . These attempts to shed light on the atrocities committed at the Eichberg may have done little to change the regional population’s lack of interest in this topic, however. —Lutz Kaelber “You ever eat grass-fed beef?” This from a biker in Starbucks, eavesdropping on my conversation with a friend. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s good.” He curled his lip. “Tastes... Read more
My mother used to sing us to sleep. Her lullabies weren’t choruses of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” repeated just until she could tell we were out. No, she brought her guitar into the room my sister and I shared, sat close in the dark, and as far as we knew, had nowhere else to go and nothing more important to do. In those moments, she was all ours. Our favorite songs were the sad ones. Like “Summertime,” that great ode... Read more
This past Saturday, on a brilliant fall morning, my eight-year-old son came bounding downstairs for breakfast. I reached into the refrigerator, grabbed a cold Diet Mountain Dew from in between glass-bottled organic milk and tomato juice, and served it to him with farm-fresh eggs, feeling the part of a drug dealer. We had a long day ahead, and I wanted to see what happened. I smiled to myself, imagining some upcoming event, the mothers’ conversation all about peanut-free this and... Read more
Has the Lord God graced us with any poetic mind as elegant and potent as that of his darling, William Shakespeare? No, I say, No!—thrice and four times, No! Fie upon it. Out, damned calumny! And don’t speak any garbage about him not really being him; nobody outside Bigfoot believers and Roswell Rosicrucians seriously contends it. He was him, all right, and a thrashing from crown to crow’s foot is owed to any villainous cur who repeats such bold and... Read more
I have my father’s hands I have my mother’s tongue I look for redemption in everyone —Over the Rhine This is a story about beauty, about living in the ruins of something you could never name, but which came to you like an inheritance, like skin or hair or freckles, unbidden, immovable. My hair was a tangle of red from the moment I was born, and with that came everything else. I was born into a circuit, into a grid... Read more
Continued from yesterday. In his now infamous 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace tells a parable about two men, an atheist and a Christian, sitting in a bar in the Alaskan wilderness debating the existence of God. The two men interpret the world in two different ways, the believer thinking that his friend’s survival in a recent blizzard was the result of a half-hearted yet answered prayer, and the atheist believing that “all that was was two... Read more
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