![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/-GwN3I-Mdd2Q\/TDC03dvMjCI\/AAAAAAAAA_w\/zegoCIpgDu0\/s1600\/sunday+books.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s installment of the Sunday\u2019s Good Book series of reviews was meant to be about Robert Alter\u2019s Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible<\/em><\/a>, but I\u2019ll confess I didn\u2019t get around to finishing the admittedly slim volume.<\/p>\n It was recommended to me by the professor of my oratory class, but I misunderstood the nature of the book. I had thought it was a series of case studies of biblical rhetoric in American political<\/em> language, or American culture broadly. \u00a0It turned out to be a study of the use of biblical language in American literature<\/em>, which was where it all went wrong for me.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t always like reading literary criticism, and I absolutely cannot enjoy it when I haven\u2019t read the books being discussed. \u00a0Of the six Alter studies, I\u2019ve only read Moby Dick<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and even that only once in high school. \u00a0And as far as I can tell, I read it wrong. \u00a0I didn\u2019t care about Ahab\u2019s quest or any facet of the plot or characters. \u00a0I preferred the infodump chapters on the history, culture, and precise terminology of whaling.<\/p>\n This book didn\u2019t suit me, but I thought it might be of interest to some of the readers of this blog, and, if it turns out to be of great<\/em>\u00a0interest to any of you, email me to arrange to give it a proper review in a guest post. \u00a0If you\u2019re very<\/em>\u00a0interested in reading it and sharing your thoughts and live in the continental US, email me at leah (dot) libresco (at) yale (dot) edu and I might send it to you if no one at school puts in a claim. \u00a0With a senior essay to draft and plenty of other theological works (and just plain novels) piling up, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll return to it in the\u00a0foreseeable\u00a0future.<\/p>\n I am still interested in reading the kind of book I thought<\/em>\u00a0I was getting: a study of religious motifs in political discourse, so if anyone\u2019s read something good along those lines, drop me a note in the comments. \u00a0The closest I\u2019ve gotten is Drew Westen\u2019s The Political Brain<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Westen\u2019s major focus is using neuroscience to guide new strategies in political messaging, and, to put it bluntly, I came off the book with some major suspicions about his conclusions. \u00a0However, he also spends a fair amount of time talking about using religious rhetoric to promote policies in the public sphere, and even includes some examples of how to appeal to shared religious values on several contentious issues. \u00a0Some of the case studies were interesting, and I\u2019d be interested in more works on that topic.<\/p>\n When Westen gave a talk at my school, he admitted that he felt he had no future in politics as a career because, as a Jew, he couldn\u2019t appeal to his mostly-Christian constituents in the vernacular that had the most resonance for them. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s correct to write himself off. \u00a0Since starting to blog about religion and reading theology in books and other blogs, I\u2019ve picked up some of the thought and language of the Catholic tradition, even if I\u2019m not fluent.<\/p>\n No worries I\u2019ll ever be able to turn that knowledge into political capital. \u00a0After all, I run a public blog about religion.<\/p>\n \u00a0 Today\u2019s installment of the Sunday\u2019s Good Book series of reviews was meant to be about Robert Alter\u2019s Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, but I\u2019ll confess I didn\u2019t get around to finishing the admittedly slim volume. It was recommended to me by the professor of my oratory class, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n