esrosedotblog

BOOK REPORT

First, the books I have not read.

I took a turn with Missing Out: In praise of the unlived life., in which Adam Phillips says that many of us live two parallel lives, one that we have and the one we feel as though we should have or that we missed or something.

It sounded good in the review and it is an interesting idea drawn out over too many pages. I got the point in the Prologue.

I also got that this was a closet atheist book which is OK but then just come out and say it. The implication is that if you have God in your life, you are especially prone to this kind of misguided, frustrated existence where you pine for what you do not have.

I say "bullshit" to that. I have a Higher Power and that presence helps me be where I am and not spend much time on where I am not. It is the essence of my belief. True humility being acceptance of who and what I am. That was just in a reading in the Meeting I went to this morning.

The book is OK. I agree with the premise. And I don't argue about God with atheists. It is futile. And amounts to wanting what I don't have!

I left Adam to his thoughts after the first or second chapter and a quick scan of the rest. Off to the library with this one.

I also bailed on the new book by Kurt Anderson, True Believers.

I had enjoyed his earlier ventures, Heyday in which he followed five people across the US in the mid 19th century from NYC to SFO and all the stops in between. Also Turn of the Century which does a similar job with some dot.com people at, well, the turnover from the 20th to the 21st century.

Both were fun because they told a story of a bunch of people with the overlay of details from the culture at the time. A kind of time capsule.

This book is similar in that it covers the experience of one person and her friends through the 60s. The same tour of the zeitgeist but with more of a plot. Seems the lady was part of a still undiscovered bombing plot. Twist is that she is a well known lawyer who has even been considered for the Supreme Court. This book is the one she is writing about that time. A big break in the big secret. Already I am yawning.

The idea of touring the cultural benchmarks of a time through a sweeping novel is a good one and Anderson has done this with a vengeance.

Fun but eventually boring if you lay too much heavy plot on it.

Too much for me, anyway.

I am also reading as much of a writer named Ron Hansen as I can handle. I liked his two novels of the outlaw west, the second being the one from which they made the Jesse James film. Similar in these are the local color things. The heavily researched historic detail. It was fun but I was sure glad when they arrested all the Younger Gang and then, in the larger, better one, Jesse James. Then I started his collection of short stories. The first being a rundown of Oscar Wilde's few days in Omaha Nebraska.

Yaaaaaawwwn.

Off to the library for all these as well.

Now, the one which is the hottest, bestest, scariest.

Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.

The long awaited rundown of Scientology.

Wright is a serious writer with a Pulitzer in his pocket. He is on the staff of The New Yorker, in fact, this started as a long piece about Paul Haggis who had defected from the "religion" after 34 years membership.

Wright has taken a certain tack here which is very effective. He takes Scientology absolutely seriously. Chapter and verse.

By this I do not mean he swallows it. He reports it. He tells what he has found out about it.

The first section is mostly about J. Ron Hubbard, the kind of cracked but wildly productive author of the textbook and the originator of the structured "church". I put these terms in quotes because they have been the source of much controversy over the years but, at present, as the Scientologists have IRS approval as a religion that is what they are. A church.

Hubbard's life is breathtaking in its drama and sheer craziness. That is not to say that he was not a genius. It appears that he was. But he was also paranoid, egomaniacal and, perhaps, a pathological liar.

Wright does not write to refute or to castigate. This is not an expose. He puts down, to the best of his ability, what happened.

The second part of the book is about the church and how it survives without its founder. There is a lot about David Miscavige the head of the church. A huge lot about the para military Sea Org which runs the widespread network of churches, print shops, movie production and god knows what.

The church has an enormous pile of money. The royalties from Hubbard's book, wise real estate investments and eye popping fees from members to say nothing of volunteer labor for much of its work.

This gets us to Hollywood where the main recruiting mechanism resides these days. Haggis is the entry point here. Tom Cruise, John Travolta and a host of less luminous actors and movie biz people.

Here is my major take away.

Hubbard and his successors and the organization have pretty much built a juggernaut cult of true believers who cannot get out except with the loss of almost all that they have including family.

The organization runs on indentured labor. People have signed away their rights. They do not leave.

There is a huge security net that stalks enemies of the church.

The complexity and immensity of this is overwhelming.

The ending of the book is a drumbeat of malfeasance. On and on. I got queasy and had to get up and walk around. It made me ill to read it. Suppression, repression.

The odd thing is that Scientology is also a technology of wellness. Hubbards formulas and techniques while not unique or new are effective. Even of those who have left the church still practice its fundamentals.

It is seldom that a non-fiction book is as exciting as this one is. Amazing.

Everything that I sort of thought about it is confirmed and then some and then some and then some.

Wright is careful in his sum up to give the devil its due.

I think that he has not had the harrassment that others have in writing about the church is a credit to the fact-check mode of journalism so deeply inshrined at The New Yorker.

It is dangerous to out the Scientologists. They will come after you. They will sue, harass, intimidate, even imprison those who have "blown", that is, left the church and become active in resisting it.

I liked this a lot.

Labels: books, religion