I could be an invalid…
…because then I’d get to read all the time.
Our house came down with a nasty stomach flu early last week and while most of the nastier effects of that kind of thing were over by Tuesday, the weakness, weariness, and achyness continues yet today. I spent most of the week flat on my back and by Friday I could spend some of that time reading. Conveniently enough, a box of books arrived from my good friend Amazon that afternoon. I inhaled a Wodehouse and then settled in to read a slim paperback entitled Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl(N.D. Wilson – Thomas Nelson 2009). This is a shocking and disruptive book. I am not certain who it’s intended audience is; Wilson’s fellow Christians, potential converts or the philosophical and religious opponents of Christianity. But whoever they are, they are in for quite the ride. I don’t know if it is his devastatingly rich prose – the metaphors just tumble off the page at you – or his unsettlingly frenetic view of the universe but reading this book is very much like eating quantities of funnel cake and corn-dogs and then going for a spin on the eponymous carnival ride. There is too much to take in (wait, he really believes God spoke Katrina into existence?), too many autobiographical details to absorb (he’s from Idaho? and he married a surfer? is that legal? she knows that Lewiston’s not much of a port city right?), and it’s all too quease-inducing (he’s fascinated with bugs, at ease with death and destruction), so let’s just say Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl shouldn’t be read in the car, should be read in small chunks, and should be read by the strong constitutioned. Just the idea that Nietschze made Wilson laugh out loud will probably be unnerving to the Phil 101 types.
Now that I’ve gotten the warnings off my chest I should probably say something about what the book is. Well, it is an odd book. It is an observation of the world, and of the God who created it, structured around the cycle of the four seasons, as seen by a sunny disposition who is inclined to be amazed. It is a catalog of the wonders of our world, an analysis of who could possibly be responsible for it and a bit of autobiography for good measure. I’ve been reading Wilson’s work since he was penning short stories about Pookies with his sisters and this unexpected book is just what I would have expected from this unique and gifted author. I might be overstating things but it is just possible that if my generation is going to have it’s own C.S. Lewis his name is N.D. Wilson.