40 Books for Lent: 1. The Problem of Metaphysics

Ramping and Roaring has given up television. Part of the reasoning was that this would allow R&R more time to read - novels, theology whatever - something more constructive than Cougar Town, Gossip Girl and Dawson’s Creek. I spoke to Roaring earlier though and it seems on this first tv-less night she spent most of her time skipping about the internet. I, on the other hand, picked up Alex Preston’s recent The Revelations. I read a review in the FT while tipsy and immediately purchased it on Amazon along with another book I’ll probably never read. The Revelations though has immediate entertainment value. It looks basically like an amusing take on the Alpha Course with lots of psycho-sexual drama. Rofl.

All this is by the by though. Given this new attention to reading, Ramping and Roaring through Lent is going to bring you its top 40 books-that-have-changed-the-way-we-think. It’s a good chance to think through the ideas that have shaped the way you think and if I can persuade Roaring not just to do twenty different reviews of Gone with the Wind, we might discover some interesting, little known works…

So my first book, my number one book, is Don Mackinnon’s The Problem of Metaphysics. A bit heavy to start with but I really think that more than any book this one resonated with me and changed the way I saw the world. It came out of his Gifford lectures and so is relatively short and readable. I remember hearing an amusing story about him, where his wife went into the bedroom one day to find his trousers lying on the bed. She thought ‘oh hell’ to herself ‘he’s finally lost his marbles and gone out without his trousers on’. Turned out he had just gone out and bought a new pair. For all his reputed skattiness though and despite not actually publishing a huge amount (part of the last generation who weren’t continually harried to publish or perish), reading between the lines, he has influenced the main voices in contemporary theology as much as anyone.

Essentially, The Problem of Metaphysics gives a really convincing account of metaphysics, teasing out the relationship between transcendence and language. What is so splendid is the way he pulls it all together with such a wide array of anecdotes and examples from history, literature and art. He speaks authoritatively on Plato, Aristotle and Kant, as might be expected, but is just as lucid and impressive on Shakespeare, Sophocles and Cezanne. More than anything, it is a work that is convincing at a human level - it is one of the rare works of philosophical theology than genuinely conveys a sense of wisdom. My supervisor once explained that he understood God as a sort of matrix for understanding reality. In these terms this book was incredibly helpful to me in explaining God.

I have never been much interested in the specialist. It is not within me and I would never make it as a footnote precise academic. The people I find interesting then are always polymaths - those who can illuminate an area of life and keep it tied to all sorts of other areas, but most of all retain the ability of speak to everyday life. Mackinnon does this here better than anywhere else I’ve found. His analysis of the Good Samaritan and the Raising of Lazarus are exemplary as homily, philosophy and ethics. His development of parables, tragedy and presence are masterful. It is the only work of theology I’ve read twice cover to cover and it deserves at least this. It is to philosophical theology what Madonna is to pop music, having influenced an entire new generation of theology while yet remaining unique and fascinating in itself. Go buy a copy.

The Gossip Girl State

I thought up a facebook application the other day called “slept with”. Beneath your friends list: ‘Leonidas Naboombu has 4310 friends’ and your mutual friends list: ‘you and Leonidas Naboombu have 62 friends in common’ you could have a ‘slept with’ list: ‘Leonidas Naboombu has slept with 106 people’ and a 'mutual slept with' list: ‘You and Leonidas Naboombu have 84 sex partners in common’. Not only would this be in perfect keeping with the Facebook raison d’etre of self-promotion, narcissism and stalking, but it would be incredibly useful in terms of tracking the progress of STIs. There could even be facebook-world-traveller equivalent of country tally - ‘you have slept with 4% of the world population... (and have an 84% chance of Chlamydia infection).’

Bad Boys

*Trigger Warning*

So. Charlie Brooker has given up his Guardian column, Screen Burn. The man who called Cilla Black “the result of a unholy union between Ronald McDonald and a blow-dried guinea pig” has had enough of his misanthropic ways and is calling it a day, in terms of skewering TV “personalities”, anyway.

Brooker claims that meeting his victims and discovering they were actually quite nice, and feeling like a “witless bully” has encouraged him to leave the celebrity-bashing alone. But you and I know better. Why has Brooker mellowed? Because, obviously, he married a delightful young woman I like to call Konnie Hug, on account of the fact that she hugs every single person she interviews on The Xtra Factor.

Huq: Good at hugging wannabies.

Her hugs make the contestants glow and smile and think that maybe they might be able to win. I wish she’d hug me. It would make me less of a bitch. And hugging Huq has clearly charmed Charlie down from his bitter perch. Perhaps. Presumably also having a post-Blue-Peter-presenter-partner means he can’t write things like, “it’s a bit like watching a programme in which children queue up to be punched in the face by Father Christmas. Absolutely riveting for all the wrong reasons” about X Factor. (But she is very funny too: witness this segment she did for Screenwipe, where, apparently, they met.)

While I admire Brooker’s new-found love for the human race, I am also hugely disappointed. Which says two things: 1) I am a bitch who likes reading these brutal put-downs, much in need of a Konnie Hug; and 2) I am a complete stereotype of a woman who finds ‘bad boys’, or at least men who are appalling to other people to be funny/ exert their own sense of power, to be quite attractive.

The absolute apotheosis of my love for the Bad Boy comes in my admiration for (obsession with?) another Charles, Gossip Girl’s beautifully dreadful Chuck Bass.

**SPOILER ALERTS BELOW **

Dude, I'm Chuck Bass. Even Europeans must know what that means.

Oh Chuck, with your bowties, your thick frowning brows, your billions of dollars, your little black book and your “I’m Chuck Bass” catchphrase, you make me swoon. Your machiavellian machinations are even more devious than Blair’s, and I can’t stop watching. (In the season 4 evil-off between B. and C., my money’s on C.)

And Chuck is also (temporarily) saved by a beautiful, kind, good woman (who incidentally seems to be a good hugger). He starts believing in the goodness of humanity. He gives money to charity. He realises his chauffeur is a person with a family who has feelings and needs a raise.

And – and this is something I’ve been watching out for since the beginning of season one – Chuck admits to the attempted rape of Jenny Humphrey. GG is a guilty pleasure for me, but even more so given the positioning of Chuck as a constant sexual harasser right from the first episode. It takes over three seasons for anyone to come out and call it rape. He’s shown to be penitent, and a changed man, but when his relationship breaks down (of course his girlfriend-saviour is really a golddigging prostitute), can we be sure he won’t revert completely?

Maybe I’ve talked myself out of my crush. What does it say about us that women are expected, encouraged, nay, assumed to watch Gossip Girl naked while rubbing ourselves with Creme De La Mer and fantasising about Chuck? Oh yes. Rape culture. And before you say, “Blah, blah, blah, humourless feminist,” the intersections of misogyny, racism* and unbridled consumerism are all there – it’s called western capitalist patriarchy in some parts.

And let’s not forget, Charlie B (the other one) has his moments of total sexism (but it’s funny!!! cleverly, he anticipates the reactions of humourless feminists and tells us we’re stupid in advance) and making homophobic slurs. But of course, that’s all in the past. His love of a good, here’s-one-I-made-earlier-let-me-give-you-a-hug woman has changed him.

So I’m back to sex and violence. Nothing wrong with falling in love with a foul-mouthed, preferably handsome man who has a reasonably big ego.

And nothing wrong with drooling over the delicious teenagers, yummy clothes** and sensational martinis in a silly but glamourous TV show.

But careful, readers; while they look like they taste good, these Upper East Side treats might just stick in your throat.

You know you love me... xoxo


* The way Chuck and Blair treat Vanessa is totally indicative of their sense of entitlement and incessant casual racism.

** Two references for clothes this season are GG and Mad Men: obviously MM is a million times cleverer than GG but still at risk of the same glorification of misogyny if watched without attention.