I'm Such a Girl

A few days ago, when I was driving to San Angelo, a song that I don’t much like came on with the words, “I didn’t cry when Old Yeller died…” I quickly turned the song, but of course, I started thinking about the line. I did not cry when Old Yeller died in either the book or the movie. I’ve never been much of a crier, even when I was an infant (or so I’ve heard), and I started to think if any book or movie had ever made me cry. There are not any movies that I could think of (though Lonesome Dove and A Man for All Seasons almost did), but there were a surprisingly high number of books that have made me cry. When I started to list them in my head, I also realized that the handful books that made me cry were also the ones that I counted as my very favorites. That’s not much of a coincidence, but I had never thought of it that way before. Anyway, there are seven books that have made me cry in my lifetime. Two of them are children’s books that I read a long time ago (a picture book version of The Fox and the Hound and Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May that I read right after my grandmother died) that I would disqualify from my favorites list now, but the others all happened within the last few years. I also just thought it was strange that only one of the five, King Lear, can be said to end unhappily (and I really think that conclusion could be debated). I just cry for strange reasons, that’s all. Anyway, here they are, the books that for one reason or another have made me turn into a little girl.

1. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy – I didn’t like the book the first time I read it and certainly didn’t cry during it. Something about the book stuck with me though, and eventually, the experiences in my life caught up those in the book. Then, I started rereading The Moviegoer (I think I cried the third time I read it), and in some ways, I haven’t stopped rereading it. It’s my comfort book, and whenever I’m at all down, I tend to turn to this. In so many ways (often ways that I wouldn’t be proud to admit), I’m like the protagonist of this novel, Binx Bolling, and in the book, he makes the breakthroughs I often need to make in my life. In doing so, he shows me the way. I don’t recommend this book to that many people for several reasons. For one, even I didn’t like it the first time I read it; it’s sort of difficult for many people to connect with Binx. Moreover, I think I’m a little too closely connected myself to the novel to recommend it. If I recommend it to someone, it sort of feels like I’m letting a bit too much about myself be known.

2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – I would recommend this novel to anyone. It’s the most perfect book I’ve ever read (and it definitely deserved its Pulitzer). It has a pretty simple plot, but there are so many things to enjoy. It’s basically about a seventy-six-year-old preacher, who has found out he will soon be dying, writing a book to his seven-year-old son so that he can tell the boy the things he wants the boy to know about him. What follows is a sort of hodge-podge of things. John Ames often just meditates poetically on the things he has enjoyed in his life: nature, his wife, his son. And, of course as a preacher, he spends a lot of time writing philosophically about Christianity, and some of his observations and glorifications were my favorite moments of the novel (it’s really refreshing to read a contemporary literary novel that is so strongly for Christianity). And, of course, he tells stories, and of course, these are the best parts of book. It’s in these stories where the grace John Ames has praised in his meditations is made incarnate. He talks about his grandfather and his father. He writes about falling in love with his wife late in life and marrying her. He writes about his adventures with his young son. And, most importantly, he tells the stories of his life as a pastor, particularly in helping one man (I’ll leave it at that). It probably sounds like a boring book, but the stories and the observations all culminate into one of the most emotional and inspiring books I’ve ever read. In time, I could see Gilead even overtaking The Moviegoer on this sort of list.

3. For the Time Being by Annie Dillard – This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read (which is saying a lot), and I definitely don’t understand it all. That said, it’s still tremendously affecting. It’s basically a bunch of vignettes on all sorts of seemingly random things (clouds, sand, birth defects, clay soldiers, her travels in Israel, and the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), but in all of them, she’s basically trying to figure out one thing. She’s set out to tackle just about the biggest questions there are. Is there a God? If there’s a God, why does he allow evil? The result of Dillard’s questioning is the best book I’ve ever read (and I’ve heard of a lot of people who agree with me) there is on the problem of evil, and a one-of-a-kind postmodern theodicy. Of course, a book that tries to take on these sorts of problems isn’t going to be normal. After all, evil isn’t logical, and God’s ways aren’t our ways anyway; you can’t approach the subject in any sort of rational way. So she doesn’t. All the rules about what a book should be, and what an apologetic should be, are thrown out the window. She takes apart every rational explanation about the problem of evil, she cries out at God, she writes a little about clouds, and she somehow brings you back to God. I can’t explain how she does it, but she does it. She leaves you with a bunch of mysteries—the mysteries of humanness and God and of the love that occurs “despite all the facts”—and with an overwhelming desire to cast yourself into those mysteries and fight for the redemption of the world. After all, “The Mystery will be accomplished.” I know that all of that is pretty esoteric, but trust me, reading the always an overwhelming experience, and everyone I’ve ever recommended this book to has agreed.

4. King Lear by William Shakespeare – This is easily Shakespeare’s best. Easily. I remember when this was taught to me at ACU, the professor wept openly during the class, as had I when I first read it. Just about every element of element of living out the Christian story is depicted here so beautifully, with all of the humor, pathos, and grace necessary. Scene after scene is memorable and saturated with meaning. In particular, I remember Lear’s divestiture out on the heath, the Earl’s leap of faith, the reunion of Cordelia and Lear (the scene that got my professor), and the ending (which I don’t think is nearly as tragic as most people read it to be—I see at least a hint of resurrection). Anyway, this is Shakespeare’s best to me, both in terms of story and the meaning in that story, and it’s easily one of my favorites.

5. Empire Falls by Richard Russo – This is another of those books, like Gilead, that I recommend to a lot of people. Russo is one of the best writers out there (he’s even better than some of the other great domestic novelists I’ve read—Wallace Stegner, Anne Tyler, Wendell Berry, John Updike). He takes his cast of pretty normal characters, a fortyish man who considers himself a failure, his teenage daughter, his ex-wife, and several other family members and friends trying to survive the turmoil of their normal lives in a small town, and he somehow manages to present them in all their humanness. He presents these unbelievably sympathetic characters with an extraordinary compassion that somehow never becomes sentimental. All of the sadness and disappointment inherent in human life is here, and so is a redemptive humor. This is both one of the funniest and saddest books I ever read, and often, both the hilarious and the poignant moments come on the same page. After I got through the first chapter, I couldn’t let this book down, and I read the five hundred pages in a little over a day. This book also contains the single most shocking moment I have ever read anywhere. The moment’s not shocking in any gross sort of way; it just has one moment that seems utterly devastating at the time. And I think it’s the strange workings of grace in the aftermath of this devastating moment that got me. Anyway, it’s a great book; I’d recommend it to anybody.


I thought that I’d list briefly the books that were near-misses. These books nearly made me break down, but not quite.

1. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
2. Upholding Mystery by David Impastato (the ultimate book of contemporary Christian verse)
3. The Royal Physician’s Visit by Per Olav Enquist
4. The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket (I’m serious.)
5. Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner
6. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling