Reviews for Invisible darkness

The average rating for Invisible darkness based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-04-13 00:00:00 Peter Raleigh John F. Callahan places African American literary traditions in the context of older oral traditions and in relation to democratic processes (discussing "the double craft of fiction and democracy") and the social responsibilities that accompany belonging to a community. He focuses on African American writers' attention to voice in their works, arguing that "in literary works the relationship between writer and reader is necessarily more remote [than in oral communication:], if not imaginary, African-American writers use the act of voice as a metaphor for the process of change" that occurs in the oral tradition, specifically in the use of call-and-response. He continues, "In their hands call-and-response evolves into a resilient literary device that persuades readers to become symbolic and then perhaps actual participants in the task of image-making, of storytelling." Where Henry Louis Gates writes about Signifyin(g), about the process whereby African American writers place themselves in a larger conversation, Callahan expands upon this to write about the ways in which African American writers invite their readers into that conversation alongside them: "Specifically, call-and-response awakens a number of dormant relationships: between different writers; different readers; different texts; different characters in the same text; a writer and his characters; and always between a writer and his fictionalized and actual readers and between those same readers and the writer. Symbolically present in the literary genre of fiction, these variations of call-and-response summon us to read and hear and, potentially, contribute to the still unfolding 'immense story' in our lives and voices beyond the solitary, private act of reading" (21). He provides examples from Charles Chesnutt's The Goophered Grapevine, Jean Toomer's Cane, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Ernest J. Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane PIttman , Alice Walker's Meridian, and, to a lesser degree, The Color Purple, A Gathering of Old Men, The Chaneysville Incident, and Dessa Rose. African American writers, Callahan concludes, "demand participatory commitment from their readers. Their work and our work is the work of fiction and citizenship, and from this perspective call-and-response is a name of the evolving dialogic forms of democracy. Writers, readers, and citizens of every background, characteristic, and persuasion: each and every one are called to answer that still reverberating American question: Who we for?" (263). Callahan's overarching argument is an important one; however, the chapters of analysis of specific texts do not do enough to further explicate this argument. They illustrate but do not expand the ideas in his introduction and conclusion.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-12 00:00:00 Raymond Rosario I really want to like this book more than I do. I agree with the fundamental argument, I enjoy the Paul Johnson book he's bouncing off of, and I find the writing entertaining enough. But I always read through the book happily enough until I come to the last chapter, where Jones discusses Martin Luther, and then I start to doubt everything he’s said about everyone else! Luther was prone to hyperbole, which makes it easy for people who want to show him in a bad light to find quotations in support of their claims, but he was not the antinomian Jones presents him as. Luther may have drawn a firm line between law and gospel, but it was not a line between good and bad – Luther presents them both as representing God, and both as good. From Luther’s perspective, the law tells us what we have done wrong, while the gospel tells us how we may be made righteous before God. According to Luther, growing in Christ means to obey God’s laws, and he firmly believed that the Bible tells us what God’s laws are. Luther’s problem was not with God’s laws per se, but with the idea that following those laws is an act of human effort (or human will), and with the idea that following the laws without love is an accomplishment, which latter directly contradicts 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. Luther demands, not just physical obedience to the law (acts), but heart obedience to the law (feelings). Luther had no time for the argument that faith was an act of will because of verses like Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” or passages like 1 Corinthians 12:9 or Galatians 5:22, which list faith as a gift or fruit of the Spirit. But at the same time Luther warned people that they would be accountable for their sins if they did not turn to Christ and (as a result of that repentance) change their ways. Even Erasmus, Mr. Freewill himself, recognized that, “As in those who lack grace (special grace, I mean), reason is darkened but not destroyed, so it is probable that their power of will is not wholly destroyed, but has become ineffective for upright actions.” Erasmus could not Biblically deny the fact that the Bible presents salvation as in some way an act of God's Grace. Where Luther and Erasmus differed is not about God’s act in salvation, but in Erasmus’ belief that Christians could, through an act of will, do good things for God. Luther’s position was that we may sometimes think or feel like that’s what’s happening, but in actual fact, if it is a truly good thing we're doing, then it is God working through us, not us working for God. When Jones so completely misunderstands Martin Luther, I hesitate to take his word on other human beings. OTOH, I have seen people in my own life who demonstrate Jones’ fundamental argument that sinning results in philosophical justifications, while my very attempts to verify or disprove his various specific claims about people lead me to interesting places, and I have enjoyed a fair number of the books he references. For all its faults, I have read this book a couple three times now, and will probably read it again, because it makes me think.