This is the second of a newly formed “Intros” vein to the blog. The first was the post about Nick Hornby and How to be Good. Well, this intro is to an even more delightful and insightful friend, at least in my estimation. I was introduced to The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37 3/4 in Pakistan many years ago by British friends. My sister-in-law Kelley was introduced to it independently in Bloomington, Illinois. And her and my brothers and several people to whom I have introduced it all enjoy it thoroughly together through shared quotes, much as one enjoyed The Princess Bride in the late 80’s.
The Sacred Diary is a fictional diary of a very average man who attends a charismatic house church in England. It is about the odd assortment of people who attend the church and his long suffering, winsome wife and wickedly witty son. It is about the foibles of those of us who have one time or another approached the Faith in highly fundamentalistic, unyielding ways. For me, though I have not attended a charismatic church, the book was a breath of fresh air. In fact, in some significant ways it simply allowed me to simply breath period, principally as a result of needing to breath from laughing. It is a poignant book.
It is followed by at least three sequels. The Theatrical Tapes of Leonard Thynn and The Horizontal Epistles of Andromeda Veal are also very good, though dim in my memory. The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass: Christian Speaker Aged 44 3/4 is almost as good, in some places better, than the first. There are some instances in this book, however, where, for my tastes, Plass takes the sarcasm a little too far.
Speaking of taking the sarcasm too far, meet The Door magazine. This magazine used to be called the The Wittenburg Door a long time ago. Even after it changed its name, it consisted of satire of the American Evangelical Church primarilly and also of thoughtful interviews and reviews of books. Some time in the 1990’s, I think, its editorial philosophy changed. The satire became more generally focused on religion period, and became sharper. There now seems to be less constructive purpose to it. Moreover, the interviews also reflect a broader religious community. They remain excellent. I bring up The Door because they did an interview with Adrian Plass. It seems like his latest book Ghosts looks quite good too. You can browse The Door archives and see some of their interviews and takes on pop culture. The article on Buffy is pretty interesting.
To bring things around full circle, for British counterpart (not officially) to The Door check out Ship of Fools, to which Adrian Plass sometimes contributes. Finally, there is an Americanized version of the original Sacred Diary, which substitutes football for cricket and some other things. Stay away. I say that, of course, because I am a bit of an Anglophile. You will not understand some of the jokes in the original, I didn’t, but there is still plenty to relish. I guess, if you are not an Anglophile, it is possible you might not enjoy Plass, but I bet you will.