Books Grim title hides dynamic view of societies core
problem
WAITING FOR GODOT IN
SARAJEVO: THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON NIHILISM, TRAGEDY AND
APOCALYPSE By David Toole Westview Press, 448 pages,
$32 |
By VINCENT F. ROCCHIO
Though not intended, there is a profound irony in David
Tooles first book. It lies within the enormous gap between a title so
uninviting and content that is so outstanding. A title that starts with Beckett
(no cheery evening there) continues with Sarajevo, and ends with nihilism,
tragedy and apocalypse clearly fails basic marketing -- maybe intentionally.
The work itself is so dynamic and compelling that it has the
potential to get many people reading, and enjoying, a philosophical and
theological approach to subjects we would rather stay away from. Such an
accomplishment should not be easily dismissed. Given the intellectual terrain,
the books accessibility is nothing short of remarkable: It is a must-read
for graduate school seminars and every college-educated Christian.
Tooles book is a major contribution to a world struggling,
and failing, to reconcile the fundamental tenets of Christianity with a
modernized -- some would say post-modernized -- materialist and secular world.
Tooles book is tragically timely as well. Waiting for Godot in
Sarajevo is an important intervention (and alternative) to the cycle of
crisis and punditry that our media-saturated society has devolved into. Rather
than situation-specific, Tooles work begins at the core problem upon
which societies uneasily perch themselves as solutions: the meaninglessness of
reality.
Toole is not the first to demonstrate that our technological
sophistication and elaborate social rituals are only vain attempts to distance
ourselves from a world that stubbornly resists giving the answer to existence.
He is, however, able to make questioning these systems the domain of every
Christian and not the privileged purview of the academic. Indeed, his
discussion of the philosophical work of Freidrich Nietzsche is not only the
clearest summary available, but also the most nuanced (though admittedly, the
books one weakness is that the Nietzsche discussion threatens to
overwhelm it at points). Upon this alone an intellectual could retire. Toole
goes even further and provides the clearest explication to date on the writings
of Michel Foucault, the problematic French historian.
Most important, these discussions are not done for their own sake,
or as part of some historical review of philosophy. Toole gives his readers
good cause to be pursuing these ideas, examining these philosophers
thematically: as part of a provocative analysis of the philosophical
underpinnings that ground our more dominant and invisible ideologies, and as a
search for alternatives to our current politics of nihilism.
In positing Christianity as the most cogent and coherent
alternative, Toole takes a very poetic and eclectic approach, weaving together
philosophy, cultural commentary, theology and short fiction. He vividly
portrays how the difficult answers Christianity provides are made possible by
the powerful transcendence engendered in Christs love and example. Though
not intentional, Tooles work demonstrates why New Age alternatives and
secular humanism are so popular: The love at stake in Christianity cannot be
extricated from trial, struggle and sacrifice.
Christianity promises the way of the cross for everyone who wants
to follow -- a fate we would all like to sidestep. Toole demonstrates, however,
that Christianity does not end with a tragic formula, but an apocalyptic one --
and in the process, rescues the latter term from the connotations heaped upon
it by rightwing fundamentalism.
Toole reintroduces the apocalyptic as an important but neglected
dimension to which our discipleship can (must) aspire if the world is to be
saved from the failures of the 20th century. Waiting for Godot in
Sarajevo provides the means to reclaim a silenced but integral part of
Christian spirituality.
Vincent F. Rocchio is a media scholar and independent
filmmaker. His book, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian
Neorealism, is published by the University of Texas Press.
National Catholic Reporter, December 17,
1999
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