Christ and Pop Culture

Carissa Smith finds little to do with evolution and a lot to do with truth in Fred Chappell’s 1989 novel.

When a colleague recently loaned me a book, telling me it was about a high school teacher in hot water over teaching evolution, I wasn’t too excited. Wasn’t one Inherit the Wind enough? However, once I started reading, I discovered that Fred Chappell’s 1989 novel Brighten the Corner Where You Are has none of the pompous bluster of Inherit the Wind; it’s not a chest-thumping ode to “truth” and “scientific objectivity.” In fact, rather than dwelling on whether Darwin was right or wrong, the novel is much more interested in exploring a certain Pontius Pilate’s question: “What is truth?”

Chappell, a North Carolina writer, is both a poet and a novelist, but he’s also clearly a student of tall tales. Brighten the Corner Where You Are opens with high school teacher Joe Robert Kirkman telling his hunting buddies of the fearsome “devil-possum,” who is “black and yellow polka-dotted with long ugly claws and teeth and has got a face like a little old man with whiskers and mustaches and muttonchop sideburns.” Later that night, Joe Robert finds himself face-to-face with this beast he thought he had invented, and he finds himself reconsidering: “One trouble was that he had described his patchwork terror without truly imagining it, merely flinging silly words about. He hadn’t the least thought what it would actually be like to see the beast . . .”

Ben Bartlett says redemption isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Rich and Ben discuss the cultural phenomenon known as Black Friday, argue over a canceled TV show as metaphor for Romans 7, and discuss the implications of living in an iPhone Culture.

Carissa Smith finds a lot to like about a movie many Christians would love to hate.

Richard Clark eats some of his words.

Richard Clark’s take on the (not so?) revolutionary on the iPhone.

Ben and Rich return with a new format and a bit of a vengeance.

David Dunham relates to Christian Slater. This won’t happen again.

David Dunham explores the nature of sin on television.

Richard Clark hopes for the best.