The Shack. A Review

The Shack
Wm Paul Young
Windblown Media
Los, Angeles, California
Copyright 2007, 248 pgs
Http://www.theshackbook.com


“Read this book, it explains so much!” These words expounded by friends of The Shack are the same words used by the house in the movie Rose Red. “It explains so much” is the same thing the house tells someone just before it eats them.

Those words were in the back of my mind when a friend dropped by my table yesterday during a book signing and handed me a copy of The Shack. She said I’d never see the Trinity in the same way again. Well, I love my friend and so I took her book and suspended judgment. When I got home I sat down and started to read. It didn’t take long for me to discover something was terribly wrong with this book, on oh so many levels. In fact, it’s hard to determine exactly where to start. But I will do my best. Not to be disparaging to the author, but to inform the reader. After all 15.00 bucks are at stake here.

The Shack, put simply, is about a man by the somewhat amusing name of Mackenzie Phillips—we’ll get to that in a minute—whose daughter is murdered by a serial killer. He undergoes a period in his life called ‘The Great Sadness’ where upon God, posing as a middle aged African American woman by the name of Papa—yes we’ll get to that too—invites him to spend the weekend in the shack where his daughter was killed. He goes, and meets the Holy Trinity, who has put the universe on hold so they can explain to him the meaning of suffering. And to make the story even weirder, Young interjects himself into the story as one of the characters.

I found nothing inspiring or heartwarming about Young’s work. Instead I found it a strange hodgepodge of new age philosophy, Eastern religious platitudes and pop psychology, covered in a sticky goo of melodrama. Even his version of the Trinity isn’t new. The characters represented here are aren’t archetypes as one would expect when dealing with subjects of Divine nature, but stereotypes, poorly done and so two dimensional they are completely unbelievable.

Yes, Young tries to pull on our heart strings, but not in the wonderfully inspirational way that everyone from Wynona Judd to Kathie Lee Gifford is cooing about. Young does this the same slick way a con artist uses us to scam us out of our bank account’s PIN number. It’s deceitful. It’s offensive. It is hardly inspirational. And trust me, The Book of Job does a far better job and discussing the topic of suffering than The Shack.

The Shack was privately published by Young and Wayne Jacobson. And after reading the first initial pages I quickly realized why. The book is improperly formatted, and must have gone through rejections from every reputable publishing company in the States. In fact, it is so badly done that the book doesn’t come close to following proper submissions guidelines from any publishing company I’m aware of. And I know quite a few. I sincerely doubt POD or vanity publishers wanted anything to do with it either.

The grammar is horrendous. The book is full of run on sentences, sentence splices, dangling participles and passive voice phrasing. Adverbs dangle from carelessly constructed sentence structure like cockroaches clinging to a greasy wall. The plot is neither riveting—as one of the book’s many supporters claims—nor inspiring. The plot stalls, it’s pedantic and the pacing tiresome in some places, outright boring in others. There is virtually no movement at all. Instead of giving me that lump in my throat and tears in my eyes as the blurbs in the first pages promise, it caused me to roll my eyes and gave me an irresistible urge to grab a red pen and start editing.

The dialogue is as two dimensional and unbelievable as the characters. Papa (who despite the name is a woman and uses a confusing form African American pseudo-speak) talks to Mack in platitudes that wreaks of melodrama and speaks in terms that are clearly heretical.

The Protagonist is given the name Mackenzie Phillips, or Mack for short. Apparently the author was unaware that this is also the name of an actress. While reading, I half expected Bonnie Franklin and Valerie Bertinelli to show up. Why did Young do this? I do not know. I do know that it’s bad form to give a character a famous name, unless the writer purposely wants to give the reader a bad case of the giggles.

Why people love this book is a mystery to me. I found it difficult to read—grammatically—the plot dubious at best, the opening scenes reminding me of that Peanuts classic when Snoopy is sitting on the roof of his doghouse, laboring over an aged typewriter. The words in the dialogue bubble are “It was a dark and stormy night….suddenly a shot rang out….”

Another huge problem I have with the book has nothing to do with theology, plot or sentence mechanics. It does have to do with how he uses a ‘splattering’ of lyrics from various sources, such as U2, Bob Dylan and others. Although he does give them credit in the back of the book, Young does not receive permission from any of them (except one) and all but the one mentioned in parenthesis is undocumented. This is a huge no-no and I am sure at some point one of these artists is going to come along looking for their lost music. They’ll find it, too, I’m sure, and Young will have a lot of “xplainin’ to do.” As Ricky once said to Lucy.

After reading the book, I couldn’t help but wonder why or how a book so full of shuck and jive ended up on the prestigious New York Times Bestseller list.

The answer came to me just before falling asleep at 3.00 a.m. The NY Times doesn’t read the books on their list for quality or literary merit, although they should. They simply let the world know who sold the most books during a given period of time. And although Young is obviously a bad writer, he’s a good publicist. Instead of using scare tactics implemented by La Haye and Jenkins in their equally bad “Left Behind” series, Young taps into our worries, our hurts, our deepest fears. He combines the worst of New Age tripe and Pop Culture, and puts a human face on it and calls it God. Then, he markets it (I understand the marketing budget for this book was like $200.00) by telling susceptible readers who fall for his scam to buy copies not only for themselves but for friends and even strangers. He urges readers to purchase books for homeless and battered women’s shelters, not to comfort those who are hurting, but to evangelize, to put people on the path to his particularly weird brand of Christianity, to fill pews, and to fill coffers.

And the bizarre thing is that it is working. The only person whom I haven’t heard lionize this book is Oprah herself. In retrospect, she may have, I don’t’ know. I don’t watch her show.
But I know one thing. It’s not fooling everyone. It certainly didn’t fool me, even though I am Buddhist and not Christian. I have studied Christianity along with other comparative religions, along with literature, and mythology. I may never have stepped foot into a Christian Seminary but I do understand the concepts brought forth by this book are clearly heretical. I’m sure others, better versed in Biblical teachings than I aren’t fooled either.

And as I pointed out, those musicians are going come knocking on the shack’s door looking for their wayward lyrics. I hope Young and company have stored up enough money for the forthcoming lawsuits.

This book has been compared to Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress. It is not, trust me. I’ve read the Pilgrim’s Progress and there is no comparison in both literary and theological quality to Bunyan’s work and Young’s. A Pilgrim’s Progress inspires because the author was inspired. Young’s work isn’t about inspiration. It’s about making a quick buck. There is certainly nothing wrong with making money, but there is something ethically wrong when one does it at another person’s expense. In this case it’s via exploiting people’s suffering. And that just plain pisses me off.

There is truly good Bible inspired literature out there, The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas, for instance, or Milton’s Paradise Lost, Even outstanding films like The Greatest Story Ever Told, And Name of the Rose far, far exceeds anything the Shack puts forth. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Shell out 15.00 and see for yourself. Or chances are someone will give you a copy. But I do urge you to read intelligently, and read critically. And figure it out for yourself. I look forward to reading comments.

Whispers Scavenger Hunt!

Shreveport,LA< Author Author! Pics :D

Here's a sampe of some of the pics that were taken at the Author, Author! Book festival. We had a ball, no kidding. During the Fai Do Do we danced to When The Saints come Marcing In. In the pic you can see me getting my Cajun on.
Will post more tomorrow.

MAX THE CHOW UPDATE

Hi all:
If you haven't heard: in brief:

My brother's house was robbed last night. In the thief's haste to get away he ran over my brother's dog. She's in great pain and needs to see the vet, but since they got my brother's money as well as his tv, meds etc. he doesn't have the cash to get her to the vet for medical attention.
I've set up an account at Westridge Animal Hospital. You can donate by phone to
this address:

Westridge Animal Hospital
3090 New Boston Rd
Texarkana TX 75501
903-838-9572
If you choose to donate something, even a small sum, it would be a great blessing.
Hugs
Pat

MAX THE CHOW NEEDS HELP

Good morning

In brief, my brother got robbed last night. Max his chow mix was hit by the
robber's car while trying to defend her home. She is in need of veternary
attention but Zack doesn't have any money. I am trying to set up an account for
donations to go straight to Westridge Animal Hospital in Texarkana, Texas so she can get the medical attention she desparately needs. She's everything to him now that he's alone.
If anyone would be willing to donate even a small amount it would be a great
blessing. I will have contact info so you can donate shortly. Please feel free
to distribute this email to anyone you can think of.
Hugs and thanks for thinking of us.
Pat

You Can't Make This Up

Where do you get your ideas?

This has to be, without a doubt, the most common question we writers get.
Once, not long ago, when someone asked me this question I'd fippantly say
I get my ideas from an evil well in the back of my property.
The truth is, there is no evil well, and the damned thing would
probably eat me if I it did exist. Then I'd end up like that
creepy kid in the film "The Ring."




I've heard Ringu was scarier anyway. Someday I'll pick up a copy and decide for myself. Scary is, after all, relative.



But this doesn't answer the question, where do we writers get our ideas?
I can't tell you where other writers gets theirs, but I can safely say that I get idea for stories from everywhere. Sometimes an idea comes to me in the shower, or while taking the akita out for a walk. Or sometimes I see something and it gives me an idea. The idea for the short story "Fifteen Minutes of Fame" which you can find podcast at Undeadjake.com came from a cheesy movie poster starring Regis Philbin.
Watching people, especially when they are the most "human" is a good way to make your characters mroe believable. And of course, I get my ideas from real life.
And I find real life is the best place to pick up story ideas. Stuff that happens in real life is far better, and most often, weirder, than anything you can make up.
Take for example, this little gem. It actually happened and yeah, elements of this real life drama will eventually find its way into my writing.
My son had eye surgery about four years back. There's lots of stories that goes with this time period, but the best one (and it's the best because it had a good outcome, otherwise,it could have been disasterous) occured the day after our son's surgery. We were at a Denny's restaurant not far from the hotel where we were staying in Little Rock, Arkansas. We were relaxing and about to have dinner before going back to the hotel to rest and then head back home the next day. The place was crowded and we ended up at a table in the middle of the dining room. The waiter had taken our orders when someone from the back of the restaurant shouted "He's got a gun!"
Before anyone could react, a nondescript looking man wearing khaki colored slacks and a brown shirt dashed past us. An undercover narco officer ( we found out later) was in hot persuit. People screamed, many hit the floor. The man ran out of the Denny's, hurtled a very deep ravine, crossed a busy four lane intersection and in the midst of cursing and squeeling tires, the man was apprehended in the middle of the cross section. He was cuffed, stuffed and promptly taken away.
Of course I didn't hide under the table. My inner journalist was let out and I was too curious to know what was happening to be afraid. So while people were huddling under tables, and my husband hissing at me to come back to ours, I was standing at the window watching the entire scene unfold.
Nobody got shot. Nobody but the junky wanting to buy crack from an undercover agent was injured. And they had already left with him.
But the remaining officer's were busy looking around our car, especially underneath it. I pointed that out to my husband who went outside to see what the deal was.
In the meantime people are bailing out of the restaurant, many, I noticed, hadn't bothered paying out first.
JW returned memoments later to explain why the cops were so interested in our little car (apparently the perp tossed his gun underneath it when he made the mad dash across the freeway)

The manager tried his very best to take charge of the situation. Once everything had calmed down and those of us who were content to remain sat and listened as the manager made his apologies to the patrons. there was general grumbling. The waiters looked wild eyed. The manager looked panicked.
And then, my son said, "hey it was cool. A dinner and a show."
And everyone laughed at the twelve year old kid with the dark glasses with the smart mouth. Everyone at that point relaxed. We had our dinner. The manager survived his percieved coronary. All was well.
So you don't need an evil well to produce ideas for your writing. All you need is to go out and live :D
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