Reviews: book & music
BOOK
The End of Faith By Sam Harris, Norton, list price $13.95, available in hardback
☆ ☆ ☆
This book's audience will fall into two categories.The first category will wholeheartedly agree with it, call it a wake-up call and trumpet its virtues in The New Yorker. The second category will find it offensive and smug, if not blasphemous.As for myself, I was somewhere in between. How one views this book and determines its merit will totally depend on religious views.
Sam Harris' central thesis here is simple: religion should not be politicized. He presents a compelling, if well-trod, argument that details genocide, warfare, imperialism and oppression, and how each of these horrors can be linked back to religion. Atheists, he says, feel no drive to blow themselves up or slaughter people by the millions. That comment right there is my biggest problem with the book. Harris could have simply stopped with his indictment of state-sponsored religion. Instead, he takes
it further. He'd have us believe that religious extremism is a myth—religion in and of itself is its own extremism, which he supports by bringing up passages in Deuteronomy and the Koran, both of which sanction the murder of heretics, he says.
It's a blanketed call for the abolition of religion; Harris sees a time in our future where Allah and Yahweh have gone the way of Odin and Apollo. In expressing this, he runs of the risk of falling into the godless, academic trap that turns off so many people of faith to begin with.
The book is at its best when Harris steps off of his soapbox and details religious extremism throughout history, showing that it is in no way a purely modern phenomenon. From the witch trials and Inquisition to the Holocaust and the modern-day Hindu/Muslim conflict in Kashmir, Harris convincingly tells us that religious extremism, if
given state sanction, is truly a terrible thing, whether the religion in question is Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
The book is clearly interesting reading. It's a shame that Harris risks alienating religious moderates, who would otherwise agree with him on many levels, by insinuating that they believe in what amounts to fairy tales.
- Kelsey Hayes
MUSIC
Confessions of a Broken Heart, album single Lindsay Lohan
☆☆1/2
Throughout her short career, Ms. Lohan has run the gamut of modern female-media personas. First, there was the relatable, fresh-faced, full-figured redhead circa Mean Girls, quickly followed by the sexed-up redhead. And now, thank goodness, she's gone brunette, so as to say she's "healthy" again, and we can all stop worrying about her mental state. Her latest single, Confessions of a Broken Heart, finds her somewhere in-between, smack dab in the midst of her coked-up, bleach-blond, anorexic faze. And damn it, she's got a lot of problems and she's ready to spill.
When Lohan's first album dropped, everyone expected another Hilary Duff/ Ashlee Simpson fiasco — faux-angst that sounded like a mule being slaughtered as guitars crunched and wailed.
all the better to feel the pain. And oh, how we felt it.
The difference is in the fact that Lohan had something to sing about. She was the bitch who wasn't afraid to "lay it on the line." She was the broken-hearted hot girl, the one who put herself out there for everyone to pick apart. And they did. Not to mention the voice — a thick, throaty wail that could actually carry a tune and
the angst pop that has since saturated American radio, a style that, until Lohan
then some. It was the perfect vehicle for Melancholy piano lines and power-gui-
showed up, no-one could deliver.
"Confessions" follows along in the same vein, finding Lohan at her dramatic best, delivering like she means it. Daddy's done wrong, but she still loves him, and won't he send her a letter? It's the same story we've heard in the press, but it sounds way better in this sonic representation.
tars accompany our heart-broken songstress as she runs through yet another knockout rocker. Sure, it's cheese, it's predictable — but it's done so perfectly you can't resist.
Guessing from the cover, you'd have thought this would be some come-hither sexual romp for the clubs. Thankfully it's not, and it's just another reminder that Lohan and her cohorts are serious masters of marketing. Angst sells, but sex sells better. Put them together and you've got a winning combo.
- Nick Connell
11.17.05 Jayplay
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