Are Angels Real?

The spiritual beings known as angels have been widely documented in the Torah, the New Testament Gospel and the Holy Quran. Heavenly beings have also littered the spiritual tales of Native Americans, Hindus, and Buddhists. So, are they real?

DO ANGELS AND DEMONS REALLY EXIST? That’s the focus of the latest fiction ebook from The Solari Publishing Group entitled “The Angel of Grace“. It’s a wildly entertaining story about a guardian angel who enlists her biggest fan to escape the clutches of a shape-shifting demon. It’s a story within a story, expertly told by up-and-coming author Frederick S. Blackmon.

The main character, Darren, loves to read fiction books about angels and demons, but never expected that his favorite character was a real life angel. When she begins appearing to him in dreams and visions his first reaction is that he’s going insane. Yet, with the help of a gypsy fortune teller, his surly British neighbor and a teenage computer whiz, Darren sets off on a quest to find the real Angel of Grace.

• Jay Prew

Happy Birthday to Toni Morrison, an American literary icon

   HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to Toni Morrison, the author of “Beloved” and other great American classics.

The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison

 

Literary Quote of the Week

“Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.” ― Sherman Alexie (Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven) 

Author Quote of the Week

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”- C.S. Lewis

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson’s book Jesus’ Son portrays single serving slices of what it means to be alive. According to this provocative collection of short stories, there is more to being alive than simply breathing and eating.  This examination is relayed to the reader in terms of altered states of consciousness, jaded recollections and sexual fascinations.

In some of the stories, Johnson’s unnamed protagonist comes close to eloquently depicting the quintessential essence of life. Yet there are also times in the book when the main character’s outlook on life is noticeably sarcastic, morbid and morose. These odd moments of clarity are surprisingly off beat.

Although Johnson attempts a serious glance at the true meaning of being alive, the main character is often preoccupied with the trivialities of life. Characters come and go throughout the book and Johnson’s protagonist seems to regard them with little concern at all. Their lives seem to pass like a picture show before his eyes, lacking any real substance and consequence. In the story “Steady Hands at Seattle General”, the main character asks Bill if he’s still alive in the deeper, spiritual sense of the word. Bill replies that “it don’t get no deeper than the kind of shit we’re in right now.” (131). Perhaps at this point, the reader can surmise that the main character will delve further into this intellectual puzzle, but Johnson pulls back. Instead he compares the deeper sense of being alive with the stark reality of being on drugs at a hospital. Denis Johnson seems to be toying with the idea at this point. He never quite pulls the trigger.

Throughout the book, Johnson expresses a fixation on the existential triviality of being alive. This book reads more like a philosophical discussion that the reader is invited to eavesdrop on. Overall, I love the lack of rules and conventions in this book. It’s challenging and therefore, a great read.  In the year 2000 the book was adapted into a movie and was brilliantly directed by Alison Maclean.

 

Author Quote of the Week

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” — Franz Kafka

Literary Quote of the Week

“People who die bad don’t stay in the ground.” – Tony Morrison (Beloved)