The Shunning

Beverly Lewis (1997)

a.k.a.

Thee Grayte Amish Fiction Reading Experimente of Twenty and Ten

with

The Deuce of Clubs Amish Fiction Book Club

—sure, sure, of course. But even though the ancient Spartans aren't ethically or morally admirable, there's always a certain amount of interest (possibly morbid) in people who are bizarrely singleminded—wouldn't you agree?

Oh, hel-LO, there. And WEL-come! <sets empty martini glass on passing butler's tray> You caught me mid-sentence, there. In medias res, as we say in the lit biz. <wipes caviar-smeared fingers on fancy smoking jacket front> Say, speaking of literature and bizarre singlemindedness, have I mentioned that I just read an AMISH ROMANCE NOVEL?

[Note for Overly Busy People with Lives and Responsibilities More Important than Mine, Who are Too Busy to Read an Entire Web Page About an Amish Romance Novel (Let Alone Read an Amish Romance Novel):

If you're just looking for the short answer, then...

A: ...yes. The Shunning is as big a turd as any intelligent reader would suspect it would be. The End, Selah.]

Now, for the more curious among you (a.k.a., those of you cruising the web on work time <wink>)....

"You best be reverent when ya speak of the shunning." (p. 245)

My heartiest condolences to you, fictional Amish character trapped in a crappy romance novel, but I don't think I can manage that. I mean, I can kind of reverence the custom of shunning, itself (I'd love to see it revived and widespread and directed against bureaucrats and their lackeys everywhere). I just can't seem to budge the reverence lever <elbows you in the buttonless suspenders> for Beverly Lewis's absurd and badly written book named for shunning. (To be honest, I couldn't even trouble myself to find out why Lewis uses Meinding as the Amish term for shunning, whereas the Amish word for shunning seems to be Meidung. But, based on past experience with disparaging religious matter here at Deuce of Clubs, I'm sure I'll find out soon, by way of some museum piece of an ungrammatical marvel of an email from an irate Beverly Lewis fanatic.) (Or, if history's any guide, a flood of emails.)

But what I'll pretend all you religious people are wanting to know is: How did I get myself roped into reading an Amish romance novel?

Well, see, my extended familial situation is strange and uncomfortable in that, on either side of my parentage, I am the lone non-fundamentalist Christian. (If you're one of those census takers I'm always having to duck, you can classify me as an atheist anarchist . . . ya Nosey Parker). What that means is that I find myself in sympathy with very few of their pursuits and they are (by design) mostly ignorant of the blasphemies that would horrify them regarding mine. So it was weird when by chance I found out that a few members of my bloodline (and many of their friends) seem to be a little bit addicted, frankly, to reading various types of Christian-themed romance novels and trading them among one other.

Now, if I may be frank two times in a row . . . I'd say it's hard to see how reading romance novels, religious-themed or otherwise, falls under the category of "redeeming the time, because the days are evil"—and I'm almost sure it isn't what the nobleman in Jesus's parable meant by "occupy till I come." I wouldn't think a Christian would want to be found in the middle of reading some Christian romance novel when Jesus returns (especially when it's entirely possible that the Lamb of God prefers vampire and werewolf fiction—although that would at least go some distance toward explaining the success of Stephenie Meyer).

My relatives like to swap these religious romance novels among each other but the stories in them are evidently so interchangeable that it's hard for them to remember which ones they've read, so as each person in the group finishes reading one of them, she'll inscribe her initials inside the front cover, so as to avoid the calamity of inadvertently re-reading a religious romance novel that's so unremarkable in every way that it's almost impossible to remember having read it.

(Their initialing scheme reminded me of this lady I once saw in a used book store, who brought in a box of romance novels to trade in and had a checklist of romance novels she was looking for. But there were no book titles on her list. Instead, she requested each book by number—as one does, of course, with all great literature. And baseball cards.)

It's hard for me to see the point of spending large chunks of time reading books that have to be numbered because numbers are about the only thing that distinguishes one from another. Plus, if they make so little impression, it seems to me you could get the same effect (and save money besides) by just reading the same book over and over, until Jesus comes back and slaps it out of your fat hand.

Even if one views life as a mere marking of time, reading romance novels seems like a sad way to do it—and reading religious romance novels seems approximately quadruply sad.

If you already want to kill yourself today, don't look at this:

3 Odd Foot of Grunts? Kind of: it's ma's shelf of fine Amish romance novels. [Image tilted vertically for ease of sadness.]

But then I overheard my relatives talking about something supremely sad: Amish romance novels.

W-H-A-T what?

There's such a thing as AMISH ROMANCE NOVELS. What? Thee? Fooking? Fook?

And something clicked. Something primal. I was somehow compelled (maybe in the name of blood-related solidarity or cultural bridge-building, maybe plain old manmade-disaster-bystanderism) to take part in this quaint and disheartening family tradition—though only once, of course; as the philosopher Voltaire said, upon turning down an invitation to experience an orgy for the second time, "Once, a philosopher; twice, a pervert." (Although, unlike a second orgy, if I were to read a second Amish romance novel, apparently I would not remember it.)

To make my experiment in Amish romance even sadder, I decided, in the spirit of Amish technological forward-lookingness, to share my sadness by live-Tweeting ("Tweet" = <barf>) my reactions to this literary abortion over the Internet.

(And no one even tried to talk me out of any of this. I thought I had friends, man!)

The good part was that reading the novel took only a few quick sittings. The phrase light reading might have been devised for just such a book as this. And how was the book?

Well . . . that was the bad part. You know how seven out of ten people (note: made-up, bullshit statistic) who reviewed Kick-Ass and liked it somehow came up with the idea of saying it "kicked ass"? Now think of the most basic and obvious response to the title The Shunning and you'll know both how the book was and how I'll be responding to all future Amish romance novel reading opportunities. The Shunning most definitely does not kick ass. The experience of reading it was like some oddball wrestling match, possibly similar to the ludicrous contest described in the Bible, between Jacob and YHWH-disguised-as-an-angel (or, depending upon one's theology, the pre-incarnate Christ), except that in this agonizing competition, (a) horror grappled with hilarity until I felt I'd been butt-violated by a funny bone in the shape of a buggy whip, and (b) my "thigh sinew" (whatever that is) seems to have emerged from the experience intact (for all I know).

I did succeed in reading the entire book (this ain't my first bungling Christian fiction rodeo, cowboy). I got through it the way I do whenever I read an ineptly written book: by imagining what it'd be like if someone wrote it who didn't suck. Usually someone such as Dostoevsky, Hemingway, or Kafka, but in this case, you could almost pick another author at random and be nearly statistically certain that your choice of author could not possibly suck more than Beverly Lewis. And it's the fault of Beverly Lewis, not the Amish. Interesting novels can and are written about dull, misguided, insular people. They just can't be written by celebrating dullness, misguidedness, and insularity. What makes it worse is when they're written by an artless, hammy, sappy, cliché-ridden romance novel hack. (Am I looking at you, Beverly Lewis?) (A: I am looking at you, Beverly Lewis.)

If you'd like to read further, more specific, disbelieving and unforgiving criticisms of (read: pot shots at) the book's contents, you'll find them "Tweeted" <oof> below in my customary suave and urbane style, but—please—don't think I'm under the impression that an interest in great (or even competent) writing is what leads a person to resort to curling up with a book detailing the exciting lives of people who [hrmm, let's avoid the word shun...let's go with . . . avoid! No, wait:] eschew automobiles, guitars, and electricity—though,

Imagine this is how you are:

—now try to imagine NOT making up dull stories about Amish people. (Impossible, right?)

curiously, not wheels, eyeglasses, or propane. For familial reasons, I don't want to go into what, exactly, I think chases certain types of people into the arms of such a complete horseapple of a book. (Eat my mixed metaphor, Amishmongers!) If, though—and I'm only going by the novel, here, but—if the Amish have such a problem with guitars and humming tunes that aren't thankful and joyous hymns about sinners in the hands of an angry god, I have to wonder what they think of Amish romance novels?

I wouldn't have to wonder about that if I worked for the marketing division of a publishing house. In fact, wondering what a bunch of weirdos in beards and bonnets think about anything, least of all Amish romance novels, is the last thing I'd have to do, even if the publisher published Amish romance novels. That's because the target audience for Amish romance novels seems to consist almost exclusively of non-Amish religious women who somehow wish they could be even more repressed by a traditional Western religion than they already are. And holy cowbells is that one tongue-down-the-throat of a marketing strategy. The Shunning? More like, The Stunning—in that it temporarily paralyzed my desire-to-write muscle when I discovered that this puddle of butt dribble sold over HALF A MILLION copies! Not only that, but someone's making a movie of it. True, that someone is said to be Michael Landon, Jr. (son of the late Little House on the Prairie <cough> and Highway to Heaven <ack> star). And it'll be a production of Hallmark, which has the golden touch when it comes to turning the crappiest material into even crappier movies.

Even so, admit it—especially if you're a writer who makes every effort to do good and meaningful work (or even just spew amusing nonsense that doesn't completely suck)—wouldn't you be happy to receive even a tiny slice of what Christians spend on utter crap and nonsense practically every nanosecond of any given day?

<curtain falls; it's decorated with a giant frownie face>

We thank you for attending this meeting of the Deuce of Clubs Amish Fiction Book Club (DOCAFBC)!

IMPORTANT DEUCE OF CLUBS AMISH FICTION BOOK CLUB NOTE: The Deuce of Clubs Amish Fiction Book Club (DOCAFBC) is hereby disbanded. All former members are admonished to be ashamed of themselves. We shall never again discuss (or, one hopes, mention) Amishphilic or Amish-centric fiction. Never, ever, ever (x ∞).

IMPORTANT DEUCE OF CLUBS NON-AMISH FICTION BOOK CLUB NOTE: The Deuce of Clubs Book Club shall continue to exist, and shall not allow this unfortunate lapse into wholesomeness to result in reviews or discussions of reruns of Touched By An Angel or Highway to Heaven. While I admit that I still have the borrowed copy of The Shunning in my possession, I'm almost sure I won't forget I've read it and accidentally read it again, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you, nor would I tell you whether I wrote my initials inside the front cover, and when I return it, I definitely won't be telling my relatives what I've written here. Instead, I'll try being nice, just to see what that's like.

(Or did the Amish get to me after all?)

<Ominous Doctor Phibes organ chords>

<Six burly Amish farmers with axes appear and go all Carrie Nation on the organ>

Postscript: Last month (apr2010), Beverly Lewis published yet another goddamned Amish romance novel. Keep fucking that werechicken*, Beverly.

*[were·chicken \'wir-chi-kən n. were + chicken from OHG wer, man + ME chiken, chicken : 1. Like a werewolf, except . . . a chicken. 2. A synonym for WTF. Origin: Twitter, 2010 < blunderbussed "#werechickens is going to be my wtf tag."]