Friday, January 09, 2009

Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black

Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black considering that I received this for Christmas and started reading it Christmas night probably says something about me. This is Black's views on religion and religious belief. I was mildly surprised to find out that he isn't actually an atheist he just has major issues with organized religion.

Most of the book is biographical discussing his childhood as Jewish, his falling out with the religion. There is a hilarious section on a Bar Mitzvah for a dog. From that point he moved on to various forms of Eastern mysticism. He does believe in a higher power for example he felt something when his brother passed away. He discusses his belief in psychics. There is a long winded testimonial of a friend of a friend who claims to have psychic ability.

There are some thematic chapters of him riffing on religions including Catholics, Evangelicals and a rather nervous discussion of Islam. The section on TV evangelists is probably the funniest part of the book.

The final section is a off-Broadway play he performed with one of the guys from the TV show Perfect Strangers. He freely admits that the critics hated it and I have to say they had a point. If you take the standard TV evangelist spiel and replace "Jesus" with "comedy" you'll get the idea.

If you go into this looking for something more akin to his standup routine it will be disappointing but if looking for a description of one person's faith then it is good.

Recommended.

No comments: