Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die: Or the Eschatology of Bluegrass

After a few dozen pages, I found myself unexpectedly charmed by this quirky and mystifying book, but that charm was not enough to make me unreserve... (show more)

After a few dozen pages, I found myself unexpectedly charmed by this quirky and mystifying book, but that charm was not enough to make me unreservedly like it. I borrowed the book from a friend based solely on David Crowder's name. I am not a huge fan of his music, but I lived in Waco for four years, and he was one of those beloved local celebrities, the guy with something of a national profile who you still saw at a local Tex-Mex restaurant about half the time you stopped in for a bite. So I picked up the book, expecting from the title that it was about the concept of dying to self as part of the process of Christian sanctification.

I was wrong about the subject of the book. The book is about death and mourning and historical perspectives on the soul and kind of about bluegrass (although the bluegrass chapters are easily the ones in which the authors seem least animated, and the section capping off the bluegrass analysis would have felt a bit like a smug NPR interview even if it hadn't quoted large sections of an actual NPR interview). There is a set of three unusually intertwined magical realist stories that are printed in columns of occasionally physically intertwined text (I appreciated the audacity of the authors, although the stories themselves were pretty weak, especially at the end, and didn't really add to the book as a whole except for one gut-wrenching glossary about what we mean when we use standard condolence language).

Most importantly (for me), there are transcripts of IM conversations between the two authors, with additional text added to reveal untyped thoughts. This is the strength of the book, where two friends hash out their grief with humor and sorrow and awkward pauses. At first, I was annoyed by the conversations because they seemed to be too self-consciously quirky, but there was real truth and depth to them. I would read more conversations between these two authors.

Sadly, though, the book is not one that I would quickly recommend to anyone. At least one of the authors, if not both, suffers from a tendency to use five-dollar words when simpler ones would do (and probably be more appropriate - the authors mention something about "pugnacious fighting" that makes me think one of us doesn't know the meaning of the word pugnacious, and my pride makes me think I have it right). The chapters about the history of the soul are too shallow to be academic, too academic to be entertainment, and they never seem to really get anywhere (although they do set up some lovely IM exchanges). The chapters about the history of bluegrass have a certain appeal, since I approached them with complete ignorance, but they never really tied in with the rest of the book - the big finale chapter reveals (SPOILER ALERT) that the big connection is that they're kind of based on jazz, which comes from spirituals, which embrace suffering, so.. whatever. Why didn't the authors just write about spirituals and detour off into how much they dig bluegrass? And really, at the end, I am at a loss as to what Crowder and Hogan accomplished. I don't think they really draw any profound insights into the nature of the soul or grief or music or humanity or God, and about the only thing of lasting value I gained from the book was a taste of how these two individuals have experienced their grief. I think this book is more helpful, for that aspect, for a grieving person than the overhyped A Grief Observed (by C.S. Lewis), but it is not worth time wasted on the rest of the book. (show less)