A review of noir writer Andrew Klavan’s The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. I have already posted this review on Amazon and Goodreads.

This is a very readable book that fleshes out Andrew Klavan’s thesis:

The opposite of murder is creation–creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness. The murders in Shakespeare’s Macbeth are horrific, but they are part of a beautiful play.

page 17

In other words, Klavan is wrestling with the problem of evil. Based on his decades of thinking about this, he has concluded that in this life, there is no theological answer that can redeem evil for those who have suffered it. Theological answers there may be, but those are not what redeem it for us. The only answer to suffering is not an answer, exactly; it is beauty. The example he frequently re-visits is the Pieta, “the most beautiful statue in the world,” a statue of Mary cradling her maimed and innocent, dead son.

I think Klavan’s thesis is a very strong one. I think of the book of Job. Job suffers horribly, and apparently undeservedly, and to add to his suffering, he is told that it must be his fault. He asks God why. Now, as it happens, there is an explanation for everything that is happening to Job. But God doesn’t give it. He just starts talking to Job about the wild animals and their habits. This is beauty, it is wonder, and it is far beyond Job’s experience. But ultimately, God answers Job with Himself, with His presence. He answers Job out of the whirlwind. He mentions just a few of His mighty, mysterious works in creation. And this is a good answer. It is enough. It is a much better answer than if God had said, “Well, it all started when I got into this argument with Satan …”

Kingdom of Cain is a hard book to read because of the real-life crimes described in it. Klavan tries not to get too graphic unless he has to, but this is a book about murders after all, including copycat murders. The blurb says it examines the impact of three murders on our culture, but there are a lot more than that, both fictional and–this is the hard to read part–real. The hardest one for me was the kidnap, rape, and murder of a 14-year-old boy by a pair of older teenagers who were later lionized in fiction.

This book is very insightful. Perhaps if I had never heard Klavan make these points before, I’d have given it five stars. But I have been following him for years, and he has been working on this concept for years, so the idea was not new to me. Especially in the later chapters, it felt a little belaboring. Hence, four stars.