Tom Cantor Seems Like a Loser and a Moron

Earlier today, I received in the mail an unsolicited autobiography by Tom Cantor titled Changed, which is a recounting of Cantor's decision to accept Jesus (though he insists he's still a Jew and not a Christian).  There have been plenty of articles about people offended by receiving the book, but none that have really gone into depth about the content.  So, using examples from the book itself, I hope to prove three things. 

1. Tom Cantor is a loser.

As far back as Saint Augustine, the Christian redemption narrative has featured a recitation of the convert's depravity before finding Jesus.  This trend continues today.  Ben Carson tried to stab someone and Mike Lindell was a crack addict.  According to the synopsis on the back cover, Cantor was "expelled from schools" and "broke through the boundaries of morality and plunged into sexual defilement."  Sounds saucy.  Let's start with the expulsions.  Cantor was expelled from a private military school at the age of eight.  What did he do?  Well, he was told not to touch the fire alarm, and frequently did so anyway.  One time he accidentally set it off, and his fellow students quickly gave him up. By his own account, he only intended to touch the fire alarm, and setting it off was an accident.  This is enough for him to caption a picture of his seven year old self as "Trouble Maker in Disguise" and cite this incident as proof of his underlying perversity.  "Accidentally pulling a fire alarm" is the least bad thing someone could do to get expelled. If Saint Augustine stole pears he didn't need, Tom Cantor touched a pear at the supermarket and accidentally knocked it to the floor.  This is the first of five bad things Tom Cantor does in his life.  Or rather, the ones he treats as bad things.  See section 2 for the actually shitty things he does, but never seems to acknowledge are awful.  The next horrible, sinful act he perpetrates is when he gets caught shoplifting records at the age of 15.  Yes, despite describing himself as a died-in-the-wool terror, there's a seven year gap until the next thing he finds worthy of mention.  The result of this arrest?  Daddy sends him to a boarding school in Switzerland.  The third bad thing happens on the boat there.  He was "so loud and annoying to the other passengers that the Swiss Police...picked me up by the ear and told me that I was a guest in their country."  How does this rebel without a spine react?  He behaves himself for the rest of the trip.  He was loud, and was told to quiet down, and did.  This is proof of his "rebellious nature."  

His fourth bad thing is probably the worst. After being in Switzerland for a couple months, he got caught being drunk and getting into a fight, which leads to expulsion and finding a new boarding school.  Is this good?  No.  Is this shocking for a teenager sent halfway around the world (or who has friends with a parent out of town)?  Also no.  We're talking about a man who, as a senior citizen, recounts accidentally pulling a fire alarm when eight years old as one of the worst things he's ever done.  This is not a rebel or a trouble maker.  This is a loser who is desperate to think of himself as having a bad streak, and briefly being loud on a boat hits his top five bad boy moments.  This is someone who desperately wants a cool redemption arc, despite being Milhouse's lamer older brother.

But hey, maybe the fifth moment is a doozy.  We still haven't come to the "sexual defilement" and whatever can be found on the other side of "the boundaries of morality."  It's 1960s Switzerland, who knows what freaky stuff he could get into. Maybe BDSM, prostitution, orgies, consensual sex with women who weren't truly in love with him ah shit it's consensual sex with women who weren't truly in love with him isn't it?  Here, in its entirety, is the sexual defilement of Tom Cantor:

        "During those trips my sexuality woke up. I hoped that sexual intimacy would fill my emptiness and bring me peace and happiness.  I turned to women looking for comfort and love.  But, the women I turned to were not looking for love, they were were only looking for a new passing excitement.  Those sexual encounters not only left me feeling emptier, but, worse, they made me feel filthy inside. I FELT DIRTY INSIDE!"

Tom Cantor managed to hook up with a random girl and was shocked, shocked I tell you, that she wasn't in love with him.  Him, the bad boy who tried and failed to steal motown records from a supermarket!  The dashing bandit who briefly bothered some transatlantic passengers, and would have kept doing so had he not been asked to stop! But the unnamed, undescribed, totally real European girls didn't fall for his dangerous allure, or his inflated ego, or his almost certainly clammy hands (even though they once accidentally pulled a fire alarm). 

After this, he feels so dirty that he takes a hot shower!  with soap!  for two hours!  But this doesn't cure his terminal case of feeling icky! 

2. Tom Cantor is a terrible partner

Tom Cantor moves back to the US to go to college at Miami University in Ohio.  After trying a shower once didn't cure his sense of defilement, he decided that he needed a "girl that was wholesome and pure" to "cleanse" him.  So he goes to the library to "hunt for that serious student."  He discovers that the study rooms each "had a square window that I could look into." He describes his reaction to this discovery as blurting out "Pefect! Window shopping!"  This alone is worse than any of the things Tom Cantor has actually felt bad about.  He sees a girl he likes, and then proceeds to lie to her, first claiming there are no other rooms available.  He presents her as believing this to be true.  "Appearing to be sorry that there were no booths available, she agreed."  He then finds out she's studying French, offers to evaluate her accent, then has the clever idea of negging and lying to her again.  "Seeing an opportunity to spend time with her I told her that her accent was terrible and that I could help her with her accent even though I knew I had a terrible Swiss accent."  He doesn't present this as a bad thing he did that he now regrets.  He just lied to this woman he didn't know with the hope of seducing her so she could cleanse him of sin.

After coming back to college after visiting family for the summer, he proposes to Cheryl, who tells him that she had been raped and was now pregnant.  This is terrible news.  For Tom.  Yes, Cheryl has PTSD and nightmares and sinks into depression.  But that's not the most important thing here. 

 "Impure, she was no longer better than I. No longer could she rescue me from my  own impurity.  What was worse [sic] about the rape of Cheryl and the pregnancy was that it forced me to be reminded of my own sexual defilement.  Her pregnancy was a glaring reminder of my own acts and defilements." (emphasis added)

To be clear, according to this man, the worst thing about the woman he loves being raped and impregnated, was it reminded him of the time he had emotionally unfulfilling consensual sex as a teenager.  Fuck this guy, right?  This is sociopathic.  This is worse than pulling a fire alarm on purpose!  But of course Tom Cantor doesn't see it this way.  The rape of the woman he claims to love is a tragedy, but mostly because it makes him feel bad. 

Even if we put aside how morally atrocious this is, how much of a moron do you have to be to actually put this in a book about your come to Jesus moment?

3. Tom Cantor is a moron.

Ostensibly, the purpose of sending this book to random Jews is to convert Jews.  And yet, in an 85 page book, he feels he needs to stop and explain what a moyle is.  Yes, he spelled mohel "moyle."  He also needs to explain what Yom Kippur is, what Baruch Atah Adonai means, etc.  He also does not seem to understand anything about how the world or any religion works.  If you're wondering how someone can accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior, but still consider themselves to not be a Christian, Tom Cantor explains his reasoning. 

"I had always been taught that people who were not Jewish were either Christians or Moslems...  I knew my three co-workers were not Moslems, they must be Christians... Right in the middle of them talking about their extra-marital relationships, I announced, "You fellows need Jesus Christ."... I was trying to find out if being Christian meant having Jesus Christ... From their response, I learned that a person could be a Christian and not have Jesus Christ or, expressed differently, I learned that a person could have Jesus Christ and not be called a Christian." 

Completely putting aside religious faith, this is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard.  This is grown man from a major city in the twenty-first century, and his entire argument is predicated on only three religions existing.   Even if we agreed with his conclusion that his coworkers were Christian and didn't have Jesus (after all, they're not Muslim or Jewish, so there is literally no other option), the reverse isn't automatically true.  Everyone who isn't a doctor is a lawyer or an accountant.  My acquaintances aren't lawyers or accountants so I will assume they're doctors.  I asked them if they have residency at a hospital.  They said no.  Therefore, a doctor does not need to have residency at a hospital or, expressed differently, a person can have residency at a hospital without being a doctor.

Q.E.D.

Look, I grew up in a pretty Jewish area.  I'm not super well-versed in the New Testament.  But Tom Cantor is either bafflingly ignorant or hamming it up for effect.  

"The first book in the "New" section was a book called "Matthew." What became obvious to me was that this was a book about Jesus.  This book was all about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus... As I came to the end of the book of Matthew, I was shocked to read of how Jesus was hated, betrayed and tortured to die a slow, agonizing death on the cross.  I felt so disappointed that the person I hoped could help me was now destroyed."

According to Tom Cantor, he, as an adult, began reading the new testament and was surprised to find out that it was about Jesus Christ.  We were all impressed when people went months without spoiling Infinity War, but Tom Cantor managed to go about 20 years without finding out about Jesus being crucified or resurrected!

Obviously, this is a lie.  It's a very stupid lie that serves no purpose.  He mentions travelling around Europe; was he confused by all the buildings that had a big letter "t" with a dude nailed to it?  Did his Christian girlfriend who happened to be carrying a bible with her when they met just never mention it?   When people tell obvious lies and expect to be believed, they either think their audience is dumb or foolishly think they themselves are exceptionally clever.  Tom Cantor is the latter.  That's the reason I'm treating this as evidence that Tom Cantor is a moron.  It fits a pattern we see in the book, where he acts real self-satisfied about convincing people of obvious lies.  His entire story of meeting his wife is just a series of lies that he recites as if it were proof of what a clever wooer he is.  He has no sense of his own limitations.  The purpose of this book is to convert Jews, but show me one of us who doesn't know that the New Testament is about Jesus.  Show me one who hasn't heard that Jesus gets crucified and [spoiler alert!] resurrected.  Not only is this a dumb lie, it directly hinders his goal.

Based on this book, Tom Cantor doesn't seem to understand Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the fact that those aren't the only options, syllogisms, how lying works, how empathy works, the fact that your girlfriend being raped isn't all about you, that Dennis the Menace isn't history's greatest villain, the definition of "defilement," or that an 85 page book shouldn't have 31 chapters. 

Tom Cantor is a loser, a terrible partner, and a moron.

Q.E.D.

1941: The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin

The Author:

           Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896-1981) was born in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.  His father died when he was seven, and he and his mother lived with his maternal grandparents before eventually moving to Glasgow.  At the University of Glasgow, Cronin became a medical doctor, serving as a medical officer in the first world war and later as a general practitioner in small towns in Scotland and a mining town in Wales, before being appointed Medical Inspector of Mines.  At the university, he also met Agnes Mary Gibson, whom he married in 1921.  They had three children together and they were married for nearly sixty years.

            He was laid up with an ulcer in 1930, requiring six months recuperation, during which time he wrote his first novel, Hatter’s Castle, which was an immediate success.  He wrote several books before, in 1937, publishing The Citadel.  The Citadel is to the British National Health System (NHS) what Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is to the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Not only a huge critical and commercial success, The Citadel established Cronin’s as an important literary figure of his time.

            In 1939, Cronin and his family moved to the US, settling in places as disparate as Bel Air, California and Blue Hill, Maine.  He remained a prolific writer for the rest of his life, and spent the last years of his life living in Switzerland.  He passed away in Montreux in 1981.

The Book: 

          The Keys of the Kingdom tells the life story of Francis Chisholm, a Scottish Catholic priest, from his childhood to his old age, focusing largely on his thirty five years spent in establishing a mission in Pai-Tan, China. Chisholm is an extremely sympathetic character, and, like most of the supporting characters, is written with a good amount of depth.  The characters are the greatest part of this novel.

         From the beginning, we know that Chisholm is not your dogmatic, stiff, hellfire-and-damnation cleric.  The first chapter takes place when Chisholm has a vocation in Scotland in his old age, and is being investigated by the local bishop (the rest of the novel is chronological, starting from his childhood).  He had complaints against him for saying things like, "Atheists may not all go to hell. I knew one who didn't," and "Christ was a perfect man, but Confucius had a better sense of humor."¹  This is a trend I've been finding in a lot of the books on this list: pro-religion via being anti-dogma.  That is to say, many of these books argue that reliance on dogma is not only bad, but directly detrimental to religion, arguing instead a form of what is essentially Humanism based on Christianity.  The first book I reviewed, The Inside of the Cup, dealt with a priest discovering this.  This trend continued.  There were the good preachers in Elmer Gantry, Dean Harcourt in Green Light, and Casey in The Grapes of Wrath.  Whereas a novel like Elmer Gantry tried to combat what Lewis saw as hypocrisy by exposing a negative figure, the others I've listed focus mainly on presenting a good preacher, an example of what religious officials should be. (I don't think it's a coincidence that the good preachers in the novels listed above rarely achieve any high status, as opposed to the Gantry-like characters.)

     Chisholm's life is one long attempt to make the world a better place, which he does, to the extent that he is able.  Other characters, often within the clergy, stand in his way, but this opposition is not generally due to malice or greed, but rather people who are more concerned with the number of baptisms at the missions than with the number of people who benefit from the mission.  The amount of philosophical and theological monologues alone suggests that Cronin is using Chisholm to state his own religious views, which seem to be humanistic.  Chisholm argues that the church should argue pacifism in times of war.  He argues that good works, regardless of religion, are paths to salvation.  Basically, he argues for human decency and kindness.

      Like pretty much every book I've read here so far, this one was adapted to film:

      The 1944 film starred Gregory Peck (who also played Pa Baxter in the film adaptation of The Yearling).  It seems, though, that Cronin is better known outside the U.S. Most of the search traffic for his name comes from India and the U.K.,² which is probably in no small part due to the importance of The Citadel in the U.K.

     I wouldn't try to stop anyone from reading The Keys to the Kingdom, and it is certainly an enjoyable book.  I don't feel that it's one that you need to go out of your way to read, though.

Also published 1941:
James M. Cain - Mildred Pierce   
C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters 
H. A. Rey and Margret Rey - Curious George 
Bertolt Brecht - Mother Courage and Her Children

1. Cronin, A. J. The Keys of the Kingdom. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1941. Print.
2. Google Trends page

     

1913: The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill

No, not that Winston Churchill. 

This Winston Churchill

WHO?    

     The author of The Inside of the Cup was, at the time, more famous than the future British Prime Minister.  The American Winston Churchill was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1871.  He attended the United States Naval Academy and, upon graduation, was made an editor of the Army and Naval Journal.  In 1895, he was made managing editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine (the same magazine that “now survives as a harrowingly explicit sex manual”¹).  He published his first novel, The Celebrity, in 1898, to moderate success.  His second novel, Richard Carvel, was released in 1899 and placed third on the bestsellers list.  From 1899 through 1913, Winston Churchill appeared on the annual bestsellers list eight times.  Five of those times, he was in the number one spot.  He became a millionaire and a household name.  The Inside of the Cup was the last book of his to reach the top of the bestsellers list.

          He got involved in politics in the early twentieth century, and got elected to the New Hampshire state legislature in 1903 and 1905.  He failed to win the Republican nomination for governor in 1906.  In 1912, he ran as the candidate for the Progressive Party (colloquially known as the Bull Moose Party, after its founder Theodore Roosevelt), but lost to Democrat Samuel Felker.  The novel I’m reviewing deals heavily with the political and social values espoused by the Progressive party.

So what's this book?

          The Inside of the Cup was originally published serially in Hearst Magazine in 1912 before being released in book form in 1913.  The title comes from a biblical quote: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.”2

          Despite being written over a century ago, The Inside of the Cup is surprisingly relevant today.  The story centers around John Hodder, an orthodox Anglican rector from a comfortable suburb who is recruited to lead the congregation of St. John’s, a prestigious chapel in “one of the largest cities of the United States of America, and of that portion called the Middle West.”  St. John’s had been built on Dalton Street in what was originally an upscale part of town, but in the past decades, had become the slums.  However, it is still frequented by the rich and powerful.  Through his interactions with the heads of industry and the poor of Dalton Street, Hodder’s worldview drastically changes. 

          Theology is, unsurprisingly, a major aspect of the novel.  The first chapter features a conversation between members of the Waring and Goodrich family which sets the tone for the theological debates to follow.  The aim of the novel’s theology can be inferred from this quote on page eleven:

“So far as I can see, the dilemma in which our generation finds itself is this, - we want to know what there is in Christianity that we can lay hold of.  We should like to believe, but, as George says, all our education contradicts the doctrines that are most insisted upon… We have the choice of going to people like George, who know a great deal but don’t believe anything, or to clergymen like Mr. Hodder that demand that we shall violate the reason in us which has been so carefully trained.” 

          Although initially obstinate, Hodder eventually agrees with the above sentiment and sets to create a new understanding of religion, putting him at odds with Eldon Parr, one of the nation’s most powerful businessmen.  The main focus of the novel is Hodder’s ‘conversion.’  As with practically any book that delves into the can of worms that is theology, the book occasionally becomes encumbered by it.  Its saving grace, however, is the similarity of the issues in the novel to the issues of today.  Regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof (in the spirit of full disclosure, I am not religious in any sense), anyone who has an intellectual interest in theology could gain some insight from reading this. 

          The cast of supporting characters and their subplots are the best part of the book.  Although most of the focus is on John Hodder, he is not so much of a personality as he is a set of beliefs that we watch change throughout as he becomes enlightened.  It is a testament to Churchill’s writing prowess that these small characters are so complete, and tend to steal the show whenever they pop in.   

Why was it so popular at the time?

          The Inside of the Cup was written in what is known as the Progressive Era in the United States and propounds many of the ideals of the Progressive party including women’s rights (including suffrage and minimum wage), an eight hour workday, a social security system, direct election of senators, and more.  The novel deals with all of these to some extent and further shows how they not only do not contradict religion, but are a necessary part of it.    

          Specifically, the novel calls out the unfair practices of major trusts.  Abuse of workers at the hands of large companies was endemic.  If you think corporations are powerful today, this was nothing compared to how it was at the time.  From Thomas Patterson’s textbook “We the People” (ninth edition):

“After the Civil War, the Supreme court also gave nearly free rein to business.  A majority of the Court’s justices were proponents of laissez-faire capitalism, and they interpreted the Constitution in ways that restricted government’s attempts to regulate business activity.  In 1886, for example, the Court decided that corporations were “persons” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and were thereby protected from substantial regulation by the states. 

“The Court also weakened the national government’s regulatory power… When the federal government invoked the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) in an attempt to break up a monopoly on the manufacture of sugar, the Supreme Court blocked the action, claiming that interstate commerce covered only the transportation of goods, not their manufacture… However, because the Court had previously decided that state’s regulatory powers were limited by the Fourteenth Amendment, the states were not allowed to regulate manufacturing activity in a significant way.”3

     Public sentiment was incited, and a book that helped them express and expand upon their discontent was bound to receive a large audience.

Why haven't I heard of it?

          Winston Churchill’s popularity declined not long after this book was published.  He wrote two more novels in that decade, plus one non-fiction and a play.  In 1919, he quietly left the sphere of public writing, only releasing one more book in 1940.  He passed away in Florida in 1947.  Since then, the other Winston Churchill has become considerably better known, as a public figure and as a writer. 

Should I read it?

          If you have an interest in theology, academic or personal, there’s a lot to gain from this book.  The showdowns between opposing parties are very tense and exciting, though they are few.  If you can handle some slow parts, I’d recommend giving it a shot.


You can read The Inside of the Cup on Project Gutenberg.

Books with similar themes:
Native Son by Richard Wright
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

1. Vonnegut, Kurt. Bagombo Snuff Box. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999.  Page 7.

2. Churchill, Winston. The Inside of the Cup. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913.

3. Patterson, Thomas E. We the People. 9^th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2011. Page 82-3.