A Delicate Fade [Paperback]

Benjamin DeVries (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2004

The only sense I ever made out of life was when a man told me the kingdom of God is placed between this world and the one to come. he said it hangs like a curtain between what I can see and feel (everything fragile and fading, like me) and everything whole. as weak as I am and as blind, it's here waiting to show itself. . . . ---Ben deVries What do you do when your experience of life doesn't match up with what you thought it should be? A delicate fade offers an intense, stream-of-consciousness narrative as a twenty-something writer wrestles with this and other questions. including quotes, snippets of poems, and a detailed and sensory exploration of the world around him, Ben DeVries chronicles his struggle to live between what is and what should be. an intensely personal journey of doubt, faith, and hope, a delicate fade is an honest chronicle of one person's exploration of Christianity, postmodernism, and the meaning of life. A lifetime and I saw you, I can see you change I remember everything (except what I am now) I remember how I spent all this time looking A lifetime watching, but I lost myself somewhere I found myself between what is and what was meant to be.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A 20-something son of evangelical Christian missionaries to the Netherlands, DeVries employs a stream-of-consciousness style to describe the precariousness of his faith amid postmodern angst. Like a journal entry, the writing fades from impression to impression, interspersed with song lyrics and quotes. Authors cited include John Donne, Thomas Aquinas, Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard and Leo Tolstoy, reflecting the breadth of DeVries's search for answers. He doesn't find many: "The dark night of the soul may be more than just one night, and it might even be more than the different traumas coming together with my inability to cope with them, but it could be my own self falling apart." Too many such observations approach self-pity. The author finds comfort in God's presence, but even the comfort is questioned; he fights doubt for every inch of assurance. The book maps DeVries's inner life without tying it to specific events, and this vagueness will undoubtedly frustrate some readers. Still, it reflects the intense feeling that believers of DeVries's age and disposition know all too well. This slight book will appeal to them and those who wish to understand them.
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Review

'...a delicate fade' -- Ben DeVries

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (April 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031025535X
• ISBN-13: 978-0310255352
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,478,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An honesty that makes faith real, January 29, 2008

By 

Stephen H. Webb (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Delicate Fade (Paperback)

This book is unbearably honest and almost perfectly beautiful at times. It is a religious diary for these postmodern times, a bit Pascal, a bit grunge, a rock and roll style with a whole lot of longing for God. There are quotable lines on nearly every page, and the delicacy of the writing softens the sadness while sustaining the reader through what is, in the end, a journey of hope. I was very moved by this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathe deeply this fresh air!, April 16, 2004

By 

David R Leigh (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Delicate Fade (Paperback)

A DELICATE FADE, by Ben DeVries, gave me the consistent sensation I was eavesdropping on the inner dialogue of another's soul. He writes with such lucid honesty, it was as if I'd been allowed to slip inside the stream of another's consciousness--a kindred seeker and sojourner--experiencing his thoughts as they were occurring. I felt his internal wrestlings, shared in his defeats, and identified with his questioning.

Ben writes forthrightly. His background is clearly that of an Evangelical; some would say Fundamentalist. Yet he communicates as their discontent product and reluctant critic. Without paying homage to them, he writes with an emotional transparency that discloses their limitations and legacies as his own. Both of which he has inherited and both of which he salvages--if not harnesses (!)--as contributing to his life in ways he passes on to the reader.

Ben offers a perspective that will come alongside those who are disillusioned with the religion of our day and assist them in their groping after hope and faith and God. His voice is one most certainly awaited by the coming generation. He writes as one of them! And those of us from prior schools of thought will do well to listen--whether we are ready or not. Doing so will take us not only inside the twitching curtains that obstruct our understanding of the emerging post-modern soul, but it may even help us pull back our own layers of buried questions and struggles--perhaps forgotten for having been so long conceded or abandoned.

There is an honesty and sincerity here that is at once refreshing and disturbing. It is the frankness one should expect from a kindred seeker after Truth, but which is yet so uncommon that we may have given up looking for it. Many will undoubtedly ask themselves after reading this book why it has taken so long for these thoughts finally to be expressed. Others will marvel that such a young soul possessed the depth of insight to know how to articulate them.

I recommend this book to all those who feel as though others view them as unconventional or disenfranchised--as "on the fringe," when it comes to religion, or church, or Christianity. And I recommend it to anyone who questions, who fights against the creeping shadows of despair, or who feels alone in feeling (however numbly) that Truth and Reality are veiled by a curtain that flutters but never seems to open.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful exploration into a new genre, February 2, 2007

By 

Kyle R. Hudson "scottishsurfer" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Delicate Fade (Paperback)

DeVries hits the average Christian over the head with the sledgehammer of everyday life: REAL faith is hard. Part autobiography, part poetry, part philosophical commentary, A Delicate Fade is a masterpiece that may well be Mr. DeVries magnum opus, and grant him the immortality of Harper Lee, Sartre, and Whitman.