Bad Faith

Granta: 137
Page: 53
Reviewed by: Italo Perazzoli

I read with pleasure the memoir of Ken Follett, it is written in first person and it is very personal, he speaks of his childhood, a truly nightmare.

"I was not allowed to go to movies as a child. There was a cinema in Cowbridge Road, Cardiff, not far from my home..."

Kennett explains his point of view and the reasons of this privation, where he passed his free time in a library rather than in the cinema.

In this short story, the author tells us that he was a member of the "Plymouth Brethren" a protestant sect.

From his pen emerges the life of his father a "victim" of this sect, a repulsion for the world, contaminated by the sins, to be absolutely avoided.

There were also a "war" between sects, at page 56 (Granta 137), he said: "My uncle Ken was not allowed to attend the funeral, even though she was his sister, because it was a service of rival sect."

Fortunately, for Ken his "way out" was a book, that changed his world, the title was "Father and Son" written by Edmund Grosse, the story of a young man who rejects the Plymouth Brethren.

Surprisingly he did not become a staunch atheist, but he said that "he chose philosophy in the hope that it would help me resolve my doubts about the existence of God" but he become an atheist after his graduation.

The title of this short novel is not linked to his childhood but by a phrase of Sartre an existentialist.

"If you hand moral responsibility to another authority - the Bible, or a priest or the Pope - you may simplify your life, but you lose a part of your humanity. 

This what Sartre calls 'Bad Faith' " In my opinion the sects are extremely dangerous, for those people, that can be steer by others towards the radicalism and fundamentalism.

Ken tells us that his best character is "Prior Philip, a monk who cares for the spiritual and material welfare of his people here on earth" after this experience, Follet describes himself as a "lapsed atheist" who does not take the communion, but he likes going to the church as a member of the local choral.

Recently I finished to read "The Philosopher's pupil" of Iris Murdoch and, in my opinion the Prior Philip and Father Jacoby, believe  in a Spiritual God, rather than a Personalised God.