I’ve been reading Eric Metaxas’s book, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007)–the official book in conjunction with the movie (which I haven’t yet seen). The book is well-researched and quite informative. Thus fair I have been especially struck by the ability of Metaxas (who is a believer) to bring out the spiritual side of Wilberforce and to provide a very helpful overview of the historic context of the time.
But regrettably I feel compelled to register a complaint, or at least issue a forewarning for those who might be considering it as a purchase. No less than two of the endorsers (George Gallup and Os Guinness) praise Metaxas’s “sparkling style.” But I found it consistently distracting.
Maybe some of my annoyance can be attributed to reading the book on a long flight, but during some of these clever paragraphs I just wanted him to get on with the story! As an example, here’s a passage about Wilberforce and George Fox. (The bold is mine.)
Wilberforce may have been crazy like a fox, but Fox himself was so often drunk as the proverbial skunk that Wilberforce wisely decided to forego badgering him about becoming involved. Even if Fox had initially assented to lend his name to the cause, it seems rather likely that he may have eventually weaseled out of any real commitment anyway, and it is always possible that, given his affection for dissolute living, he may even have beome a mole for the opposition. (p. 90)
(Readers will not be surprised to learn that Metaxas used to be a writer for VeggieTales!) To my mind, however, this comes across as cleverness for cleverness’s sake.
Now perhaps I’m just a humorless reader and this style works better on others. Perhaps you’ll find this book not only informative (as I did) but also amusing (as I didn’t).
In a brief bibliography at the end of the book, Metaxas mentions that one of the goals for this book is “to whet the readers’ appetite for . . . other books [listed there], each of which will add happy depth, breadth, and height to the portrait in your hands. . . .” “First and foremost” he recommends “Kevin Belmonte’s excellent Hero for Humanity, which is filled with information, and which is especially accessible to American readers.” So that would be an alternative for those of us who find Metaxas’s style more tiresome than sparking.
Humor is a funny thing. When a writer begins the acknowledgments by writing, “I wish first and foremost to thank my typist, yours truly, for quite literally transcribing my thoughts as I thought them, a feat hardly to be explained, and yet quite literally true”–well, either you think get a little smile on your face, or you roll your eyes. If you are among the latter, you may want to turn elsewhere for a biography on Wilberforce.