By jordan on January 23, 2010
I’ve seen Marilynne Robinson’s novels in bookstores before, but the covers never stood out to me (unfair? yes.) But I came across an excerpt from one of her essays — having no idea she wrote such things — and was impressed enough to put The Death of Adam on hold at the library. I haven’t been dissapointed.
All the essays are, as she states in her introduction, “contrarian in method and spirit.” In other words, they are polemics. This is important to remember, since they will seem hyperbolic if considered otherwise. She is similar in style and temperament to Joan Didion: sober almost to melancholy, but not quite.
The introduction immerses the reader in Robinson’s way of understanding and discussing things. Her views are contrarian, not because she has firmly taken sides in any existing conflict, but because “contemporary discourse feels to [her] empty and false.” This leads her to attack diverse aspects of American culture, with the overarching goal of saving it from itself.
I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe that there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization, and I want it back.
Robinson has been strongly influenced by John Calvin, the Puritans and protestant theology, and this informs everything she writes. It is especially important to her critique of American culture, which centers on its neglect of history and its formative traditions.
In several of the essays in this book I talk about John Calvin, a figure of the greatest historical consequence, especially for our culture, who is more or less entirely unread. Learned-looking books on subjects to which he is entirely germane typically do not include a single work of his immense corpus in their bibliographies, nor indicate in their allusions to him a better knowledge than folklore can provide of what he thought and said. I have encountered an odd sort of social pressure as often as I have read him. One does not read Calvin. One does not think of reading him. The prohibition is as absolute as it ever was against Marx, who always had the glamour of the subversive or the forbidden about him. Calvin seems to be neglected on principle. This is interesting. It is such a good example of the oddness of our approach to history, and to knowledge more generally, that it bears looking into. Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is.
It’s worth noting that the essays in the book were all published in the 1990s. It’s amazing to see how little has changed, the essays aren’t dated or immaterial to America’s present state. They certainly deserve thorough, attentive reading, both for their content and style.
Posted in American Literature, Non-Fiction | Tagged marilynne robinson
By jordan on January 20, 2010
Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief sounds pretty straightforward, and, by Rowan Williams’ standards, it is. He basically explains the meanings of the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds. This gives the book a tight overall structure, which balances the conversational, often digressive writing (the book is based on a series of talks.)
There were two passages that I found especially interesting. In the final chapter, Williams offers a critique of contemporary culture.
One of the oddest things in our culture is that we seem to be tolerant of all sorts of behaviour, yet are deeply unforgiving. The popular media mercilessly display the failings of politicians and celebrities; attitudes to prisoners and ex-prisoners are often harsh; people demand legal redress for human errors and oversights. We shouldn’t be mislead by an easygoing atmosphere in manners and morals; under the surface there is a hardness that ought to worry us.
It’s not uncommon to hear such criticism, especially from religious figures. But Williams offers something incisive and constructive. He’s not bemoaning the state of culture out of prudery or superiority, but diagnosing a serious, underlying problem. He goes on to say that the Church’s Creed (and, ideally, the Church itself) is countercultural, not because it’s more moral than the culture, but because it’s forgiving, rather than merely tolerant.
The other interesting passage concerns George Herbert’s poem, “Love (3).” Williams says it’s the “greatest Christian poem in the English language.” That’s bold, when many others would turn to T.S. Eliot (I would have picked Auden’s Horae Canonicae.) His judgment is influenced by theological as well as artistic considerations, but — after rereading it — I think I may agree.
Posted in Theology | Tagged George Herbert, Rowan Williams
By jordan on January 14, 2010
I’ve been sucked in by Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. The stories in this book are intoxicating. It’s similar in effect to Romantic poetry, especially Keats. Herschel’s cosmological speculations are the highlight in this regard.
But the Romantic Age was not all discovery and progress. Holmes knows and acknowledges this; he’s not naive. Nevertheless, screw-ups are relegated to second fiddle; Holmes acknowledge the Terror, but only as a coda to the Wonder. This bothers me because one purpose of the book is to reinvigorate that Romantic attitude towards science. This strikes me as naive atavism. It’s true that the influence of the Romantic age persists, and could be reinvigorated. But what would grow out of such a project would develop uniquely, unpredictably — just as the Romantic Age itself did.
Holmes certainly, however, deserves great credit for even recognizing the existence of “Romantic Science” as something distinct from “Enlightenment Science.” The Age of Wonder also serves as an excellent reminder that science does not stand apart from the rest of human cultural activity. This is not always acknowledged.
Posted in History
By jordan on August 26, 2009
I’ve recently finished reading Shusaku Endo’s novel The Samurai. I feel like writing about it, but I’ll certainly need more than one post. It’s an almost painful book to read, and it unsettled me profoundly. But after the ordeal it offers a kind of solace. I’ll need a few posts to work it out.
Posted in Fiction
By jordan on August 6, 2009
Let me begin with the book’s eponymous essay.
The strangest thing about reading this is the image it gives of hippies. Growing up in California, I’ve met plenty of people one might call hippies. In my experience a typical hippie is old, poorly dressed, and not very interesting to talk to. It’s hard to imagine these same people ever being young, much less being typified as children. I was also struck by her assertion that the hippy movement was “evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart” (p.xiii). Now that the major discussion in almost every arena seems to center on rebuilding broken systems, her diagnosis reads as obvious and prescient: the hippy movement was clearly the first sign that America (and the Western World) had lost it’s sense of itself. Or, as Didion writes:
We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create to create a community in a social vacuum….This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. (pp.122-23)
Aside from “Slouching Towards Behlehem,” my two favorite pieces were “On Self-Respect” and “Los Angeles Notebook.” The former is just good sense. The latter, besides appealing to my typically Californian narcissism, is a very good anecdotal portrait of my city. That it is a series of anecdotal sketches is a major part of it’s quality. Los Angeles is too large and various to be properly conceived of in whole. The fractured nature of Didion’s piece is appropriate to LA’s own fractured character.
I bought and read this book, not out of interest, but on recommendation. But Joan Didion is now one of my favorite writers. I suppose I’ll have to go ahead and buy the massive Modern Library collection.
Posted in Non-Fiction
By jordan on May 8, 2009
Just finished Norman F. Cantor’s Inventing the Middle Ages, about the great medievalists of the 20th century. It’s uneven, but considering the range of figures he deals with it’s understandable. He can’t be an expert on the life and work of every medievalist of the 20th century. But the weak passages are outweighed by the strong ones. Particularly striking is the book’s closing. In the last few pages, Cantor predicts a “retromedieval revival” in the coming 21st century (the book is copyrighted 1991). He also predicts an inevitable end of the modern world.
Scarcely anybody believes anymore in capitalism and socialism as value systems. We endure them as ways of social existence, as instruments for physical survival, but we draw no emotional sustenance from them—except for a handful of archaic fanatics or manipulators of vested partisan interest. So we have found our inspiration and teleologies elsewhere, in cultural systems. Since medievalism much more than classicism incorporates the religious faiths of our grandparents, as well as the artistic and erotic sensibilities of our parent’s generation, and because of the richness and diversity of the medieval world, wherein anybody can find an aspect of special significance and proximity, medievalism sustains itself and flourishes as the cultural structure of a compelling value system. In the strange world of the twenty-first century, when so much of the Victorian and modernist worlds will have been swept away into obsolescence and uselessness, medievalism bids fair to increase greatly its importance in our lives.
….
Like the Roman Empire, the modern age will crumble from the crack of inordinate greatness beyond the interest of the many and the desire of the privileged few to sustain, and in the murky streets of ruined cities and meeting grounds of a billion humble habitations, our heroes and saints will show us how to begin history anew.
I would be suspicious of his assertions, if I had not already encountered them elsewhere. Phyllis Tickle’s deeply flawed but still compelling book, The Great Emergence, also argues that the modern age, having begun with the Renaissance, is now ending. Recent events seem to verify that the systems the modern world was built on are irreparably flawed, and that new political, economic, scientific, and social models will have to be devised. In fact, I recently read an article (I can’t remember where) that used the term “social capitalism.” The author concluded that capitalism and socialism have both lost credibility, and that people are now looking for a more practical hybrid system.
Cantor makes a few other predictions, too many to list here. It will be interesting to see how accurate he ultimately is. Current events make him pretty convincing so far.
Posted in Non-Fiction | Tagged emergence, medieval, norman f cantor, phyllis tickle
By jordan on June 28, 2008
But in history, as in traveling, men usually see only what they already had in thier own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to it’s study.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
I’m taking History 11 (American History 1) right now, and have been discovering the truth of this daily over the past couple of weeks. Certain issues, most notably immigration, have drawn more questions and opinions from the class than others, and it’s from these topics, concerning which the students have some personal experience and interest, that receive the most thorough elucidation and discussion. For his part, the instructor does a good job of identifying what doesn’t click with us naturally, and stops to spend extra time on those topics that we need to be encouraged to take some interest in.
It’s perpetually astonishing to me how useful seemingly unrelated classes can be to each other. My current reading for my upcoming English class (English Literature 2 – Romantic through 20th Century) has been especially so for my History class, since they cover much of the same ground. When I read about how the Founding Fathers were influenced by the Enlightenment, I know, thanks to having read works from the Enlightenment, what that really means.
Posted in Non-Fiction | Tagged history, john stuart mill
By jordan on June 9, 2008
I just got The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus for my birthday (thanks Mom). Gomes reminds me a lot of C.S. Lewis in that he addresses a popular audience from a scholarly background, and does so eloquently and with literary skill. He is also apt to scatter his writing with rather quotable constructs.
Inner strength comes from the sure conviction that God has placed us in this world to do the work of life, and not of death. (pg101)
He also frequently makes reference to other’s works. One, so far, has stood out to me particularly. From page 100:
In one of his great poems,”Choruses from The Rock,” T.S. Eliot asks,”Why should men love the Church?” This is his answer:
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they would like
to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constanly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good…
I’m doing all of my reading for Eng 206 — which I’ll be taking in the Fall — right now so I can pursue my own studies in the class when it comes around. Eng 206 is English Literature 2, and much of what I’m reading for the class has been eerily consistent with my own reading on the side. I recently read Eliot’s The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In a general sense, I’m not surprised at the fact that old works can still be relevant today. When I encounter a particular instance of the fact, however, I never fail to be caught off guard.
Posted in Non-Fiction | Tagged jesus, peter j gomes, Religion
