Fire In Mine Ears

Denver, or Real Notes from the Rocky Mountains

2011-11-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

I can now justify the subtitle of this blog. I've been to them. They're big. They're rocky. They look great with Aspens turning into splotches of gold along their crests. And these big fellas call them home:

Yes, that's me, being wooed by an elk. He proceeded to chase after me for a few paces, and I was afraid he'd taken our little dalliance for a serious romance. I shooed him off to the elk lady herd, but they ignored him. Bad personality, I guess.

All I heard before I moved to Denver was exclamations of "Mountains! Mountains!" and while I'll admit that their grandeur is ever-new, and that I'll miss them when they're no longer part of my morning commute, my heart is always drawn back to the woods of my Midwest home. I know that it's probably wet and slightly humid and mostly nasty in Ohio right now, but it's snowy and chilly and dry in Colorado. You can always find something to complain about.

And Denver, for all of the hype, really isn't that great. In fact, compared to Cincinnati, it's a dud. I like cities of all shapes and sizes: big, small, showy, understated, artsy, business-like. But Denver doesn't really have much of anything to recommend itself. No lovely river running through the downtown. No historic buildings. No art museums filled with Old Masters to enjoy on a rainy day. No hole-in-the-wall Shakespeare theaters. Yes, the Capitol building has a gold dome and its steps are "One Mile Above Sea Level." The mountains are much more than one mile above sea level. Skip Denver and go to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Admittedly, I haven't tried the Denver restaurant scene. Maybe I'm just waiting for a Colorado steak to knock me off my feet. But I doubt it.

Of course, my view of Denver might be skewed because the day of my visit was, unbeknownst to me, both Zombie Walk day and another day for Occupy Denver. The city center in front of the capitol building had become a hippie commune periodically traversed by blood-sucking zombies screaming at little children. I felt like I was going to get fleas and tried desperately to avoid getting handed a sticker, button, flier, or other piece of contaminated protester merchandise.

I guess not long afterwards both Michael Moore and President Obama visited the city. I'm just glad I wasn't there for that.

I kept puzzling over the protesters' signs. I couldn't quite figure out their angle. Was it banks they were protesting? Rich people? Poverty? Government? Further reflection and research hasn't clarified it for me very much. I'm still confused as to exactly who this 1% is and what they've done. I hoped I didn't look like a 1%-er, but since I couldn't decipher from the signs what the characteristics of that demographic are (other than not being in danger of fleas and not camping in downtown Denver), I couldn't know.

I just told my roommate that I liked seeing police everywhere. Handguns make me feel comfortable, somehow.

At the end of the day, I was glad to return to my small suburb, to my insulated townhouse, to my private-Christian-school-teacher life. I'm glad to watch the mountains from a distance. A walk on the wild side is fun only if you have a boring side to go back to.

Orthodoxy, Two Years Later

2011-09-17T15:25:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts I wrote last weekend about church...

I'm approaching my two-year anniversary of attending an Orthodox church. This coming Pascha will be my third as an Orthodox Christian. And so, this Sunday, while I was standing in the choir loft at the third Orthodox church where I've been a regular parishioner, I started to look back, not in nostalgia, but out of curiosity. Why? Why did I abandon everything that I had previously known about church and take a chance on what seemed from the outside a social club for Greeks and Russians?

I remembered how I used to feel during liturgy. During my first few months in the Orthodox church, each service transported me. I could almost physically feel as we ascended into heaven, could almost hear the choir of angels singing. Many Sundays brought me to tears. When I was a catechumen, I watched Orthodox Christians communing with a mixture of the deepest longing and envy. I wanted to be with them, to stand in line and sense the mystical presence of Christ as I partook of His divine body and blood. I was sure that if I felt transported, they must feel positively otherworldly.

These days, most Sundays are a rush for me -- last-minute reminder notes to pray Pre-Communion Prayers the night before, a longing glance at the coffee maker before I hop in the car, screeching into the parking lot at one minute 'till, and then the endless round of mistakes and confusion that is church choir. I'm always glad I'm there, and if I'm not, I feel rather hollow inside, but when I'm at liturgy, I don't feel transported or otherworldly. I'm just me -- tired, worried, distracted me.

The music doesn't take me aback with its unusual chords and rhythms any longer, nor do I smell the incense in the air with surprise, as I once did. It's all usual, normal, routine: the icons and the chants and the incense and the prayers. Every motion of the service has become familiar, as regular and comfortable as petting the dog when I come home from work.

Staring at the large icon of the Theotokos that graces the wall above our altar, I wondered if I had been wrong about Orthodoxy. I converted, in part, because of the otherworldliness, the unfamiliarity. I felt that it kept me fervent, kept me fresh at prayer. And there was a certainly a sense in which that was true during my first year or so as an Orthodox. But no longer. Orthodoxy doesn't feel unfamiliar anymore. I'm not so confused during services that I'm kept in a perpetual state of intense, fervent prayer that I won't mess up. Nowadays, I struggle against yawns and aching knees like the rest of the congregation. My prayers are routine now, and on a night when I'm tired and distracted, my prayer rule can be nothing more than rote, a habit that I practice without even thinking about it.

Even standing in church, I'm willing to consider that I was wrong, that maybe the reasons that compelled me into the church were no longer enough to justify my continued life in it.

So, as we approached the Anaphora, I tried to imagine my life without the Orthodox Church, that two years ago I had blithely continued attending the Protestant churches of my childhood, that nothing had ever changed.

And suddenly I felt a tug on my heart that was almost physical, as though a plant that had begun to take root had been given an unexpected jerk. I realized that our prayers, our icons, and our hymns might have become familiar to me, but they had become familiar in the way that a home is familiar, in the way that your family is familiar to you. Moments with those closest to you are rarely bathed in a celestial light. You bicker, you tease, you're grumpy and annoyed and frustrated most days. But the love between you is so strong that if it breaks, you bleed inwardly.

In these past two years, the Church has become my home, my food, my sustenance. When I'm away from home, church becomes my haven, the balm for my homesick soul. Divine Liturgy gets me through the work week. Eucharist gives me patience and resilience I'd never have otherwise. And I don't have to come as a fervent convert, wide-eyed and passionate, in order to receive that spiritual food. It's there, whether I come worthy of it or not. I don't make the spiritual experience with my fervor; it washes over me, the real presence of Christ invading my bones until the thought of doing without it is like imaging the death of a loved one -- painful, even in the mind.

The choir began singing the communion hymn, Receive the Body of Christ, Taste the Fountain of Immortality. Our director had chosen my favorite setting, and it was like a small gift to me as I joined the communion line. With my hands crossed over my chest, I sung along, slowly, quietly, fighting congestion from the last week and exhaustion from lesson planning the night before. I didn't hear any angels -- only warbling old-lady sopranos enjoying the hymn. Nor did a cloud of incense carry me to the heavens. I don't think I have a halo yet, and if you talk to me on Monday, you won't find me any less anxiety-ridden than usual.

But I was home. And as I ate from the communion spoon, I was no longer alone.

"O brave new world, that hath such people in it" [Out West. Playing Teacher Lady.]

2011-09-07T01:25:00.003-04:00

So... I moved.

I'm sitting in my new house in the grand state of Colorado right now, writing a blog post when I really should be going to bed. I have to wake up at what seems like the crack of dawn (to a night-owl like me) in order to meet with students before I begin another long day of teaching.

Yep, I have a new career. I now spend all day playing with, scolding, and just generally trying to learn with thirteen 6th graders.

How did this come about, you ask? So unexpectedly that I can't really explain. One day, I was working an office job in Ohio, and less than two weeks later I was signing a teaching contract. I'm still getting over the shock.

In between, I also did a lot of other things...

1) Went to Europe again. (It'd be embarrassing if it weren't so much fun.)
2) Became a godmother. (And, yes, my godson's pretty much the most adorable kid on the planet.)
3) *Finally* saw Harry Potter 7 Part 2, and embarrassed my teenage brother by bawling my way through most of the movie.
4) Drove through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. (The first three all look the same. Kansas, on the other, is interminable, but beautiful -- if it's possible for a place to be both at the same time.)

And then I found myself staring up at these great big rocks called mountains. I still wake up every day in shock that they're still there.

(Yes, they actually look like that.)

Thus far, I'm enjoying the West, though I think I'm really an Easterner at heart. People out here are almost too casual for me -- all of sudden every waiter/cashier/bank teller is my best friend and confidante. I'm always a bit surprised by how much they tell me about themselves and the frustrations of this particular day, but as a writer, I can't complain. As Flannery O'Connor says, "The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention."Except here, I don't even need to stare.

As for the change in weather -- I have a brand new appreciation for rain. When I went back to Ohio for Labor Day, there was a huge thunderstorm that left over 2,000 people in my city without power for over 24 hours. And I sat in front of our windows and absolutely reveled in it. If my mom had let me, I'd have played in it. I haven't seen that much water since I moved to Colorado. It makes me feel thirsty just thinking about it.

I've done all the obligatory new-to-dry-climate things: gotten headaches from the altitude, had huge allergy attacks from the new flora, almost fainted from dehydration. I'm so sick of drinking from my water bottle, and I've never used this much chapstick in my life. Living here gives a whole new meaning to the Biblical phrase "a dry and weary land."

But playing teacher-lady every day is fun. I already wear my hair in a bun, wear glasses, and like apples, so I guess it was an obvious career choice. I'm afraid I'm a bit too much of a kid for my job, though -- I enjoy reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer almost as much as they do, and anyone who walks past my classroom and listens to me reading out dialogue in a Southern accent might mistake our class time for play-time.

Besides, reading student compositions is its own reward. If you've ever read a 6th grader's thoughts on the paragraph, you know why I'm laughing right now.

And now that I'm settled and becoming accustomed to living in the Wild West, you can expect regularly scheduled programming resume. Not that this blog has ever been particularly regular. But you can hope.

Monday Miracles [W]

2011-05-23T22:30:00.001-04:00

Yes, at this rate we'll finish the Alphabet by Christmas.

Anyways, today is Monday, and we all know about Mondays. Even though I overslept, I made it into the office (eventually) and got everything on my to-do list done. [Let me clarify -- everything on the work to-do list. There are still piles of dirty laundry on my floor.] And when I finished the workday, I thought to myself, "It's a miracle I got all that done today."

Do you ever think about how flippantly we use the word 'miracle'? Once it was used for miraculous occurrences in the Bible, like the five loaves and two fish that fed 5,000 people. Now I use it for an unusually productive day.

Or for Billy Crystal in a wig.

Incidentally, my mother calls Miracle Max my alter-ego, which might mean I'm a saintly miracle-worker or might mean I'm a fraud. You choose.

Here's where T.H. White, our author for "W," comes in. White was a British novelist whose most famous work, The Once and Future King, was published in four sections between 1938 and 1958. He was reportedly a bit of an odd duck; he once quit his job as a teacher and lived in an abandoned workman's hut in the forest, hunting and fishing and becoming positively "feral," according to his autobiography. [Sounds like Miracle Max, really.]

Oddball or not, White was a genius, though he's not always recognized as such. Many people know the first novel in his Arthurian quartet, The Sword in the Stone, from the Disney movie, but don't judge the book by its adaptation. White has quirky sense of humor, an unerring sense of narrative, and a taste for epic tragedy, not to mention an elegant prose style. Once and Future King is a big book, but you won't regret a page of it.

There are many passages in the novel that I love, but one of my favorites -- one of my favorite passages in any novel -- comes when White writes about Lancelot healing a wounded, dying knight. Leading up to the moment where he puts his hands on the knight's wounds to attempt a miracle, Lancelot is filled with fear and embarrassment. He knows that his affair with Guinevere keeps him from truly being the "most pure" of King Arthur's knights, the knight who purity was reported to have healing powers. White describes everything up the moment that Lancelot stretches out his hands to heal the knight's huge head gash, and then the perspective switches to Guinevere:

Guenever, who was watching from her pavilion like a hawk, saw the two men fumbling together. Then she saw a movement in the people near, and a mutter came, and yells. Gentlemen began throwing their caps about, and shouting, and shaking hands. Arthur was crying the same words again and again, holding gruff Gawaine by the elbow and putting them into his ear. "It shut like a box! It shut like a box!" Some elderly knights were dancing around, banging their shields together as if they were playing Pease Pudding Hot, and poking each other in the ribs. Many of the squires were laughing like madmen and slapping each other on the back.....All the field, and all the people in the field, and all the towers of the castle, seemed to be jumping up and down like the surface of a lake under rain.

In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle.

For me, this passage perfectly encapsulates what a 'miracle' really is. It's a moment of unexpected mercy, something that we did not deserve breaking into our disordered lives. White somehow takes the epic of Arthur and captures this truth of our ordinary lives: that sometimes, in spite of ourselves and usually when we're at our very worst, we experience an unlooked-for grace, or even find ourselves the means of giving that grace to someone else. And the real miracle is not the event -- the money or the physical healing or the safe passage through a dangerous situation. It is that we, even with our faults, received it or were allowed to participate in it. In some sense, we are all Lancelot, humbled by the wonders that show themselves to us when we are the least worthy of them.

Really, a miracle doesn't just give us something that we want. It humbles us. It puts us in our place. We get a glimpse of our true place in the world -- how small we are, how weak we are, how much miraculous help we really need.

When I think about it that way, this isn't a word we should trifle with. We should save it for the most important moments -- those moments of profound insight when we realize that, whatever we thought we understood before, we knew nothing.

I'd give you more from Once and Future King -- the ending is particularly poignant -- but I won't spoil it for you. If you haven't read it, add it to your list, and if you have, pull it out and re-read some of your favorite passages. It's the perfect ending to a long day.

Happy Monday!

Better [Very] Late Than Never [V]

2011-05-17T13:37:00.000-04:00

I never finished my A-Z of authors, so I'm going to now. [If you're new to my blog and have no idea what I'm talking about, start here.] It may be halfway through the month of May, but here in Ohio the weather is like April -- wet and cruelly cold. So I think it still counts.

Originally I had thought about writing this post on Voltaire -- something about "tending your own garden" and other Enlightenment phrases that sound nice but aren't really helpful. But then I went to Europe and, while I was on airplanes and trains and subways, I read two other authors whose middle names start with a V and who have nothing else in common. So you'll get something more enjoyable, and more disjointed, than ornamental 17th century gardens today.

It would probably be more artistic to begin this post with a lovely description of me reading essays in a cafe in Paris, but I didn't read in the cafes in Paris, and I'm nothing if not honest. It was too noisy and too dirty in the city, and by the time I actually sat down to eat, I was exhausted. My time in Paris was distinctly un-literary. In fact, I didn't even get my picture in front of that famous landmark, Shakespeare and Company, because I wore the wrong shoes that day and my feet hurt so badly that I had to shuffle around Notre Dame Cathedral (which is noisy and embarrassing). I know I've missed an essential experience in my literary life, but I had to put my feet first.

[Also, can I be heretical for a moment and wonder what is the point of an English language bookstore in Paris? I see the practical necessity, but still -- I'll go to London or New York for my English bookstores, thank you.]

Instead, this post begins in the Chicago airport, the new international terminal that has the worst food court of any international terminal I've been in. While I was eating my mediocre Reuben sandwich, I pulled a book at random out of my over-heavy bag to read and distract me from my lunch. I always pack too many books when I travel -- they're like a safety blanket, albeit one that could crush me in an emergency -- and I always regret it by the time I get to the airport and I actually have to carry the bag around. The book I pulled out was one by an author I knew nothing about, a book I won in a contest: Making Waves: Essays by Mario Vargas Llosa [I highlighted the V in case you missed it and thought I was cheating]. I didn't know what the book was about or who the author was, so I figured it would be good to have around in case I got bored and wanted something completely different.

I started with the introduction, because I'm one of those people -- the ones who read the preface and the introduction and the acknowledgements first. It's a bit OCD, I know, but sometimes the acknowledgements page is my favorite part of the book, and I wouldn't want to miss it.

Rarely, however, do I find such a gem in the prefatory matter as this quote. I still know little about Vargas Llosa -- other than what I learned about his Peruvian childhood in the collection's first essay "The Country of a Thousand Faces" -- but rarely have I read a quote that so perfectly encapsulates the literary life, whether it's as a reader, writer, or teacher of literature.

Because literature is a passion and passion is exclusive .... Hemingway is in a cafe and by his side there is a young woman. He thinks: 'You belong to me and Paris belongs to me but I belong to this notebook and pencil.' That is exactly what slavery means. The condition of a writer is strange and paradoxical. His privilege is freedom, the right to see, hear and investigate everything...What is the purpose of this privilege? To feed the beast within, which enslaves him, which feeds off all his acts, tortures him mercilessly and is only appeased, momentarily, in the act of creation. (p. xv)

It's a bit of a dark picture, to be sure, but it reminded me of something my friend Gabi at Iggi and Gabi said during DIY MFA about writer's block: "Writer need to write, and when they're not writing, they hurt." Vargas Llosa understands this hurt as the writer's enslavement to writing, but I think it's equally true of other aspects of a literary life. Readers also need to read, and English teachers must teach. Unlike some jobs that you do because practical circumstances force you to, you choose a literary life because something inside you forces you to -- sometimes, whether you want to or not.

****

I experience a similar, but less serious and more expensive, enslavement when I'm at a bookstore or book fair. When I see all of those books, I simply must buy some, even if my suitcase is already too heavy and I'm going to have to buy another one just for books. That's how, even though I already had too many books to carry, I ended up with a new suitcase and H.V. Morton's 1920s travelogue, In Search of England when I left the UK. I knew even less about this book when I bought it than I new about Vargas Llosa when I won his essay collection -- at least I knew that Mario Vargas Llosa was a famous name, whereas I had never heard of H.V. Morton. But I liked the title, and the book only cost 3 British pounds -- which is almost $6, but I ignored that and bought it at the Oxford street market anyway.

Some people are lucky at cards, others are lucky in love, but I have the best luck of all -- luck in books. It turns out that H.V.[standing for the horrible middle name "Vollam"-- no wonder he used the initial] Morton is a classic travel writer [read more here], which I didn't need Wikipedia to tell me because the prose spoke for itself. Morton is clever, humorous, and insightful by turns, and his prose is elegant and very 1920s without being too dated. He begins his story of his journeys around England as a sick (and homesick) journalist stranded in Jerusalem, where he makes a vow:

I was humiliated, mourning there above Jerusalem, to realize how little I knew about England. I was shamed to think that I had wandered so far and so often over the world neglecting those lovely things near at home, feeling that England would always be there whenever I wanted to see her; and at that moment how far away she seemed, how unattainable! I took a vow that if my pain in the neck did not end for ever on the windy hills of Palestine I would go home in search of England, I would go through the lanes of England and the little thatched villages of England, and I would lean over English bridges and lie on English grass, watching an English sky.

Quite surprisingly, I recovered. It was the only religious moment I experienced in Jerusalem. I mention this because all journeys should have a soul. (pgs. 2-3)

If that quote doesn't have you hunting for a used copy of this book, I don't know what would. I can't say that I experienced a similar feeling of homesickness in Europe for Ohio, but I know what it means to want to know a place that way -- to experience every inch of it, to soak it in through your skin. In fact, that's what I set about doing for those two weeks I was in Europe. If I experienced any sense of homesickness, it was for my old home in England, on the coast in Portsmouth, or for London, the city I spent half of my sophomore year of high school walking around on the weekends.

But...I'll save those thoughts for another post.

European Abduction (Or, what happened to me the past two weeks)

2011-05-10T17:01:00.000-04:00

So, I disappeared -- for longer than even I was bargaining for. My title is just for show; I wasn't abducted. I just went to Europe and discovered that wireless internet access is a lot harder to find in the rest of the world.

You see, I'd had this trip to France with my mom planned for the past several months, but once we were in France, we extended the trip to England for a few days in Oxford, and then for a few in London. It just snowballed until it was a bloated, expensive, completely worthwhile trip. In the end, I was gone for two weeks instead of one week, and gone from my blog for two weeks when I hadn't planned any sort of break at all.

Yes, I have lots of stories and pictures that will be fodder for this blog for the next week or so, at least. You would not believe the crazy things you can see in a French train station.

Right now I'm just concentrating on recovering from jet-lag, which is harder the older I get. When I was 16, the cross-Atlantic flight felt like nothing, but now it resembles being run over by a Mac truck. If something's incoherent, I apologize. I'm still on UK time, which means I think it's 9:45 at night, not 4:45 in the afternoon.

I hadn't originally planned to be missing from my blog. I assumed I could write some blog posts in the airport and then schedule them to post. Airports have wifi, right? Surely Chicago airport, where I had a three-hour layover two weeks ago. Of course.

Nope. Not unless you'd like to fork over $6 for a half-hour, which just didn't seem worth it to me. I love you all, but I'd like to think that you'd do the same.

Anyways, I'm back, and you can expect regularly scheduled programming to resume as soon as I'm on my regular schedule. That will be tomorrow, because I do have a *cough* day job, and I can't sleep off my vacation all week...

Why you shouldn't read John Updike, or Kiernan's Most Embarrassing Literary Story [U]

2011-04-25T18:28:00.000-04:00

After a weekend of midnight prayer services and psalm chanting, of singing until I'm hoarse and eating until I'm stuffed, I'm back. We're on the home stretch of the A to Z Challenge, which means we're down to the really difficult letters: U-Z. How many authors can you think of whose names begin with Z? How about X?

Yeah. Me neither.

Still, I've managed to scrape something together -- not always something profound, but tidbits nonetheless. Today, I have lots of little pieces of nothing, which I suppose is in keeping with the title of my blog. It comes from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, after all. So today, let's make a big deal about some small things.

*****

First, I have been remiss. The wonderful Sylvia Van Bruggen of Word Doodles gave me the One Lovely Blog Award last week, though I am just now getting around to posting it.

I believe that I am supposed to bestow this award on 21 other bloggers. Since this award looks quite feminine, I thought I'd restrict myself to female bloggers. Do visit them all!

The Art in Life
Glimpsing Grace
TwentyTwenty
Archipelago of Joy
A Mad Tea Party
A Silver Cord
Ankle Cemetery
Coffee and Details
The Door in Thy Wall
The Priscilla Home
Mist of the Blossom Rain
Lest I Forget...
It's the World, Dear
Edinburgh Daily Photo
Dirt Poor Chic
Chick in an Egg
Penny Dreadfuls
Roosje: Little Rose
Sibling Revelries
Praying With My Feet
Frohock's Law

Thanks, Sylvia!

****

"U" just isn't a common letter in names. The only commonly-known "U" names I could think of were Ursula (from Latin) and the last name Unger (from German). You know that a letter is rare when the baby name book gives you "Uzziah" and "Uriel."

In American fiction, "U" is synonymous with one man: John Updike. This giant of the modern literary scene died while I was in college, and my writing teacher gave him a lovely little in-class eulogy. One of the craziest English professors at my college taught a class on him, and I still remember some of my friends blushing with embarrassment at the novels they read for homework. The class's title was something about the Christian theology in Updike's book, and I think the title of the class, contrasted with my friends' response, demonstrates how controversial Updike was, with his odd mixture of theology and sensuality.

I can't offer you any wise thoughts on this contradiction, however, because I've only ever read one piece of writing by John Updike. It's so short I'll quote it right here. It's from the short story called "In Football Season" [Google the title to find a free online copy.]

Do you remember a fragrance girls acquire in autumn? As you walk beside them after school, they tighten their arms about their books, bend their heads forward to give a more flattering attention to your words, and in the little intimate area thus formed, carved into the clear air by an implicit crescent, there is a complex fragrance woven of tobacco, powder, lipstick, rinsed hair, and that perhaps imaginary and certainly elusive scent that wool, whether in the lapels of a jacket or the nap of a sweater, seems to yield when the cloudless fall sky like the blue bell of a vacuum lifts toward itself the glad exhalations of all things. This fragrance, so faint and flirtatious on those afternoon walks through the dry leaves, would be banked a thousand-fold on the dark slope of the stadium when, Friday nights, we played football in the city.

When I read this quote, I had no idea that it was by John Updike. In fact, it arrived in my inbox in an untitled email from a literary friend of mine.

Now, it's important to this story that you know more about this friend. He's one of the nicest people I know, and he's always sending bits and pieces of his own writing -- essays, poems -- to read and comment on. They're often quite good, but I try to always respond with some sort of constructive criticism. He often sends them in precisely that sort of email -- an untitled one, with no introduction, explanation, or note from him. Just the text he wants me to read and comment on.

So, one Friday evening at around 11 p.m., this friend sent me an untitled email. In it was this little paragraph about young women in the Fall near a football stadium. It sounded as though it were from a creative essay of some sort. And, since it was Fall in Michigan, and football season had just ended, and the paragraph seemed to describe something that had happened just recently, I assumed that my friend had written it.

When you think about it, that's probably the biggest compliment I've ever paid him.

I was the Editor-in-Chief of the student literary magazine that Fall, and I knew that this friend was trying to get something ready for the deadline. So I did what I would have done normally. I edited the paragraph.

Yes. I edited John Updike.

My roommate, who's a poet, was sitting next to me on the couch, and I remarked to her, "This isn't perfect, but it's showing great promise." I read it aloud to her, and she agreed. [See? I wasn't alone in my assumption.]

So I sent my comments, and my friend replied with a stunned, "Um. I didn't write this. This is John Updike." And I felt more ludicrous than I have in my entire life.

I'm not sure what this story proves -- that I'm the biggest fraud you've ever seen or that John Updike isn't all he's cracked up to be. Of course, I'd love to believe that it's the latter, that Updike is the fraud and not me. But I don't really think it's either. To be honest, I stand by some of my comments on the passage -- there are some confusing phrases, some wordy phrases, some phrases that break the flow of the rest of the sentence. They're not glaring faults, but they are there. And seeing them reminds me of an important truth:

No writer is perfect. No writer is flawless. Everybody -- even John Updike -- could use more editing.

So, perhaps the moral of this story is to write, even though you think it may never be as good as Hawthorne or Melville or Hemingway or Updike. Even they had their faults. In fact, they wrote good books -- great books, even -- that were still flawed. You're not setting out to write a flawless book, just to write your very best -- to tell your story as well as you can, to fight with your sentences until they say something close to what you want them to say.

Or maybe this is the moral: Don't offer suggestions for improvement until they're specifically asked for. It's been my policy since then. Mostly.

****

This video has nothing to do with this post, other than that today is Bright Monday (the day after Orthodox Pascha), and so I simply must post my favorite Serbian Pascha song. You don't have to be Orthodox, or even a Christian, to enjoy this:

PASCHA!

2011-04-24T00:00:00.007-04:00

Christ is Risen!

Indeed He is Risen!

Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered! Let those who hate him flee from before his face!
(Paschal Troparion)

Defying Death [Holy Saturday]

2011-04-23T12:00:00.005-04:00

The angel standing by the grave cried out to the women: Myrrh is proper for the dead, but Christ has shown himself a stranger to corruption.

~from the Liturgy for Holy Saturday

Alfred, Lord Tennyson considered this poem the greatest of his works, and at his request it always appears last in collections of his works. The poem tells about a passenger taking his final journey in a boat, about which Tennyson wrote, "The Pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him." In the poem, the passenger, perhaps Tennyson himself, tries to see better, clearer, with a more sure faith in the Pilot.

Similarly, Holy Saturday is our attempt to see beyond the grave, through the darkness, to catch a glimpse of Christ's face beneath the shroud. It is the most defiant act of hope in the church week. Liturgy on Holy Saturday proclaims that though we die, we live.

Thus, I think Crossing the Bar suitable for today's moment of breathless anticipation.

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

The Tomb [Holy Friday]

2011-04-22T12:00:00.011-04:00

The noble Joseph, when he had taken down your most pure body from the tree, wrapped it in fine linen, and anointed it with spices, and placed it in a new tomb.

~Troparion for Holy Friday

"S" could only be for Shakespeare. If you don't know how much I love this poet, then read the tab "The Blog's Title."

The Bard didn't write a poem for Good Friday, but I think this oft-quoted section of The Merchant of Venice is fitting.

The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show like God's

When mercy seasons justice.

Groaning for Resurrection [Holy Thursday]

2011-04-21T11:55:00.003-04:00

It's today that Holy Week begins in earnest. Last night, in Orthodox churches, we prayed an evening service to prepare us for today, Holy Thursday, the day that Christ instituted the Last Supper. This evening, we'll celebrate liturgy. And then the journey to the resurrection begins. It's a beautiful journey, but it walks through a graveyard first.

I'll be absent from the comments for the next several days, but I'm going to continue posting a few poems (from authors following the A to Z scheme) as meditations on Holy Week and Easter.

Blessings!

For "R," Christina Rosetti.

A BETTER RESURRECTION

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

The [Q]ueen of Fiction

2011-04-20T12:17:00.000-04:00

Have you all been wondering what writer I would choose for "Q"?

So have I.

With the letter Q, author names go from few to nonexistent, so I had to search further afield. Other A-to-Z Challenge Bloggers chose some of the rare "Q" words in English -- Query, Quickly, Quiet, Queenly. But I had limited myself not just to words, but to writers.

And so I asked myself, "Who is the Queen of English Literature?"

The answer was obvious.

Did she not patronize Shakespeare? Did she not inspire an entire age in English literature? Is not Elizabeth English the most immediate predecessor of modern English? And was she not a poet in her own right?

Not many people know of Queen Elizabeth as a patron of the arts and a writer herself -- she's usually associated with the Spanish Armada, her notoriety as the 'Virgin Queen,' and the age of exploration. But we don't call that period in English Literature "Elizabethan" for nothing. Not only did Elizabeth's religious policies calm the turbulent church politics of the day, providing a more stable political climate, but her patronage of the arts sparked a Golden Age for English language and culture. Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson all performed before her. Sir Francis Drake pilfered from "the Spanish Main" for her. Sir Walter Raleigh explored the world for her, and then covered London puddles with his cloak for her to walk over. Thomas Campion and William Byrd composed for her. And it's no coincidence that we have so many paintings of her -- her court was chock-full of artists.

She even found time to pen a few lines of poetry herself, not the mention her letters, speeches, written prayers, and translations from Latin. I doubt that Queen Elizabeth could have inspired her artists without at least dabbling in writing herself -- to truly appreciate the arts, you have to have some experience, however little, of creating them as well. None of her poetry is anything too profound, but that's why they're delightful. Take, for example, this poem, thought to be written by a young, flirty Princess Elizabeth:

When I was fair and young then favour graced me;
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore,
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe;
How many sighing hearts I have no skill to show;
Yet I the prouder grew, and answered them therefore,
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

Then spake fair Venus' son, that proud victorious boy,
And said, you dainty dame, since that you be so coy,
I will so pluck your plumes that you shall say no more
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

When he had spake these words such change grew in my breast,
That neither night nor day I could take any rest.
Then, lo! I did repent, that I had said before
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

[The biographical implications of this poem for the never-married 'Virgin Queen' are tantalizing to scholars, of course. Pity they can't prove for sure that she wrote it.]

But the Queen was not frivolous, however delightful her sense of humor. Read this selection from her famous "Speech to the Troops at Tilbury," as her army was mustered to defend England against the Spanish Armada.

Let tyrants fear; I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

The original "I am woman, hear me roar," except the phrase "the heart and stomach of a king" is much more poetic than Helen Reddy's.

If you'd like to read more of the Queen's writings, try this online anthology at Luminarium. And then give me your thoughts -- What is the relation between politics and literature? How should political figures support the arts? Do we have a thriving arts culture in America, as in Elizabethan England, or not?

Put A Little Gothic in Your Day [Edgar Allan Poe]

2011-04-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

When you start to list authors by the alphabet, you're surprised at what you find.

For example, I knew that "S" would be popular. Shakespeare alone ensures that literary people want their last names to begin with an "S."

But I thought "N" might be a bit more fashionable. It's such a sleek-looking letter, after all. "U," as expected, has very few literary associations. But "P"? This letter of the alphabet has been surprisingly prolific:

- Plato
- Chaim Potok
- Eleanor H. Porter (Polyanna)
- Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit) [Speaking of whom, have you seen the movie Miss Potter?]
- Petrarch
- Alexander Pope
- Aleksandr Pushkin

And that's only a few.

But for Americans, there's only one author whose name begins with a "P":

Edgar Allan Poe

We've all read his poetry about bells and Annabels and ravens. We've all heard tales, rumors really, about him -- his mysterious marriage to a teenage cousin, his poverty, his interest in cryptology, his bad health and tragic death. Poe is the inventor of the American Gothic, but his greatest short story is his own puzzling biography.

That's not to belittle his short stories and poetry, however. If you've read early Gothic, you'll realize how much darker and more terrifying Poe is than the first hacks who dashed off stories of mad wives and brooding castles. When Gothic literature started out, it was overly melodramatic and filled with wildly unbelievable plot devices. But in Poe's hands, those same elements are drained of their sensationalism and become terrifying. Each short story is like a dark, amorphous shadow at the window -- you don't know what it is, and that's why you're so frightened. I've spent several hours in class discussing the meaning of stories like Ligeia and The Tell-Tale Heart, but even when I feel certain that I've pinned the story down, I still feel a sneaking suspicion that Poe has slipped through my fingers again. Even when I think I know what the shadow is, I'm still scared.

So on this rainy, thundering day [at least, here in the Midwest we've got thunder], take a side of Gothic with your sandwich for lunch. Just reading this Wikipedia biography of Poe will be sufficient to give you the spooks. If you want real chills up your spine, read (or, more likely, re-read) The Tell-Tale Heart. You'll hear a sound beneath the floorboards for hours after. And if you're quite brave, read Ligeia, one of Poe's lesser-known stories about a man who remarries after the death of his first wife. I wish I could tell you what that story is about, but I can't. Read and be amazed.

And for those with sensitive stomachs and a love of endings with a solution instead of a mystery, read The Purloined Letter. The versatile Poe has the distinction of being the founder of the Mystery genre, as well as one of America's greatest Gothic writers, and C. Auguste Dupin is not only the first, but one of the cleverest and most charming, of the unusual sleuths that populate mystery literature.

Then tell me in the comments -- What's your favorite mystery? Favorite Gothic novel? Favorite Poe poem or story?

Reading for Busy People [O'Henry]

2011-04-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

If you're Eastern Orthodox, Easter is a week-long affair. We're in church almost every day of the week, usually several times -- Monday and Tuesday are slow days, because there's only one service a day.

This means that this week, between work and church, I'm a little swamped.

Still, I didn't title this post "Over and Out." I'm not a quitter. And besides, even during the busiest of weeks, there's time to read.

So stop here this week for the Book Review version of Flash Fiction -- something to read, hopefully something short, and a quick reason to read it.

Today, we're on letter "O." This could stand for Ovid, George Orwell, or Baronness Orczy. But we don't have time for them today (sadly enough). We do have time for...

O. Henry

(Doesn't he look so jaunty?)

We've discussed short stories in DIY MFA lately, so they're on my mind.

His name wasn't really "O. Henry" -- it was William Sidney Porter, which is a much more turn-of-the-century, American-businessman sounding name. His parents didn't know to give him a literary name, but he was a good enough writer to give one to himself.

My favorite O. Henry is everyone's favorite -- "The Gift of the Magi," the story of a penniless couple (who always make me think of my many young-married friends) who sacrifice their greatest treasures to buy each other Christmas presents. This story showcases O. Henry's greatest talent: the humorous, delightful, hopeful surprise ending. It's easy to do a surprise ending that beats your characters up. After all, it doesn't take too much imagination to think of tragic coincidences -- we've all had them happen. But to think of a realistic way to pleasantly surprise your characters? That's for the really talented writer. And if you want to learn how to do that, read O. Henry.

I'm sure you've already read "The Gift of the Magi," so today during your lunch break, read "A Retrieved Reformation." It's an intricately-plotted and sparely-told story of a crook who wants to change his ways. Think of it as the American version of Les Miserables -- short, sweet, and happy, instead of long, melodramatic, and bittersweet.

Oh, and with a professional criminal from a New York gang instead of a man driven to theft by hunger. Who says we're not better than the French?

The Woman in Red [Nathaniel Hawthorne]

2011-04-16T19:09:00.002-04:00

[NOTE: For readers of my post on Jane Austen earlier this week, check out Bethany Saunder's blog for some great thoughts on Fanny Price!]

I mentioned last week that Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of my favorite American writers, so don't tell me you weren't expecting him to show up at letter "N."

Everyone seems to have at least heard of, if not read, Nathaniel Hawthorne's greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter. Even today, a "scarlet letter" or a red "A" is a popular idiom for social stigmatization -- witness the recent film called Easy A, a title which plays on the cloth symbol of adultery that Hester Prynne wears. [Note: I did not see and so do not recommend this movie.] Otherwise, however, The Scarlet Letter is known for little else, except its negative portrait of Puritan Boston. It's one of those books that everyone has heard of, and no one likes to read.

This is a shame, because the novel is both an engaging story and a literary masterpiece, and to know it solely for its portrayal of the Puritans is to reduce it to a school textbook. Sadly, that's becoming the fate of many Classic books. As with The Great Gatbsy, I wonder if in our zeal to educate our children, we make them so familiar with the Classics that they become numb to them, unable to appreciate the depths of the story because they've heard its basic plot points repeated too many times.

It's time for a Hawthorne revival, too, because he's one of the literary predecessors of the recent outpouring of paranormal romance in popular fiction. We may associate his novel with repressive Puritans, public humiliation, and prejudice, but it's also a story of fairies, devils, brooding weather, forbidden love, and strange revelations. Hester Prynne's daughter, Pearl, is the grandmother of all the elf-children and preternaturally-gifted offspring in contemporary paranormal fiction, such as Stephanie Meyer's Renesmee.

For those of you not familiar with the story, it's the tale of Hester Prynne, an adulteress living in colonial Boston. She refuses to name her lover after she is discovered pregnant, and so, to shame her into speaking, the Puritan authorities command that she wear a red letter "A" sewn into her dress at all times. Their attempt to force her confession fails, but the stage is set for Hawthorne's drama.

The novel's plot is slow and meandering, so some readers lose interest early in the story. Keep going, however, so that you can see how Hawthorne weaves together the lives of a few members of the village: Hester; her wild daughter, Pearl; the old apothecary, Roger Chillingworth; and the town minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hawthorne increases the tension between these characters slowly and deliberately, before he lets it break in the shattering (and surprising!) final scene.

Hawthorne is also a master of the character study, and in this book he delves deeply into the psychology of sin, guilt, shame, and revenge. Even without the twists and turns of the plot, the novel would be worth reading for the detailed portraits that Hawthorne draws of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and (my favorite) Pearl.

Don't be deterred by the novel's reputation as an anti-Puritan polemic, either. Despite its portrayal of the repressive Puritan authorities and their harsh (and failed) punishment, this book isn't really a diatribe against 17th century New Englanders. Anyone who has read the novel knows that it's not the Puritans who are the bad guys -- it's Hester's cruel (and, incidentally, godless) husband. Rather, the story is a plea for honesty, compassion, and forgiveness in the face of vindictive revenge. If you love hopeful, but emotionally-wrenching, endings, you'll love this book.

I'm tempted to talk more about the climax, but I'll resist giving you spoilers. Suffice it to say -- this is another novel that you should stop thinking of as high-school homework. It'd be a shame to consign such vivid characters to the domain of exams and research papers.

Also, chime in with a comment, and tell me:

What is one Classic novel you read in school that you hate? What is one that you love?

And now -- until Monday, friends!

Friday Poetry! [A.A. Milne]

2011-04-15T22:13:00.000-04:00

It's Friday, and what with a long work day and evening service tonight (Lent is over! Let Holy Week begin!), I don't have much in the way of profound thoughts or good book recommendations. But that's the great thing about being a reader. If you can't think of anything to say, you can always borrow from someone else.

If you know A.A. Milne only as the author of Winnie the Pooh, you should get acquainted with his poetry. He wrote two collections for children -- When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six -- that are full of charming, nonsensical rhymes and delightful little stories about kings and lilies and rice pudding and Christopher Robin. So without further ado...

Buckingham Palace

by A.A. Milne

From When We Were Very Young

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.

Happy Friday evening!

Beyond Narnia [C.S. Lewis]

2011-04-14T18:51:00.007-04:00

First, a few matters of business.

Some of my lovely readers have been kind enough to give my blog awards!

Deirdra Eden Coppel of A Storybook World has awarded me the "Powerful Woman Writer Award."

Many thanks, Deirdra! You all should go read her blog, especially the wonderful "Author Interviews" she's been doing over the past few weeks.

Then Andrew Leon of Strange Pegs awarded me the "Versatile Blogger Award."

This award comes with a few strings attached. I have to tell you seven things about myself, and then nominate fifteen of you for this award. Thinking of other blogs shouldn't be difficult, but I'm not sure that I can think of seven really interesting things... Still, here goes!

1. I began writing my first novel when I was eight. It was a historical novel about George Washington's stepdaughter Patsy Washington. I still have the unfinished manuscript, complete with my original illustrations, in a box somewhere.

2. I should perhaps add as an addendum to the above -- I am not an artist of any sort. Thus, it was not a good idea for me to illustrate my own work.

3. I've played the violin off and on since I was in 4th grade. Now that I've graduated from college, it's been mostly "off," but I'm hoping soon to go back to "on."

4. I lived in the UK for 14 months while I was in high school, and I still consider Portsmouth, England, as my real hometown (of sorts).

5. My first job was as an afternoon nanny to two little girls, about four and two at the time. It taught me the real meaning of the word "hectic."

6. I grew up in Indiana (for the most part), and I really want to write someday about how beautiful cornfields are. They really are. Trust me.

7. In less than two weeks, I will be in Lyon, France, reviving my rusty French and eating home-cooked food at our organic-farm B&B. Yes, I can't think about much else.

As for the rest of you, it's hard to pick. Here's a few people I simply love to read:
1. A Light Inside
2. W.I.P. It
3. It's the World, Dear
4. Thursday's Child
5. Coming Down the Mountain
6. Musings of an Aspiring Scribe
7. Veritatem in Artem Invenire
8. To Think in Ink
9. The Garden Window
10. By Singing Light
11. The Door in Thy Wall
12. Alive, Radiant, and Free
13. Dirt Poor Chic
14. Mocha Philosophia
15. The Warrior Muse

Many thanks, Andrew!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

*************

I can hardly believe that we've skipped so quickly through the alphabet. It seems only yesterday that I was posting my midnight acceptance of the Challenge, and now we're on Letter L.

And only C.S. Lewis will do for 'L.' As for Jane Austen and John Keats, there simply is no one else.

Much has been written about Lewis lately, both online and in print, and with good reason (I contributed to this slush of writing on Lewis some time ago here). Scholarship is still grappling with the author of several recent additions to the Classics canon: The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters. The further we get from Lewis, the greater his shadow becomes, and the more scholars wants to know everything about him and his work. In comparison to when I was a girl, Lewis is now a scholarly fad.

And of course the three Narnia movies have made Lewis something of a pop-culture phenomenon as well.

I'm as devoted a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia as anyone (in fact, I prefer them to The Lord of the Rings, and yes, that was an intentionally controversial statement). I love Lewis's Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. But it's a shame that some of Lewis's most important works have been ignored in favor of others. So today I'll give you five books by C.S. Lewis that you may never have heard of, but that are just as good (or better than) his more popular books.

#5 An Experiment in Criticism

This is Lewis' meditation on reading and story, and it's certainly the most profound collection of thoughts on the subject I've ever read. Lewis considers types of readers, the relationship of the written word and visual art, myth, fantasy, realism, and that pesky problem we have as readers, misreading. He isn't afraid to challenge many of our most beloved misconceptions about reading (and writing), which has rankled some readers, but his final answer to the question "Why Read?" is a perennial favorite:

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

#4 Essays

Lewis was a master of the essay -- erudite, concise, clear, and elegant -- though he's not frequently used as an example of the genre. There's no one better to imitate as a prose stylist, however, and if you write non-fiction prose, you need to have a collection of Lewis's essays on your shelf. The best ones (or at least the ones I like the most) are On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature, The Discarded Image, The Weight of Glory, and Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He touches on topics as various as Medieval Literature, the Medieval Cosmos (see Dr. Ward's website Planet Narnia for more information on the Medieval Cosmos and its influence on Lewis), stories, myth, and Christianity, so there really is something for (most) everyone.

[As a side note, all aspiring writers should read his "On Stories" before they venture into the land of storytelling and mythmaking (you can read it on Google Books here).]

#3 Out of the Silent Planet

Science fiction novels don't usually feature a philologist as a protagonist. Lewis not only succeeds in making such an erudite character ordinary and lovable (and in giving us a sidelong portrait of his life-long friend J.R.R. Tolkien), but he also weaves together a complicated and tantalizing Outer Space mythology. Unlike the other two books of the trilogy (see below for the second), this first one has a light, jaunty quality -- nothing too terrible happens, and much of the book's draw is for the unusual beings Ransom meets on his travels to the planet Mars. Still, the image of Earth as "the Silent Planet," the one that none of the other planets have heard from in ages, is a piercing, sobering analogy for modern human loneliness.

#2 Perelandra

I hesitate to recommend the last book of this trilogy to you, That Hideous Strength, because I'm not entirely certain whether I like it or not. To me, the second book will always be the real apex of this series. Our hero Ransom travels to Venus, where he must resist the evil Professor Weston and rescue Tinidril, the queen of the planet. Along the way, there are green people, dragons, and a coffin traveling through space. The novel is both a rip-roaring good yarn and a modern-day retelling of Dante's Commedia. It might sound a bit odd, but then isn't that true of all Science Fiction?

#1 Till We Have Faces

This novel, a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, is a masterpiece. I'm flabbergasted that it doesn't attract more attention, scholarly or popular. It's a lyrical adventure story, romance, and myth from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's possessive, bitter older sister. She's not a particularly endearing protagonist, but her voice is hypnotic, and the ending is stunning -- heart-breaking, cruel, and beautiful. Only Shakespeare can match Lewis's audacity here. Read it and learn what the true meaning of a "surprise ending" is.

If you're tired of hearing about The Chronicles of Narnia (Please remember, however, that the Prince Caspian movie was a travesty and that you must not judge the book by that!), try picking up a new Lewis novel and rediscover the self-labeled Oxford "dinosaur" who writes with his own unique brand of wit, vivacity, and relish.

Let Us Love the Old Poets [K is for Keats]

2011-04-13T16:21:00.000-04:00

Today, I have some writing advice for you: memorize poetry.

Yes, even if you're a novelist. Yes, even if you don't always understand it.

In particular, memorize rhyming poems, metrical poems, and nonsense poems. Doing so will tune your ear to the English language as no amount of exercises or prose style handbooks ever can. This is not to discount free verse poetry, which I enjoy both reading and writing. It's simply to advocate for memorizing old-fashioned metrical poetry as a way of discovering the sounds of English.

[As a side note, I think free verse is so hard to memorize. There's no pattern for your mind to follow. I did have a professor who memorized the entirety of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock one summer while he took tickets in a parking garage, though. Any other free-verse memorizers out there?]

When you memorize poetry, you'll store away snippets of lines that will come back to you when you can't think of the right word or phrase. Knowing classic poetry by heart lets you borrow from some of the best writers -- and isn't (legal!) borrowing an essential part of being a writer?

Poets are also some of the best people to read about writing. Take, for example, this poem by John Keats, our author for today:

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

Isn't this every writer's fear? That somehow we will die before we've captured all of the words and stories swirling around in our heads and put them on paper? Or that the ideas will simply disappear, like mischievous fairies, before we've had a chance to write them down?

I find it comforting that Keats felt like that, too.

I've always loved memorizing poetry, but I've sometimes found it difficult to make time to do it -- to make a 3x5 card and drill the lines. I know it doesn't take much time, but when you're tired, you don't want to drill yourself on poetry memorization. And besides, the 3x5 card method feels a little too academic. I want memorizing poetry to feel the way reading poetry does -- beautiful.

So now, to memorize poetry, I get CDs and listen to them while I'm at work. (You could also do this while you drive, or while you're exercising.) Just put a track on repeat and listen. At first, you won't pay much attention to it. But then, as the words repeat, they'll start to catch your ear -- a nice phrase here, a beautiful image there. After a few weeks, you'll be able to murmur the whole thing to yourself (which means you can embarrass yourself in public places by mumbling poetry, as I do sometimes).

The first CD I'd recommend is the soundtrack from Bright Star, a movie about the life of Keats.

This CD weaves together the music from the movie with readings by the actors of Keats' poetry and selections from his letters to his fiancee, Fanny Brawne. Both the reading and the music are so lovely that you'll start reciting La Belle Dame Sans Merci as soon as you get it.

[Also, if you haven't seen the movie, you should.]

There are so many reasons to love Keats. He's probably the greatest of the Romantic poets, the early 19th century fathers of the modern lyric poem. His poems are by turns intellectual, elegiac, romantic, and playful. He wrote about such a wide variety of subjects: Dante, Homer, Robin Hood, Nightingales, Autumn, Psyche, a Grecian Urn. And, of course, he wrote love letters and poems to his young fiancee that are so beautiful they make me cry.

And he did all of that by age 26, which means I have three years to catch up. (I think I'm too far behind.)

Unlike bombastic Byron and depressed Coleridge, Keats is a thoughtful romantic. He feels deeply, but he also thinks deeply. Keats luxuriates in particular experiences, even if they're as simple as listening to a nightingale, and he helps us to see ordinary experiences afresh -- or, really, for the first time. He also loves a well-told tale, which is why some of my favorites of his poems -- The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci -- tell haunting tales of forbidden love and mysterious women.

And, well, there's the poetry. There are no words to describe it. For each poem, Keats has said all that there is to say.

I'm hoping that I've lengthened your reading lists this month, but today I don't want you to add Keats as another "author to read." Instead, click on one of the links (or try here), and read a few of his poems. It only takes about 5 or 10 minutes. You don't even need to read lots of them -- just one. Read it a few times. Savor it.

And then, in the comments, tell me your favorite poem to read and savor -- whether it's Keats or Shakespeare or Shelley or someone else. Or just put in a line of your favorite poem that you've ever memorized, and make me guess what it is. I'll start.

"Let us have the old poets & Robin Hood!"

J is for Jane

2011-04-12T17:16:00.001-04:00

(I know this isn't the most popular portrait of Jane Austen, but I love it. I can just imagine her sitting perfectly still while Cassandra painted it.)

Jane Austen, that is. Who else could it be?

I've written a bit about my personal connection to Jane Austen here, but to summarize -- I would not be writing this blog, not writing anything really, without her.

Emma was the first "grown-up Classic" that I read, and since then I've been hooked. Hence my month-long blog series mostly on Classic books and why I read them. Not to mention my English degree. Or the 40-page research paper I wrote on Pride & Prejudice.

In my life, you can blame almost everything on Jane.

But I don't just read Jane Austen to reminisce. I find that her novels are always new, each reading a fresh experience, as though it were the first time I had met Miss Eliza Bennett, and not the fifth.

For those of you (Men: I'm looking in your direction) whose education was deficient in Austen, let me instruct you for a moment. This Regency-era spinster lived a simple life with her mother and sister in her father's old parsonage. She also wrote six novels:

Sense & Sensibility (Famous now for the Emma Thompson adaptation, which makes Col. Brandon a bit more dashing than he is in the book, and omits one of Willoughby's most infamous moments.)
Pride & Prejudice (If you haven't heard of this, you haven't been alive recently. Kiera Knightly portrayed its feisty heroine in a recent adaptation, and while some people are devotees of the 1995 mini-series that made Colin Firth famous, I like them both)
Mansfield Park (Jane's darkest, most under-appreciated book. No one reads it, and everyone should.)
Emma (Jane thought "no one but myself will much like" this heroine, but everyone loves her, even when she's played by Gwyneth Paltrow.)
Northanger Abbey (Jane's mock-Gothic novel. It's hilarious.)
Persuasion (Perhaps the greatest of all her novels, this tale of a mousy member of the lower aristocracy and her sea-captain love has one of the most understated romances in fiction.)

She also left two incomplete novels: Lady Susan and Sanditon. Other than that, there's not much to tell, though if you're curious for more info, literary or biographical, try the Republic of Pemberley.

With the recent spate of Jane Austen film adaptations and spin-offs, most people feel confident that they know Jane Austen's books, and they equate them with Danielle Steel. For example, a typical response when I say I like Jane Austen:

"That's chick lit, right?"

If you're ever asked that question, I hope that you've actually read Jane Austen, so that you can say confidently, from experience, "Jane Austen is not chick lit."

Because she's not. Jane Austen did write romances, and she was a woman writing about women. But from the first her audience was men as well as women; in fact, some of her earliest known admirers were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent, who requested that she dedicate her novel Emma to him. [The admiration was not mutual, and she wasn't too happy about it, but she complied (naturally).]

And if Jane is primarily a romance novelist, she's the most dull romance novelist I've ever seen. We don't get a single moment of physical affection, and not once does Jane describe a marriage proposal in detail. Usually, when it comes to her heroine's response to the gentleman's offer, Austen writes something coy like, "Emma then behaved exactly as a lady ought," and leaves the rest to our imagination.

Really, Jane Austen transcends genre. She defies labels, categories, and assumptions -- woman's novel, chick lit, romance, satire, even Classic Fiction. Her novels have something for everyone -- romance for the woman, money-matters for the men, and social satire for all of us. Scholars enjoy them because the ever-clever Jane is always teasing them with a detail and then skipping out of sight. Artist are wooed by her deceptively-simple, smooth prose, which even today rolls off the tongue with ease and grace.

And casual readers enjoy them because they're such good stories -- Who doesn't like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, or Elinor and Marianne? Even little girls like Jane Austen, because for all of their depth and satirical wit, the stories are simply, beautifully told. Her novels never feel out-of-date, because her subjects are so human, so ordinary, that we can't help but identify with her characters, even if they're in ball gowns and we're in jeans.

In short, let me paraphrase the editors of the First Folio. Read Jane, therefore, and again, and again. And if then you do not like her, you certainly just misunderstand her.

So, which Jane Austen should you read? If you like sparkling wit and romance, try Pride & Prejudice or Emma. If you prefer dark character-studies, read Mansfield Park. Anyone who loves an elegiac, forbidden romance will enjoy Persuasion and Sense & Sensibility, and for those of you who love to mock melodrama, you'll find a kindred spirit in Austen's Northanger Abbey.

And if you've read Jane Austen, tell me -- Which novel is your favorite? What heroine do you love? Which one do you hate? [Dare I ask what you think of Fanny Price?] Who is Jane's best 'leading man'?

I was going to give James Joyce an Honorable Mention, but I don't really like his novels.

I know. I can't help it.

But I will give an Honorable Mention to...

Samuel Johnson, for proving forever with your Dictionary that one Englishman can do the work of a committee of Frenchmen.

DIY MFA: Week #1 Check-In

2011-04-12T00:13:00.000-04:00

I know I promised that I would post my homework from DIY MFA last week, but I found it simpler to just work through the related assignments on my own and then post the results here. All in all, it was an enlightening, encouraging week.

Assignment Results (Or, what happened when I did them):

The theme in DIY MFA last week was Character Development (if you'd like to see the various exercises that we did, look here). I've been devoting most of my time to one particular WIP (Work In Progress, for the non-writers among you), so I did all of the character exercises on my main character, to see what I could do to develop her more completely.

TADA Method of Studying Character -- This was the most helpful exercise Gabi posted all week. I did it informally on Myla Goldberg's "Going for the Orange Julius," and then used various colored highlighters to mark the four elements (Thought, Action, Dialogue, Appearance) in a chapter of my WIP. It was invaluable. I actually came out with almost equal proportions of Action, Dialogue, and Thought, but I had so little emphasis on Appearance that it was almost negligible. This is precisely how I tried to write that chapter, and it was encouraging to see my success outlined in pink and yellow highlighter.

I found myself using TADA when I read during the week, and it always drew attention to the successful (or unsuccessful) techniques of the author.

20 Questions -- I tried this on my current protagonist and didn't find anything new. When I used it to develop new characters, however, I loved it. I particularly recommend the roll-the-dice method. The element of chance gives you characters with all sorts of contradictory personality traits.

Character Interview -- This was a helpful exercise. I came out with a few additional traits for my character: her love of the ocean (I had no idea), how important her best friend is to her, and how much she envies her brother. For the most part, however, it served as a useful summary of everything that I knew about her thus far.

Character Acrostic -- All of the other activities we did this week would be useful for developing a new character, but this I've only found helpful for an established character -- one that you already know a lot about. Still, it yielded a few more insights into my character -- in particular, her favorite place to do homework.

Sprint #2 Exercise: Working with Character -- It was when I did this exercise, listing my character's three biggest weaknesses, that I realized I had forgotten an important weakness in developing my character. Probably the most important one! After I realized it, I knew I needed to do a little rewriting, and it will change significantly the chapters I'm working on this week.

All in all, the 20 Questions exercise was my favorite for creating new characters (and if you coupled the traits you got from that exercise with a name and a Character Acrostic, you'd have a story-ready character on your hands in minutes), and the Sprint #2 exercise was my favorite for clarifying a current character's personality and deepening it.

Word Count of the Week (Or, with all of these exercises, did you do any writing?):

One of my goals for DIY MFA was to establish a better writing habit -- to write every day, instead of when the mood struck or when I had a stray couple of hours. Gabi's initial challenge to us was to do something different, to "shake up" our writing rituals. For me, that meant trying to use stray half-hours throughout the day to write, instead of waiting until I have three hours at a stretch to work on a project.

I tried to do that all of this week. And it worked. I averaged 750 words a day, which is about 700 words more than I was averaging.

Inspiration Station (Or, can we have more of the pretty pictures from your first DIY MFA post?):

I've still been on the hunt for a pictures to add to a new file I created after the beginning of last week -- "Inspiration Station." I stop there whenever I need a new idea (or even to freshen up the old ones). My favorite this week is a scan from the new Anthropologie catalog:

Pardon the poor quality of the image (I'm not adept with scanners), but can you make out the little boy on the left-hand side of the doorway? I know we're supposed to be transfixed by the dress, but I can't stop looking at him and wondering what his story is.

Happy Writing!

The Hundred Years' Nap [Letter I]

2011-04-11T10:35:00.002-04:00

Remember how I said last week that I like extra sleep on Mondays? Today, I was blessed with some, and I'm grateful, because I went to bed a little late. Yes, because I was reading. I bet you guessed that.

In fact, I was so tired this morning that when I woke up, I thought, "I wish I could sleep for forever."

And, being who I am, that made me think of "Rip Van Winkle,"which was fortunate, because that made me think of the author, Irving, whose last name just happens to start with an "I." So, welcome to today's post on Washington Irving, brought to you by my barely-conscious thoughts.

(From a 1896 adaptation for the stage. What a soporific play.)

Like so many of the books I talk about here, we usually associate "Rip Van Winkle" and its fabulous companion, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," with school. Maybe it's because I was homeschooled that I remember them more as just stories -- I never had a boring teacher drone on about them. I read them, enjoyed them, and then talked about them with my mom, which is a lot more fun.

In keeping with our Monday traditions, let me give you five short reasons to re-read these stories now. (Other than that I just gave you links to where you can read them online for free. I love free stuff.)

5. The Setting: Upstate New York. Maybe this is only an enticement to those of us, like me, who were born in upstate New York, and still love to drive along winding roads through the forested hills and mountains. In Irving's hands, the Catskill mountains become the American equivalent of the Alps -- a place of mystery and myth, where anything can happen. If you've ever been in that area, you'd believe Irving was right, too. It does look as though something unexpected will jump out at you any moment.

4. Rip Van Winkle. This henpecked husband is such an endearing character -- kind, gullible, lazy. I love that Irving keeps Rip the same until the end. He never changes as a character, really -- he just becomes older and amusing, as opposed to younger and frustrating. This passage at the end captures it all:

There was one species of despotism under which he [Rip] had long groaned, and that was—petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.

The phrase "petticoat government" is enough to make us all indebted to Irving for eternity.

3. Ichabod Crane. Don't be fooled by the gentle Disney version. In the short story, Ichabod is a vain, pompous man with an odd propensity to credulity, who falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel only after seeing "her father's mansion." But Irving manages to make both Ichabod's and Brom Bones's faults mostly humorous, so that their battle for courtship of Katrina is a farce. And, of course, the image of Ichabod, with his long nose and feet "that might serve for shovels" riding on a skinny mare, makes me laugh through the whole second half of the story.

(I don't think Ichabod, on the right, is skinny enough in this picture. Or tall enough. I want to see his ears flapping in the wind as he flees.)

2. Irving's Humor. I've hinted at this above, but it's worth making the point -- these are not serious stories. "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," contrary to popular opinion, is not (really) a ghost story. They're humorous tales, told by a deadpan storyteller who enjoys mocking both you and his characters. Think for a moment about the premises:

Rip Van Winkle = Guy wanders into the mountains to escape from his shrewish wife and drinks a magical beer that causes him to sleep until long after his wife dies.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow = Gullible schoolmaster is chased out of town by his burly rival pretending to be a ghost.

Irving has mixed the petty and the fabulous. He puts very-unheroic characters into ghostly situations and then, instead of writing a typical ghost story, gives us a typical romantic-comedy ending: guy is freed from shrewish wife, local golden-boy succeeds in chasing off rival. All of the characters and the plot lines are straight from comedy, but the plot devices are ghostly and fantastical -- which is what makes it so fun.

1. The Ghosts. And who doesn't love Irving's ghosts? The Ghost of the Galloping Hessian, "huge, misshapen, black, and towering"? Hendrick Hudson and his crew, drinking ale and playing ninepins in the mountains, dressed in "antique Dutch fashion"? However facetiously Irving uses them, his ghosts are still marvelous creations -- eerie remnants of early American history, haunting the lonely forests and mountains that dot our countryside. I think that's why, in spite of their actual narratives, "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" are remembered as scary stories in popular culture. In spite of the humor, they still spook us a little bit.

So, today, a few questions for you all. Have you read Irving? What did you think? And can you think of other, classic American ghost stories?

[H]opping Around the Literary World...

2011-04-09T13:21:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's beautiful sunshine surrendered to a misty, thundering gloom today, which I suppose is why I'm here writing a blog post and staring at my bookshelves instead of sitting in my front yard in the sun.

Nothing like a rainy day to get me writing.

Once again, I've had difficulty narrowing down to one author. So I didn't. It's Saturday, so why not read more if you can?

Now, for three completely-unrelated authors...

First: that mysterious blind poet, Homer (if he existed at all...I like to think that he did.)

If you went to college with me, you've already read the Odyssey, and if you weren't one of my nutty friends who went to graduate school for Classics, you're wondering why I'm suggesting that you read this ancient Greek tome again for fun. The rest of you are convinced that I'm out of my mind.

Don't stop reading just yet. I'm not crazy, or weird. At least, not too weird.

I've never loved the Iliad as much as the Odyssey. The graphic descriptions of violence (the ones that always end with blood gushing out of someone's neck) never sat too well on my stomach. When Priam comes to beg for Hector's body, however, I'm always moved to a few tears. An old man sinking to his knees before the man who killed his son (and dragged the body around the walls of Troy behind his chariot, no less) to beg for a body to bury? It's a timeless moment. [While we're on the subject...DO NOT WATCH TROY. EVER.]

But the Odyssey is a completely different story, and I've always loved it. It has magic, romance, adventure, and intrigue. Penelope is only one of the many delightful female characters in the story -- there's also Circe, Calypso, and Naussika (one of my personal favorites). And there's Odysseus, the braggart leader and cheating husband who you still want to see back with his wife (and their olive-tree bed) at the end of the story.

Robert Fagles' translations (see the links above) are fabulous, but if you're not into epic poetry, try these versions:

Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff

Now, let's jump across the Adriatic Sea to Rome for a different author: the Classical Roman poet, Horace.

I know, I know. I'm losing you again. But Horace is really good. Trust me.

Not only is he the father of many common proverbs (I've always liked, "Anger is a short madness."), but his Odes and Epodes give us everything from lyrical poems about spring to angry rebuttals to his most recent ex-girlfriend. I read Horace first in Latin, and finding a translation that captures his poetry is difficult. The Oxford World Classics edition is decent, as is the Penguin.

Some highlights from the Odes...

1.8: Horace chides Lydia for keeping her boyfriend from playing sports and doing other manly things. "Why are you making him be such a sissy?" he asks.

1.13: Horace begs his former girlfriend Lydia (I'm not sure if it's the same girl as above, but it would be funnier if she were) not to make out with her new guy Telephus around him, because he goes mad with jealousy.

1.14: Horace is about to sail, but he's worried. In this poem to the ship itself, he talks about what a sorry state the boat is in -- and why he might postpone his journey until later.

1.18: Horace praises his wine glass. Enough said.

1.22: Horace tries (unsuccessfully) to convince himself that he's gotten over his girlfriend Lalagea.

1.9: My favorite poem on winter weather in any language. Read a so-so translation of it here.

See? You didn't think the Romans were that interesting.

Now for a huge jump.

Welcome to the American South!

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the few books I know that is successfully written for adults, but with a child as the protagonist. Everyone knows the story: a genteel southern lawyer defends a black man falsely accused of rape. It sounds like a harrowing book, and it is, but it has an astounding emotional restraint. Lee understands how children see the world, and that's how she writes: simply, honestly, naively, with deep clarity. Readers could only enjoy this story through the eyes of children. With the help of their father, Jem and Scout come to understand the weight of what is happening around them without being crushed by it, and so do we.

My favorite character in the story has always been Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor who sweeps in from the wings like a personified Deus Ex Machina to rescue Jem and Scout when they're attacked for being the children of a "nigger-lover." I cry at many points in this book, but the one that makes me sob the hardest is when Atticus Finch says to Boo Radley, "Thank you for my children, Arthur."

As with The Great Gatbsy, I'm not sure that I need to recommend this book, since every American reads it in high school now. But if you haven't relished the sense of honor, justice, and kindness that this book is full of, drop whatever you're doing and read it now. I've never known someone to be disappointed by it.

Welcoming Spring [Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows]

2011-04-08T21:39:00.002-04:00

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home....Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

Today was a good day to have Kenneth Grahame on the mind. Spring decided to visit the Midwest at last -- blue skies, breeze, and sunshine. I took a walk after work, and as I basked in the sunshine, I felt just like Mole, captivated by the "divine longing" of Spring. (Does that make my cubicle my "dark and lowly little house"? I think so.)

The Wind in the Willows is perhaps my favorite of all children's books, and this is certainly my favorite edition of it. I got it as a Christmas present this year, but I've waited until spring to pull it off the shelf. I thought it should have its first reading in the sunshine.

(Have you ever seen such a lovely cover?)

I don't recall reading Wind in the Willows as a child, which may be why I love it so much. Reading it as a 20-something just having her first experiences of adult life made me feel like a child again.

The story is meandering and episodic, and you keep reading for the characters. Who can forget shy, sensitive Mole, thoughtful, intellectual Ratty, and the nutty rich kid, Toad? We follow them as they "mess about in boats," take a visit to the fearsome Mr. Badger (and discover he's not as fearsome as they'd thought), and rescue Toad from his destructive passion for driving about in cars (and wrecking them). The book has a bit of everything: sentimental walks, humorous escapes, and an epic battle for Toad Hall at the end.

The book's tone varies -- one moment it's childish and funny, the next so thoughtful it's almost mystical. Christopher Milne, A.A. Milne's son, puts it quite well.

This book is, in a way, two separate books spliced into one. There are, on the one hand, those chapters concerned with the adventures of Toad; and on the other hand there are those chapters that explore human emotions – the emotions of fear, nostalgia, awe, wanderlust.

I love them both, but I find the mystical chapters are the ones I remember most. In 'Wayfarers All,' for example, Ratty feels restless and starts walking on the open road, where he meets the animal equivalent of Odysseus. Ratty becomes so dissatisfied after hearing of the Southern adventures of this wandering Sea Rat that he is disagreeable and upset all evening. He is only cured when Mole suggests he write a poem.

I think most writers can identify. Sometimes, you just have to bury yourself in your work until you can float back to the surface.

[Grahame has the best description of writing: "Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked a good deal more than he scribbled...."]

In the famous chapter "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," Ratty and Mole have a similar encounter: they meet Pan piping on the banks of the Thames, and he helps them find a missing baby otter. It sounds just odd, but instead it's very moving. Grahame captures like no other what a sense of awe feels like. You would think that would bore children, but every child I've ever read this book too as been as rapt with attention as I was.

But that isn't to disparage Toad. After all, his escape from jail as a washerwoman is one of the funniest scenes ever penned. His friends' concern over him is nearly as hilarious, especially when they launch an attack against the Weasels who have overrun Toad Hall.

So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Turn off the computer, go outside in the sun, and read Kenneth Grahame. And then try telling me that you don't want to go messing about in boats yourself.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream

2011-04-07T14:05:00.002-04:00

[First: Welcome to all of my new readers! I was excited to break thirty followers this week. Thanks for all of your conversation and encouragement!]

I'm not really sure why I love The Great Gatsby so much. It's not really my sort of book -- a pessimistic tale about hedonism, debauchery, and hopeless love that ends with deaths left and right. I'm a bit more of a C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, and children's literature type. Still, Gatsby gets me every time.

(Though, I have to agree with The Broke and the Bookish about this cover...)

I know we all read this book in high school -- it's one of the few things that we can count on in American life, along with dentist appointments and speeding tickets. Even as a homeschooler, I read it and wrote about it in the early days of this blog. If you bother to read my earlier post, you'll find a pretty negative review, because that was my initial impression of the book. Independent of my philosophic disagreements with Fitzgerald, I thought that Gatsby himself was a bit of a weak character, and I still think so.

But my real love for this book came after I finished it. It grew on me. It was like the pleasant aftertaste from a really good wine. I just couldn't get it out of my mind -- its characters, its narrator, its ending.

Of course, the real thing to love about Fitzgerald is his prose. The rest of us only dream to write like this:

Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started on the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens -- finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

And that's just a simple description at the beginning of the book. What of that piercing ending paragraph?

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Sorry. Once I get started talking about Gatsby, I start quoting.

But I think we should love Gatsby and Fitzgerald not for the pessimistic modernism or the hopeless love story or the supple prose, but for the book's insight into what makes us American. I'm not a big reader of the American novel -- indeed, there are many American classics that I simply can't stand. But The Great Gatsby (along with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter) is an exception to that rule. There's something so true about its portrayal of life as an American that it strikes every one of us -- even me -- to the core.

Perhaps we give this book to our children too young, because at sixteen or seventeen they may not really be ready to be confronted with a drama about the tragedies of materialism in American life. Isn't that really what this novel is about -- a man whose girl won't be with him because she's interested in the most secure money she can get her hands on? Fitzgerald calls Tom and Daisy "careless," and to me that's a fascinating vice for your antagonist -- not malice, but simple carelessness, a selfishness and materialism so deep that it gets people killed. I know Fitzgerald is writing about the carefree culture of the 1920s, but couldn't that equally describe our era of housing bubbles and corporate corruption?

And then there's the conflict between the city and the country, in the novel a conflict between New York and the Midwest (specifically Louisville, which makes it more NYC versus the South). Anyone who grew up in the Midwest, as I did, can testify to this antagonism. My great-grandfather is famous in our family for getting concerned when he heard that his granddaughter's new husband (my dad) was looking for jobs outside Ohio. Heaven forbid. One afternoon, while talking to my just-graduated and just-married father, great-grandpa launched into a long paen to the great state of Ohio that ended with a now oft-quoted line in our family: "Yep, all in all, Ohio's just about the best place you can live."

(I don't happen to agree with my great granddad. But it's an adorable, and telling, story nonetheless.)

In Fitzgerald, all of the major characters are Midwest kids who went to the city looking for something -- for their brand of the American Dream. My friend Bess has written about this in her wonderful blog on life as a 20-something in NYC. Everyone goes to New York, or Chicago, or LA, or DC, looking for something, to play out an American narrative in their own lives. The real possibility of living that dream -- or at least of Gatsby's version of it -- is what The Great Gatsby is all about.

Infamously, Fitgerald claims the American Dream, Gatsby's dream of Daisy at the end of the dock, is unattainable. He says it's impossible because the current of time is backward, and it takes us into the past instead of the future. I'm not sure about that, but it's a weighty opinion, and worth considering.

Whatever your opinions on Fitzgerald, you have to love him for how deeply he's thought about the struggles that are at the center of American life even today, and for how beautifully he wrote about them. So if you've read this book before and you think of it as high-school-reading-list fare, try it again. It's not exactly light or enjoyable reading. But it is a rich book -- a feast of prose and story and thought -- and for that, it's worth every minute of your time.

In Which I Debate Authors with the Letter 'E' in their Names

2011-04-06T13:59:00.003-04:00

Thinking of an author that I'd like to recommend whose last name begins with 'E' has been a little difficult.

Ralph Waldo Emerson? Too pompous. And too Transcendental. Bleh.

George Eliot? I liked Silas Marner, but not that much.

(I don't know that I've ever looked at picture of him up close like this. What big ears you have, Uncle Eliot!)

T.S. Eliot? I almost chose him, because I love his poetry. But there's not much to say, other than:

1) Read The Four Quartets. Just do it.

2) Do not listen to a recording of Eliot reading his own poetry. It sounds terrible.

So he'll be our Honorable Mention of the day. I know -- I reversed the order. I'm taking my cue from Eliot:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. ("Little Gidding," The Four Quartets)

At last, I decided to look at authors' first names, which widened the playing field considerably. Still, out of all the competitors, I've chosen the quirky, lovable Elizabeth Goudge. (Warning: The linked biography is a bit long-winded and maudlin sometimes. If you like things short and sweet, try the Wikipedia version.)

This early 20th century "woman's novelist" received a fresh wave of media attention when J.K. Rowling said that her novel The Little White Horse was among her favorites as a child. And while I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read anything of Goudge's other than Little White Horse, I'm proud to say that I discovered it before I discovered J.K. Rowling. It's not just for Harry Potter fans. If you enjoy children's literature, or if you enjoy fantasy, or if you enjoy 1940s-era novels, you should read this book.

(Picture of the First American Edition[1947] via)

My first warning: do not judge the novel by the 2009 film The Secrets of Moonacre. By all means, see the movie if you wish, but don't substitute it for reading the novel.

The book tells the story of Maria Merryweather, an orphan who is taken to live with her uncle, Sir Benjamin, after her father dies. Moonacre Manor, however, is a place of secrets, and with the help of her governess Miss Heliotrope, her uncle, the Old Parson, her new friend Robin, and a strange woman named Loveday, Maria will solve the mystery (naturally).

I love many things about this novel, but I think I love its humor best. Not all children's fantasy novels are able to be humorous and serious at the same time (though Harry Potter is another good example), but Goudge manages to give the book its own quirky wit while still maintaining the depth of her story.

The other reason to read this book is for the Little White Horse itself. Goudge loves her animal characters, the most endearing of whom is a dog named Wrolf, but the White Horse is not really a character in the book at all. It only appear three times, all under similar circumstances, and it does nothing to move the plot forward. Yet somehow, Goudge successfully turns a mostly symbolic character into a vital part of the novel. If you're wondering how, get reading.

It's Wednesday, so I don't have time for more. But I'll give you the first three paragraphs of the novel, to get you started. Enjoy!

The carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each others' arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves, and fixed their attention upon those objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength.

Maria gazed at her boots. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French essays from the floor, popped a peppermint into her mouth, and peered once more in the dim light at the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers.

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people -- those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food; and Miss Heliotrope, Maria, and Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people.

P.S. In case you wondered, I'm the first sort.

Narnia, and the North! (My Pupil's Essay)

2011-04-06T12:51:00.000-04:00

As a few of you know, I'm teaching my 15 year-old brother, Jared, a literature course this year. He's taking a different course for composition, so I haven't focused on writing projects -- instead, we do lots of discussion and fun, creative projects associated with the books that we're reading. He's designed the White Witch's castle in his CADD program and drawn a series of sketches from Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (see yesterday's A to Z post for why you, too, should read this amazing novel).

But while reading through C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, Jared decided to write an essay for me, even though I hadn't asked him to.* Here is the result, with only a very few edits from me. Enjoy!

Schooling in The Chronicles of Narnia

There is, in The Silver Chair and even in all the Chronicles of Narnia, the idea of how the school or otherwise schooling of a child changes or shapes their character. We first see this in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where C.S. Lewis mentions why Edmund’s character has been so bad. He mentions the school he went to. “ She [Lucy] found him [Edmund] standing on his feet and not only healed of his wounds but looking better than she had seen him look---oh, for ages; in fact ever since his first term at that horrid school, which was where he had begun to go wrong.” Here we can see the beginning, or foundation, of Lewis’s observation: the school that Edmund went to is the reason he had begun to go wrong.

Afterwards, when we have reached the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace is mentioned to have “not read the right sort of books.” Instead of reading these “right sort of books” Lewis says that he read books about “Fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.” He is very, as you might say, normal or mediocre in his ways, and his parents are the same way. The kind of books Eustace reads or, in other words, his schooling has shaped him to be selfish the way he is at the start of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. What his school teaches him is how to be normal, so that no one refers to him as “strange” or “odd.” His parents like him that way. One might compare the Scrubbs to the Dursleys in Harry Potter: they care about being normal and do not do what is really best for their child. Although Mr. and Mrs. Scrubb are not mentioned very much in the book, we see from Eustace’s character that his parents are this way. When Eustace learns to believe in something that is not “normal," something that is what you might call “supernatural,” he becomes his true self: the Eustace whom everyone likes. (That is, except for his mother and father.)

The Silver Chair begins with Eustace in his second term of school, or rather it starts with Jill, who joins Eustace. Here Jill is the person who is changed through going to a “strange” yet beautiful place. Over time as she, Eustace, and Puddleglum travel to find the lost Prince, Jill starts to become a stronger person, more willing to admit her faults, less emotional, and more decisive. But until she has been brought to the land of Narnia, she has all of these faults. Jill has “never had a chance” to believe in something that “everyone here would laugh at” before. The school which she attends, the Experiment House, is a school which has mixed boys and girls together. The teachers do not punish the wicked boys in the school but rather consider them to be “interesting psychological cases," and favor them. “Bibles,” also, “were not encouraged at Experiment House.” Each of the children in all of the stories, even Diggory and Polly, though in their own separate ways, must be changed through Narnia and its “abnormalness.”

All of the children who are changed through their experiences in Narnia must be brought to it by someone who has already experienced it. The schools have never led children to this place, and teachers at these schools have never experienced Narnia, or if they have that is not what they are told to speak about. C.S. Lewis has written about a striking subject: how the schools of his time and of course now (though he did not know this) bring children farther away from this land of Narnia, this place where they find their true selves. C. S. Lewis was trying to help the children of his age to believe in something beyond the normal so that they too could come to their full potential. He hoped that these children would then lead their children along the same path. If the world could be full of the people who Lewis hoped to influence through his books, the world would be more like Narnia in its times of splendor; it would be the world as its true self.

At the end, I feel as though I should shout with Puddleglum, "I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it" (The Silver Chair).

*These observations are Jared's own. We've been discussing Dr. Michael Ward's Planet Narnia in class, and I hadn't brought up Lewis' views on education at all.

A Dickensian Tuesday

2011-04-05T11:38:00.000-04:00

We've all read Dickens at some time or another. Maybe you were assigned David Copperfield in high school. Maybe someone forced you to watch Oliver (I know some people like that musical, but I can't stand it) and you later read the novel. Maybe your parents read A Christmas Carol aloud at the holidays. Dickens is still so widely-read (which is a bit unusual for a long-winded Victorian novelist) that the adjective "Dickensian" has become a cliche for poverty-stricken orphans, larger-than-life characters, and unbelievable plot twists.

Don't worry -- even though I used that adjective in my title, there are no orphan children begging in this post. Except for this ornery old one:

["You may be an undigested bit of beef! There's more of gravy than grave about you, whatever you are!"]

If by some strange twist of fate, you haven't read a Dickens novel before, by all means start with the usual ones: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol. The writing in these early novels has a youthful vivacity that's delightful. You can see why he was the J.K. Rowling of his time.

[I can't resist telling my favorite Dickens story here. When the serialized version of his novel The Old Curiosity Shop was being published, Americans had to wait to read the latest installment until a steamer arrived from England with the newspaper. After a cliff-hanger ending the week before, a group of New Yorkers couldn't wait any longer. They gathered at the dock and shouted up the the passengers on deck, "Little Nell?" And the British yelled down, "Dead!" Some people on the dock burst into tears. Now that's strong characterization.]

Still, as much as I love the early Dickens, I love the late Dickens more. You see, as Dickens aged, he sobered up (as do we all) and turned to darker themes. Often these later books feel like Victorian film noir: mysterious crimes, dark corridors, and a proliferation of villains who make Uriah Heap look like a good guy. The best of these novels, and what I think may be Dickens best novel, is Our Mutual Friend, his last completed work.

Of course, the #1 reason you should read the book is so that you can watch the BBC miniseries without guilt.

Just kidding. The novel is better than the movie, of course.

The premise of this book is about as odd as it gets. We start out on a boat in the middle of the Thames with a man and his daughter, Gaffer and Lizzie Hexam. The man's profession? He is a "waterman," which means that he drags corpses out of the water and picks their pockets.

Yep, he's a watery grave thief. Apparently, this profession really did exist in London at the time.

From there, we're swept up in the mystery surrounding the murder of John Harmon, the heir of a huge estate. [His father was a dustman, as in he made a fortune in garbage. Yet another of the odd professions found in this novel.] Mr. Harmon leaves behind him his executor, Mortimer Lightwood; the woman his father wished him to marry in order to claim his inheritance, Bella Wilfer; and his father's most loyal servant and the heir in his stead, Nobby Boffin. When Mortimer Lightwood and his best friend Eugene Wrayburn cross paths with the Hexams during their investigation into John Harmon's murder, our story begins.

It's as tangled and Dickensian of a plot as you wish, which means that the first several chapters can drag a bit as minor characters are introduced at length. Be patient; since this is Dickens, no character is really minor. You'll be glad you stuck with the book when you're mired in the money squabbles, love triangles, and murders in the middle.

The novel showcases the best of both young Dickens and old Dickens. There are the poor orphans, the larger-than-life humorous characters, and the incredible plot twists, but there are also dark murders, psychologically-disturbed villains, and mixed motives. And there are the rays of real hope that enliven the endings of the best of Dickens' work. It's a masterpiece. If you want to know how to write a novel, read this book, and sit at the feet of the master.

There are almost too many Honorable Mentions today.

Dante Alighieri, for the Divine Comedy, which is actually funny, as well as one of the greatest poems of all time.

The poets John Donne and Emily Dickinson. To quote Mrs. Elton, without your poetry, my life would be a blank.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexander Dumas, for making us all happier people and for giving us Sherlock Holmes and the Count of Monte Cristo.

And Fyodor Dostoevsky, for showing us all how crazy we are.

DIY MFA Assignment #1 (Belatedly)

2011-04-04T23:35:00.000-04:00

Because I've been spending more time with that neglected portfolio of poor creative writing this spring, I decided to join the lovely Gabriella Pereira's DIY MFA 2.0 in April. Gabi always has the most delightful thoughts on writing, reading, editing, and, most recently, story ideas. Her focus this month is on developing an idea bank, a well of writing ideas for those days when you're coming up empty. Since that's a lot of the time for me, I'm excited to flex those creative muscles.

Assignment #1 is to start your own image file, which meant that I spent some time culling through the various paintings, photos, etc., that are on my computer. I like to always have a painting of some kind as my desktop picture, to inspire me in whatever I'm doing that day. I've put a couple with my thoughts below. I think I'm inspired by the atmosphere of a picture more than anything else. I usually imagine what sort of people I would meet in that place, and that question leads to all kinds of characters.

[Envy me my artistic friends. My college friend, Jodi Olthouse, did this as a chalk painting, and I love wondering who the underwater blue man is. I think he even wandered into a story I was writing recently...]

[I love antique maps, particularly ones of European cities like Rome, Constantinople, Madrid, and London. They make me wonder about all of the people teeming in them, and about all of the things that could happen, from an upset cart to a pail of dirty water (or worse) out the window.]

[I've always loved vintage photography, especially old photographs of my great-grandparents, etc. This one is intriguing because it's a group of London children fleeing from the Blitz. But they don't look like the Pevensies, do they? What's their story?]

[I like a lot of classical art as well, especially depictions of ordinary life. Here, I'm fascinated by what the kneeling woman is looking at. And why is the woman standing so obviously not looking to her right?]

[Lindisfarne Island, off the Northumbrian coast in the UK, is one of my favorite places in the world. In this picture, you can see the island in the distance, with its picturesque castle on the top of the hill, but it's the shored boat that I'm curious about. Why is it there? And why did its owner not make it all the way to the island?]

[As I said before, I find classical painting one of my favorite inspirations for writing. There's nothing better for a bad writing day than a visit to the local art museum. This one by Van Gogh has always made me curious about the peasant woman, who I imagine is middle-aged, making her way to the church at midday. What is she praying for?]

[A lot of my work is loosely inspired by myths and fairy stories, and I love fairy tale illustrations. This illustration of the Russian folk tale Baba Yaga, by my friend Katie Rose, sparks questions even if you don't know the story. Who is this girl using a skull as a lamp?]

There's more, but that's enough for the moment. Tomorrow: Assignment #2!

Chaunticleer and Suzanne Collins [Letter C]

2011-04-04T11:21:00.001-04:00

It's Monday, so let's keep things short and simple. C is for Chaucer, and today I'll give you a list of five reasons to read his bawdy, humorous, insightful, and clever Canterbury Tales.

Besides, I like to make lists on Monday. Writing my to-do list is the most productive part of my week.

Monday is also the day when I need a little extra -- extra coffee, extra sleep, an extra-long lunch break. I'm still in shock that the weekend's actually over. So watch for a bonus feature at the end of today's post.

And now, without further ado, five reasons (in descending order) to pull that mischievous master of medieval English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer, off the shelf.

5. Middle English sounds amazing. I love the round vowels and lilting consonants, so much that I like to recite the first few lines of the Prologue to myself at random times: in line at the grocery store, in the shower, at the office on a slow day. (I know. I'm odd.) If you've never heard the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales read in Middle English, click play right now.

4. "The Nun's Priest's Tale." This story of a philandering, pompous chicken and his narrow escape is usually billed as a children story -- see Barbara Cooney's lovely Chaunticleer and the Fox -- but I think Chaucer's version is for the adults, since most of the story is about Chaunticleer's fight with his wife over whether his dream was a premonition (his idea) or indigestion (her idea). I've always wished it ended with Chaunticleer retorting to Pertelote, "It wasn't your cooking, honey."

3. "The Wife of Bath's Tale." Her prologue is almost better than her tale: the history of her five marriages and how she bossed her old, wealthy husbands around. But then we get a King Arthur story, feminist-style, with a much-debated conclusion: what woman want most of all is power, or as the Wife of Bath puts it, "maistrie."

2. Chaucer's villains, the Summoner and the Pardoner. I dare you to find me two more slimy characters in all fiction. The Pardoner is the pretty-boy, sweet-talking swindler, but the Summoner is a just a really ugly drunk:

A SUMMONER was with us in that place,
Who had a fiery-red, cherubic face,
All pimpled it was; his eyes were narrow
With black and scabby brows and scanty beard;
He had a face that little children feared.
Via

"Cherubic." You have to love the idea of this ugly guy as a cherub on the ceiling.

1. And the number one reason you should read Chaucer is...

"The General Prologue."

I like the prologue better than the tales. Reading it is like walking back in time and running into a crowd in the Middle Ages. We find out that they were pretty much just like us, and that they were just as funny as we can be. And, of course, we get to meet Chaucer the Pilgrim, which is about as close as we're going to get to a medieval book-signing.

Extra, Extra!

Now for something completely different: five reasons to read Suzanne Collins's Young Adult dystopian saga, The Hunger Games Trilogy!

Any of my close family or friends can tell I'm skeptical of popular fiction, partly because I have an ornery personality and I don't like to run with the crowd. But when John Granger recommended this series, I decided not to delay in reading it, because by doing that with Harry Potter, I missed out for a really long time. The Hunger Games isn't Harry Potter, but it's not all hype. There's a well-told, thoughtful story in the three books, and for that alone you should give it a try. But here are some better reasons.

5. All of the Roman (and Greek) History references. Maybe this is only exciting to a history buff and Latinist. Some are obvious, such as Caesar Flickerman (though I loved that she named Caesar, not the President, but the talk-show host), but I enjoyed tracing the historical and literary roots of the different names: Cinna, Coriolanus Snow, Plutarch, Cressida, Castor and Pollux. And, of course, the Arenas are an obvious borrowing from Roman Gladiatorial games.

[Am I the only one who feels like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was a significant influence on this book? Please send me your thoughts!]

4. The media skewering. Collins is a TV insider, and she satirizes the media as only an insider can. If you're sick and tired of TV and news, this is the book for you. Readers complain of Katniss' endless makeovers for the camera, but isn't that the point?

3. The Districts. Collins gave each District its own culture. Each one works in a single industry (forestry, fishing, coal-mining, etc.), each has only a certain kind of terrain (mountains, plains, seaside), and each has its own set of customs -- marriage ceremonies, songs, bread recipes. In a global world, it's rare to celebrate local culture, but Collins manages to do so without romanticizing life in these smaller, poorer communities.

2. Katniss Everdeen. Her voice captivates us from the beginning. It's tough and honest -- the voice of a survivor. She's amazingly sharp in the arena and also charmingly clueless about anything emotional, but the real reason we love Katniss is for her dedication and loyalty, not just to her family and friends, but to life itself.

1. Peeta Mellark. He's a bit of an unusual hero -- a strong-armed baker who's hopeless with a weapon. But with Peeta, Collins turns the tables on the ordinary action/adventure story. In Panem, people die left and right, so much so that people have objected to the books' violence as desensitizing. But the effect of such violence (which, while always painful, is always tastefully done) is to put Peeta's love, kindness, honesty, and abilities as an artist -- his bread and pasteries, his paintings, his speeches -- into relief. In a world where everyone is as tough as nails, the only hope, the true hero, is someone who is loving and vulnerable. It's really only through Peeta that Katniss can transcend her animal survival instincts and continue to value life and all its beauties, and that's why we all love him.

B is For Bronte [Sisters]

2011-04-02T13:45:00.004-04:00

Via

"B" could be for many things -- bumblebees and butterflies and all of the other Spring beings that are still hiding from the unseasonably cold weather in the Midwest this April. But I think for most readers, or at least most female readers, it means “Bronte.” It’s especially appropriate to talk about the Brontes now, with the recent release of a new Jane Eyre adaptation (Do they never tire of adapting that book? I’m not complaining; just asking). But today I want to talk about a different Bronte -- the forgotten Anne.

The Bronte sisters were among my first discoveries as a reader. One day, when I was about twelve, I found a paperback copy of Jane Eyre lying on my mom’s bedroom floor, and because I was out of books to read, I opened it. Then I went on to Emily’s poems and Wuthering Heights (and wondered how weird these sisters could get). And then I met Anne.

Anne is probably the least read of the Bronte sisters, though I can’t imagine why. It’s true that her first novel, Agnes Grey, seems like an insipid rip-off of Jane Eyre -- the unhappy, mistreated governess -- except that Agnes is far less interesting of a character than Jane. Still, nobody begrudges other authors their freshman effort. It’s not as though anyone doesn't like Charlotte because of her first novel, The Professor.

But for her sophomore novel, Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It’s a love story, of course. It’s set at a forbidding mansion in the country, like all Bronte novels. And it’s the story of a divorced woman’s remarriage.

Let me repeat that. This is the story of a woman, Mrs. Helen "Graham," who leaves her husband. It was written by an early 19th century spinster, and a clergyman’s daughter at that. I know they tell you that the Victorians didn't write about abusive marriages, but this Bronte did.

The novel is narrated by Gilbert Markham, the mysterious Mrs. Graham’s neighbor, and through his eyes we are filled with sympathy for this woman, who has escaped her marriage in order to save her son from her brutish husband’s influence.

Anne Bronte is not the romantic that her sisters are. She is interested in the keenly observed character, as well as the deeply felt scene. She’s interested in emotional realism. Note this passage that, for all of its 19th century diction, I find striking for its emotional clarity. In it, Helen, our protagonist, has realized that something is wrong with her marriage, but since she’s pregnant, she’s in denial:

Last Christmas I was a bride, with a heart overflowing with present bliss, and full of ardent hopes for the future -- though not unmingled with foreboding fears. Now I am a wife: my bliss is sobered, but not destroyed; my hopes diminished, but not departed; my fears increased, but not yet thoroughly confirmed; -- and, thank Heaven, I am a mother too.

Rather than giving us the typical conventions of Gothic fiction, Anne Bronte gives us a a very different sort of character -- an abused wife in denial, unable to accept that her fears have been realized, looking eagerly toward motherhood as the rescue for her marriage, unaware that everything will only worsen when she has a child that her husband can influence and abuse. Much of the middle of the novel is (purportedly) selections from Helen's diaries, and in them Anne explores Helen’s state of mind: her slow acceptance of the reality of her life, the moment when she decides that she should leave, her endless questioning of whether she made the right decision. For a 19th century female writer, this topic is not merely bold -- it’s revolutionary.*

Of course, all turns out well in the end. Helen’s infamous husband dies, and she marries the young and passionately in love Markham -- though only after a sufficient number of trials and tribulations. But along the way we’re given a number of searing scenes, the worst of which is of little Arthur, Helen’s son, with his father’s drinking buddies. I won’t try to rewrite what Anne has already done admirably, but it’s horrifying.

The novel, like all 19th century novels, has a fair amount of the flowery language and melodramatic gestures we associate with the Victorians. But if you look past that, you’ll find a engaging story, with rich characters and a plot that often surprises. It’s not to be missed.

And when you’re done, tell me -- What Bronte novel do you like best? Why?

Honorable Mention today goes to

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for her lovely Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh

Her husband, Robert Browning. If you've never read Fra Lippo Lippi, do it right now.

L. Frank Baum, for the delightful Wizard of Oz.

* All of this emphasis on the emotional realism of the book may have made it sound like a disagreeable read. It’s not. Helen is a delightful character: beautiful, mysterious, funny, and frank. If you read the novel for anything, read it for her.

Mr. Anonymous

2011-04-01T12:06:00.000-04:00

My Medieval Lit professor in college used to joke that his favorite author was Anonymous. He wanted to name his first son after him, but his wife didn't allow it. But today, in honor of nutty English professors and obscure books, we're starting out our A to Z List of Authors with the great, the ancient, and the unknown.

If there's one thing that readers like more than the book itself, it's the author's biography. What is Harry Potter without J.K. Rowling's rags-to-riches story? Or David Copperfield without Charles Dickens' childhood in the workhouse? As modern readers, we'll take a side of biography with our fiction, please.

This is why no one likes the anonymous author. I'm sure that these ancient writers were interesting people, because their stories are energetic and thrilling and poetic. Still, they left us nothing about themselves. No biography, no signature -- not even a name. And in world of book signings and favorite writers, this discourages readers. Many assume that an anonymous author writes a boring book.

That's a shame, because if you haven't read Anonymous, you're missing out. For example...

A gruesome monster and a handsome stranger (Beowulf)...
Best friends to the end (Gilgamesh)...
A green man, King Arthur, and a seductive lady (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)...
Star-crossed lovers (Wulf and Eadwacer)...
Hilarious, sometimes scandalous, riddles (Anglo-Saxon Riddle Collections)...

So today, take a dip into Anonymous section of the bookstore -- which will probably mean that embarrassing back corner labeled Medieval Literature or Poetry where a bunch of scholarly types are huddled over multiple translations of books that look boring. Don't be scared off. Not only will you find some fascinating reading, but as a writer you'll find a powerful reminder that what matters most in writing is the book. Not our platform, not our name, not our marketing (though that's all necessary), but the quality of our work. If our book is engaging, well-written, and insightful, people will keep reading it even when we're not around to promote it anymore.

If you want to really enjoy Anonymous literature, however, you'll need a good translation. The best translators remember that the original audiences for these stories were ordinary people -- fishermen, farmers, and merchants -- who gathered to hear a story after a party. An English translation should be fresh, clear, and poetic -- in other words, how the book would have sounded to the original audience.

Some recommendations:

Don't ever read another translation. I'd read Gilgamesh before and thought it was boring, but this poem made me cry. I fell in love with the characters. To this day I wonder what happened to Siduri...

In this anthology, some of the best English poets translate some of the earliest English poems. I can't think of a better way to be introduced to Anglo-Saxon poetry. You've been cheated if you've never read The Wanderer, The Seafarer, or any Anglo-Saxon Riddles, and here you can read them in translations by Mary Jo Salter, Greg Delanty, and Billy Collins. You'll find poetry for every mood and occasion, as the poems' subjects range from loss to love to humor to valor to faith.

Die-hard medievalists may not like this translation, but the rest of us were captivated by Heaney's poetry. I read this book three times when I was in high school and twice in college, and I still can't get enough of Beowulf, Hrothgar, Grendel, and Wiglaf. And now you can buy a great illustrated edition with pictures of Anglo-Saxon weaponry, dress, etc., so you can imagine exactly what Beowulf looked like when he ripped the monster's arm off. [Note: Please do not mistake this excellent book with the movie of the same name. The movie is a travesty.]

I've never found a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that I really loved. Many people are devoted to J.R.R. Tolkein's version, but I prefer Marie Borrof's translation, thought Winny's is pretty decent as well. In this case, it doesn't really matter -- this story of Green men (and we thought we had paranormal fiction!), King Arthur, Sir Gawain, seduction, and betrayal is a good read no matter what version you have.

Honorable Mentions for the letter A go to the following authors:

Louis May Alcott (especially Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom)
Aesop
Elizabeth Alder (especially The King's Shadow)

If you're in need of more reading suggestions, try them!

A to Z Blogging Challenge!

2011-03-31T20:48:00.000-04:00

You may have all noticed (ahem) that I'm a bit of a desultory blogger. Which is my fancy word for "lazy." Right now, there's a post on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows languishing in drafts, just waiting for some final editing. That's how lazy I am. (Yes, I will edit it and get it up soon.)

I've been toying with the idea of signing up for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, but I had no idea what I'd post on for 26 days. It was the alphabet "theme" that really threw me. What on earth could I think of to talk about for 26 days straight? I'm just not that interesting, people.

But, I thought it might be good for my blogging. For the whole "discipline" part.

And then, tonight, at practically the eleventh hour, I thought of what I could talk about for a whole month or more and still stay interesting.

So, every day in April except Sundays, you can come to yours truly and find out 26 Writers (in Alphabetical Order) that YOU MUST READ. And I'll tell you why you should read them in a paragraph or less, so that you can quit reading me and get to reading them (and also because that's all I have time for every day).

Some of these authors might surprise you. Some you may never have heard of. But I hope that the "A to Z Blogging Challenge" for me becomes the "Try a New Author Challenge" for all of you.

Happy Reading!

The Harry Potter Post, Part 1: The Snob's Confession

2011-03-15T10:29:00.000-04:00

Everyone has their own story of how they discovered Harry Potter, and, like chick flicks, most of these stories are the same.

1) Protagonist scorns Harry Potter after being begged to read the books by a wild-eyed devotee (friend, co-worker, son or daughter).

2) Protagonist finds himself in unwilling possession of a Harry Potter book.

3) Protagonist spends a single night gorging himself on said book.

4) Protagonist becomes a Dobby-like proselyte and sets out to convert all of his friends. Expect crazy t-shirts, HP theme park trips, and midnight showings of the movies to follow.

Via

I have to embrace the cliche and say that all of this happened to me (except for the t-shirts and theme parks). Which gives us the rest of this post to actually talk about the important thing: HARRY POTTER.

If you're here, I hope you've read John Granger's Harry Potter criticism. If you're done in the Hogwarts Professor archives (which takes a really long time), then you should have moved on to The Hog's Head. Between them, the Potter Pundits have covered nearly every topic in the Potter Universe, and I'm not really sure that I have something to add to the conversation -- other than my surprise at the books themselves.

As I was reading them, I kept thinking, "How is this even possible?" J.K. Rowling's series defied everything I had ever thought popular genre fiction could do.

Of course, the novels have their faults. Until the seventh book (where the prose significantly improves), the writing is pedestrian at best and awkward at worst. Several of the novels could have used a bit of editing, and the teen romance was trite.

But most of my complaints end there. The novels were intricately plotted. The characters were living and deep. The dialogue was memorable and well-paced. And, most surprising of all, I found in Harry Potter a plot that spoke to me deeply, as a person, in a way that only good books do.

I've been reading classic fiction most of my life, for the simple reason that it's so much better than other fiction. It's not light, and that's the point. It roots itself inside you, and you're never the same again. Reading Jane Austen or the Brontes or Shakespeare is an experience, not just light entertainment, and it's an addictive experience at that. You find yourself reaching back to the Classics for more, more transformation, more of what Kafka calls "the axe to break the frozen sea inside us."

That's not to say that Classic novels are always difficult. I devoured all of Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in two days, and I re-read Pride & Prejudice over the course of a weekend while I was in college. In fact, I usually find the best Classics to be the ones that are easiest to read -- the ones that read like popular novels but plumb the depths of human nature as deeply as any philosophical work. [See Jane Austen for more.]

I've never thought of myself a snob, but Harry Potter convinced me that I had become a bit of one. I'm in no position to judge Harry Potter's much-debated "Classic" status. That's a question for the ages -- for my children in their old age, and for my grandchildren. But this much I can say:

The Harry Potter books are good books. And, by literary standards, they really shouldn't be.

They were just too popular to be good. They were written by an ordinary woman of average education. They weren't composed as a magnum opus by a literary scholar. They weren't despised by all but the few. Everybody liked them - even me. John Granger criticizes the academy being blinded by "genre revulsion, institutional misogyny, and...'the Sarah Palin syndrome',"* and I think those blinders can extend far past the academy to every student who has read the wrong sort of English textbook (See Spotlight: A Close-Up Look at the Artistry and Meaning of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga for more). Reading Harry Potter has reminded me of an important truth: Reading is a human thing. It's for everyone. It's not something that, first and foremost, reaches your mind. It reaches to the center of your being, and there, we're all a lot alike.

J.K. Rowling accomplishes this by her famously-intricate plotting, and I think my own previous prejudice against the books can be summarized in one simple sentence: I'd forgotten about plot. This isn't surprising, considering that it's not really something we talked a lot about during my English classes. We tended to focus on language, psychological depth, and themes, and while I learned a great deal from all of that, we always neglected the black sheep of the literary family -- the Plot. I guess that's because scholarly readers now associate plots with action movies and genre fiction, which we all enjoy in our spare time as a relaxation from the real work of the mind.

But Rowling has shown us that plot can be art -- in fact, is the heart of the storytelling art. I was overwhelmed with this at nearly every turn in the series. I'll use the climax of Book Five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as an example.

First, watch the movie version of this scene -- you know, the one with the sand on the floor and Harry with the weird green eyes. [It's on YouTube here.] It's a nice scene, very moving, filled with the message that love and friendship conquer evil -- all of that good stuff.

Now compare that scene to what happens in the book: [It's a long quote. Bear with me.]

And then Harry's scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance.

He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature's began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape --

And when the creature spoke, it used Harry's mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move....

"Kill me now, Dumbledore...."

Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again....

"If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy...."

Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us....End it, Dumbledore....Death is nothing compared to this....

And I'll see Sirius again....

And as Harry's heart filled with emotion, the creature's coils loosened, the pain was gone, Harry was lying facedown on the floor, his glasses gone, shivering as though he lay upon ice, not wood... (pgs. 815-816)

In comparison to this, the movie version seems like a 19th century moralistic fable hitting us over the head with its message. There is no preachiness here, no revelation, no bold statement from Harry in defiance of Voldemort. Rowling remains consistent with the character she has created -- in this book, a very selfish, confused teenage boy. He's not in any position to fight Voldemort. In fact, his thoughts in the scene are all of capitulation, and considering that only a few moments before he tried using an unbreakable curse, he's as close to capitulating to Voldemort as at any other point in the series. In fact, the quote begins with Voldemort and Harry "bound by pain," an image that works on many levels, but here reminds us of the knife's edge that Harry stands on.

And, then, inexplicably, Harry is released. He is in pain, he is filled with the desire to die, with sadness at his godfather's death, and then he finds himself free. A lesser writer would have explained why this frees him, or, worse, would have given Harry an epiphany as he writhes on the floor.** But Rowling is a plotter, and she knows that now is not the time to show her hand. Where a literary novel would have given us several pages of internal dialogue, Rowling gives us a single phrase: I'll see Sirius again. She follows the grade-school writing dictum "show, don't tell" and reminds us when she does that we might have forgotten the power of that simple rule in the midst of our psychological probings and internal monologues. In the end, even though the scene is about the improbable possession of a teenage wizard by his powerful archenemy, Rowling's is the greater realism. A boy like Harry would have no revelations in a moment like this, but he would wish to die to see his godfather, and that simple moment of honest plotting becomes one of the most profound of the book.

Up Next: Why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is my favorite book that I read this year [and it's only March!].

*By this, Granger refers to the prejudice of the academy against conservative mothers who - gasp - can write, speak, or lead political lives.

**Even later, when Rowling offers us an explanation of what happened in the most climactic scene, she shows equal restraint. Dumbledore's only commentary is "That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you" (pg. 844). It's a beautiful explanation, but one that still leaves the reader to tease out its many implications.

"She will have music wherever she goes"

2011-03-12T12:55:00.000-05:00

I know it's now taboo to apologize for not posting on your blog, but I don't really get this newest addition to the etiquette book. Since when has it been bad manners to apologize?

That said, I'm not too sorry that I haven't posted on my blog, simply because there hasn't been time. But I am sorry. I've missed you all.

In the past month, lots of frustrating things have happened -- wrangling with insurance companies, the worst stomach flu of my life, lots of friction with a fellow employee, and a nasty musical altercation with some choir friends. But even more exciting things have happened, and what is a blog for, except to share the joys of life with as many people as possible? I like to think of joyful things as the music of our days, and if they are, my life has been quite tuneful lately. I feel like the old nursery rhyme

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes

She will have music wherever she goes.

[N.B. Upon researching, I find that this nursery rhyme refers to Lady Godiva. I do not mean to imply by this reference that I resemble Lady Godiva in anything but the music.]

So, without further ado, highlights from February, a month so short that it was over before I remembered to sign the date correctly.

1. My most important news of the month: I had a book review accepted for publication. This is my first official, post-graduation publication. Me, my resume, and I are thrilled. Not to mention my parents.

Does this make me a real writer now? I'm not sure. But here's hoping.

2. I got tickets to see Joshua Bell in concert in Indiana. I've met Joshua Bell once before, as a trembling junior high violinist. All I remember is that he was overwhelmingly good looking and very kind to a shy girl who admitted with a blush that I "play a little" while he signed my CDs. I still treasure those CDs, and I'd recommend them to you.

Still, I've never seen Joshua Bell in concert. I've never had the money before. But this time the stars -- or rather, time, place, and my pocketbook -- aligned.

And he's playing Tchaikovsky!! I may never get over my excitement for this one.

3. I went to the Climacus Conference, which really deserves a post of its own. The conference had the most lovely atmosphere: children running around, coffee flowing freely, conversations and lectures moving fluidly together, such that the two days felt like one, sustained discussion.

The highlights...

-- Meeting John Granger and having him sign my copy of his book.
-- Talking over writing mentorship with Andrew Kern.
-- Dr. Vigen Guroian's talk (he's always splendid)
-- Meeting monks from the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia. Their soaps have the most glorious smells!
-- Getting to tell Bobby Maddex in person how much Ancient Faith Radio has meant to my growth as an Orthodox Christian.
--Seeing Dr. Bradley Birzer and other college friends!
--St. Michael's Orthodox Church! Their liturgy was beautiful (bravo to their cantors!), vespers in St. George Chapel was stunning, and Fr. Alexis Kouri was a wonderfully wise speaker at the conference.
--Eighth Day Books! They're always my favorite table at a conference, and once again I bought more than I ought (and I'm not apologizing for it).

3. After lots of planning during the months of December and January, I began work on a new fiction manuscript. Some days I'm so completely buried in it that I forget who I am. I think this is a good sign.

4. I got a job writing website copy!

That probably doesn't sound as exciting to you as it does to me, but pretend that, like me, you've spent the past six months tracking deliveries on spreadsheets, proofreading weekly reports, sending meeting notices, and arranging airfare. Then imagine being asked to write website copy. It was (sort of) like being asked to be creative at the office. Emphasis on "sort of." But still. I even got to use the word "disparate" -- until my editors cut it out.

5. I've read lots of good books in the past month. Here's a partial list; reviews will follow and be linked when I get them up.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (Yes, I finally finished, and now you get to hear what I think...)
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (re-read, but it's been a long time)
Spotlight by John Granger
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

6. I finally decided that instead of going abroad or going to graduate school, or any of the other crazy plans I'd concocted for my 23rd year, I'm going to stay right where I am -- Midwest, day job at IT company, living with family. It might sound a bit hum-drum, but this past year has actually been one of the most exciting of my life, as a person and as a writer. I've always been one for change -- it becomes a habit when you move five times as a child -- but right now I'm going to stay put and keep gleaning the wheat from this one field.

Phew. That's one more thing to take off of my "To Do" list. ~~Decide immediate future.~~

7. Last but not least, new blogs! I've been reading the following great people this month, and you should too.

The Hog's Head

A Light Inside

The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond

Glimpses into Grace

A Bowl of Moss and Pebbles

Check out the Blogroll for more new links as I get them up. For that matter, check out the Bookshelf -- it's updated as well.

I'm looking forward to browsing all of your blogs and finding out what you've been up to while I've been missing. In the meantime, what was the best thing that happened to you in February?

Friday Favorites: The Climacus Conference, 2011

2011-01-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have a website that you visit so much you're embarrassed to admit it? It's in your favorites, and you return to each day (or hour), hoping against hope that there will be news?

This link as been my obsession for a while now. I was sure I would be the first to see when they posted information on this year's conference.

But (of course) my mom beat me to finding out about the 2011 Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY. Still, I'm wildly excited and have already made my reservations.

I wish I could persuade you to go to this conference by telling you wonderful stories about my experiences of last year, but no -- I missed this conference by a few weeks last February, and I've been hoping against hope since then that they would repeat it.

I discovered the conference through Ancient Faith Radio, which broadcast recordings of some of last year's talks. On a whim one afternoon while I was cleaning my room, I turned on John Granger's talk about "Why Reading Matters: Great Books and the Life in Christ."

I had heard something about this Granger guy -- something to do with Harry Potter and great literature and alchemy. I was pretty sure he was a crackpot, but I like anything about reading. Besides, argumentation is the only sport that I don't attend strictly as a spectator, and I looked forward to demolishing his arguments at the dinner table that evening. Not that that's a fair fight -- but it would be a nice, long-distance skirmish.

That talk turned me upside down and back again. It's one of the best descriptions of the power of literature that I've ever heard.

I had just spent four years studying nothing but literature -- its beauty, its method, its great authors. And now a Harry Potter pundit was transforming my world with what he was saying about books and their effect upon us.

I won't try to paraphrase that talk for you right now, as it's Friday and I'm tired and hours of filling in spreadsheets has somewhat addled my brain. Suffice it to say -- you should spend your Friday night with that talk.

Since then, I've been dying to meet John Granger, and now I have my chance, and as a bonus I get to hear several of my other favorite speakers: Dr. Vigen Guroian, Andrew Kern, Bobby Maddex, and my dear old history prof, Dr. Brad Birzer. I hope he speaks on Tolkein.

And if you're anywhere near Kentucky, you should come too. The Bluegrass State is beautiful, and Louisville is a nice city.

Beware for your pocket-book, however. Eighth Day Books will be selling, and the last time I met up with them at a conference I came back with a lighter purse -- and a richer mind.

Feeling just fine...[Tuesday's Adventure]

2011-01-27T19:34:00.001-05:00

I think I've used that phrase twenty times in the past two days. "Actually, I'm feeling just fine," I say to the unknown voice on the other end, who pauses, gives a surprised "Oh," and then hangs up as quickly as possible.

Why is all of Dayton (seemingly) interested in my welfare?

Because I was in a traffic accident Tuesday night.

And before you ask, I'm fine, my brother's fine, and other than possible internal damages to its suspension my car will (probably) be fine, too. My little collision left us scared, but unharmed.

Tuesday had been a pretty good day for me, for several reasons.

1) It was a slow day at the office, which meant I had lots of time for the important things in life: gazing out the window, chatting with Cindy, drinking large mugs of hot tea, wearing my fuzzy boots.

2) I ate at Panera Bread for lunch -- which wasn't actually a good thing. In fact, I was prepared to write a whole post on why I hate Panera. It used to be so good, and now it's just so not, and I couldn't understand, as I sat there reading Harry Potter and eating a mediocre tomato soup, why I hadn't just gone to Chipotle. I was also mad at myself for forgetting to pack my own lunch.

Enough pouting, I guess. As my co-worker Les would say -- cry me a river.

3) I was picking my brother up from choir after work, which meant that I had a few hours to kill in between office-time and pick-up time. Since I was in an area with a great library and my favorite used bookstore, I went book shopping. At the library I was excited to find this:

I mean, Deor translated by Seamus Heaney, and Billy Collins doing Anglo-Saxon Riddles? Irresistible. It's remarkably complete, too -- most similar editions ignore the Biblical and Didactic poetry in favor of the riddles and elegies, but this one includes both.

They were remarkably short on books about Medieval alchemy, however, so I was resigned to not finding anything for the research I was doing (inspired by some comments John Granger has made about literary alchemy), when I realized that I was passing a Half-Price Bookstore and that I had another 30 minutes before I picked up my brother. And, while I found a book on alchemy, my much greater prize was this:

Yes -- a UK edition of Harry Potter, complete with the correct title. I actually found Books 1-4 in UK editions, all for around $5 each, which is cheaper than you can get the new ones on Amazon. After hyperventilating in the children's section, I rushed to the counter as quickly as I could to buy them, and then set off for my car, smiling, singing -- feeling very lucky. I was particularly thankful to have my car -- it's been out of order since December, and it felt so nice to have wheels again.

I picked up my brother with only a few wrong turns in the University parking lot, and then we headed out to join my mom and sister at a local barbecue joint for dinner. We were only about 5 minutes away, which was good because I was starving.

And then, of course, I stopped at a red light and was rear-ended by a little Honda. I was going to be hungry for a lot longer.

I actually didn't realize I was being rear-ended when it happened. I was stopped, and then all of a sudden I was shooting off to the right. The whole thing was very surreal -- I turned to my brother, asked what he thought was happening, and we both agreed we had no idea, before I saw that we were about to hit a pole on the side of the road and I hit my brakes and narrowly missed the pole. I thought that my back tires had blown, and I was cursing my stupidity in not getting them changed, when I got out and saw that there was a blue Honda in the middle of the intersection with a crushed front.

It was a long night. I've never been in a real traffic accident before, and I was thanking God and my dad that I had my car insurance card in the car (if it had been up to me, I would have lost it, or forgotten to put it in, or some such thing). I learned a few lessons that night, though.

1) Always bring your coat when it's snowing outside. I know this should seem like common sense, but I was tired when I left for work that morning, and by the time I realized that I'd left it I didn't think it worth my time to go back for it. I regretted that. Since I was a kid my mom has insisted on us bringing a jacket with us "in case we get in a car accident." Per usual, mom is always right.

2) Thank God for nice old ladies. Jared's choir pianist was behind us when the accident happened, and she waited for 15 minutes to offer herself as a witness. She also said lots of nice, encouraging things to me, which, considering that I probably looked like a fool -- shivering in a thin sweater, my hands shaking so hard I could barely control them long enough to write out my name and phone number for the other driver--was exactly what I needed.

3) Policemen are nice. I know they teach this to you in Kindergarten, but seeing is believing. He was courteous, relaxed, and clear in his instructions, which was good, because I don't think I could understand anything more than the most basic.

4) Everything is funnier after a scare. Really. It's as though the only thing I injured was my funny bone.

I've spent the past few days housebound, but healthy and happy. Nearly every Chiropractor and neck-and-back specialist in the region has called to check up on me, I think. They all have different styles: some are business-like, others chatty, and others sympathetic. They all seem shocked when I tell them that I'm all right. I guess I have an unusually strong back, or something.

My brother is still exclaiming on how happy he is to be alive, but I'm just sad that I lost my wheels again. After a month and a half of not driving it because the heater died, now I can't drive it because some person pushed me into a pole. Go figure.

But it is nice to stay home and work in my lounge clothes. Count your blessings, and thank God for all things!

I'm Really Rosie, and I'm Rosie Real...

2011-01-24T22:40:00.002-05:00

Jillian and I wore this movie out watching it. I can still sing all of the Really Rosie words...

And...Part 2!

I would say that "One Was Johnny" is my favorite...

But I also love "Alphabet Soup"...

I guess I learned the lesson of "Pierre" -- I CARE!!!

Friday...err....Monday's Favorite Things

2011-01-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't turn up last Friday and give you anything to be happy about. I know -- you've suffered all weekend.

It wasn't that I didn't have anything to be happy about. I did. My mom and I ate at a new (well, new-to-me) French restaurant, Rue Dumaine. As usual, I spent most of our visit trying to surreptitiously catch glimpses of the people sitting next to us or listen to their (hilarious) conversations. On our left: blonde vegetarian and her hunky date. On our right: boisterious party of two couples that included a few academics with some kooky opinions. I was more preoccupied by the conversation to the left, especially when the waiter looked into the woman's empty blue eyes and said in an exasperated voice, "Did you understand what I said?"

Also, I finished reading a novel, had some great conversations with my parents, and watched Return to Cranford with my two younger siblings.

And I kissed my dog. A lot.

But just when I was getting used to it being the weekend, Monday came back.

Now, I'm not one of those Monday-morning-haters. Sometimes I really like Mondays. Nor was today a particularly grueling day. After a busy morning, I had a relativity light afternoon where I tied up some of the many odds and ends that were left from my crazy Friday last week. But work is work, which means that sometimes it's a little hum-drum, a little boring, and a little unexciting -- especially when you're in an administrative position.

I was listening to Ancient Faith Radio -- otherwise known as the best radio station on the internet -- and working on a user's guide for some technical equipment. It was boring me almost to tears at that particular moment, though I think that the tears were more due to my eyes being tired from staying up late and reading during the past few nights. The station was playing a booming voice saying the Litanies in Russian, and I thought about listening to something else. After all, loud, chanting Russian men aren't exactly good background music.

Then this started playing:

We sang this in church choir this Christmas, and, as usually happens when I learn a Classical piece for myself, I fell in love with it. I don't know why there's always some distance between me and Classical music if I just listen to it on a CD, but there is. I either have to see an impassioned performance, or (my favorite) learn it myself and spend hours going over each note, until it's become part of me.

When that started playing, I paused for a minute and, rather than letting my bleary eyes close, looked out the window.

Now let me just say -- my new desk is perfect for me. It's a tiny white table sandwiched in between two larger cubicles, and I think for most people it would be a bit scrunched. To me, it's cosy. I can never keep more than one or two stacks of paper on there, and since I never like to have more than one or two stacks of paper on my desk anyway, that fits me just fine.

My new desk is also in front of an upstairs window -- unlike my old one, which was in a windowless corner. For me, the window is a sine qua non for survival. I never knew how desperate I was for sunlight until I lived in a basement dormitory room at college for two years. After I moved, it was as though this nasty, niggling depression had lifted. My room was light and airy and happy again. Since then, I've tried to get window seats, window rooms, and now window-desks because, like a cat, I like to sit in the sun.

So, all that is to say, not sleeping at my desk meant looking out the window.

It was snowing, and not a heavy, blizzard-y snow or just a trickle of measly flakes. There were good, fat flakes falling steadily from the sky, and all of the trees were blanketed in them. Outside, a tabby cat that my co-workers have named our Bobcat was tracking something, probably a bird, through the snow. The scene was really quite lovely. I don't know why I was so surprised by it, but I was. It was in such contrast to our office, an older building now going through renovations. There was the sound of sawing next door, there was globe wallpaper peeling off the walls -- and then a perfect woodland scene.

And suddenly I realized how happy I should be. The snow was beautiful. The woods behind my office were beautiful. I had a warm cup of Tulsi tea in my hand, I was wearing my favorite black sweater and my new snow boots (yes, snow boots with a dress skirt -- I was cold), and Rachmaninov was playing. I was even humming the words to myself, which probably looked weird, but since I'm only twenty-two, my middle-aged coworkers probably assumed it was some popular rock song instead of Rachmaninov.

What else can you ask of the world? Not much, I submit. Not much at all.

As Anne Shirley would say, there's so much scope for the imagination out there.

Tuesday's Top Ten -- My Version of "The Office"

2011-01-18T23:10:00.000-05:00

I was moved to a new desk this week -- or rather, a little white picnic table sandwiched in between some other cubicles while they finish renovating. I like small desks, so I'm happy.

While I don't write about it much, IT office culture is, well....interesting. I don't watch "The Office," but I thought I'd give you my own version. Here are a few of my favorites from the last few days...

10. While walking past the AIT development room (Don't ask -- just accept. That's how I cope with the plethora of IT acronyms.) yesterday, I heard loud shouts of "TMI!" and then "Well, it was just dirty underwear..." I'm glad I didn't hear more, because I don't get paid to know about my co-workers' undergarments. Especially my male co-workers' undergarments.

9. I share my new office with an Italian, and in one day of sharing an office, he's told me about his crazy sister, his crazier second cousin, a cow epidemic, and a researcher who's cloning Mammoths. "Why would you do that?" he asked. "Where would the Mammoths live?"

8. During a lull this afternoon, the three of us in the upstairs office contemplated buying the defunct old gas station next door and making it our private gas station. I think the costs would outweigh what I'd save in gas, but it would feel so nice to not have a gas budget...

I think we were bored. I know I was, because I was plugging rows of numbers into a spreadsheet. Data entry -- blech.

7. While discussing last names today, a co-worker informed me that his Old-World family name was "Muck." They changed it to "Mock" when they got here -- for obvious reasons.

6. They're doing construction in the room next to ours, and whenever they start sawing through something, the entire room coughs like we're going to die and races for the water cooler. It's starting to sound like a hospital upstairs. Which makes us laugh. Which makes us cough more.

5. I had a conversation today in which I successfully won over two converts to the "Oxford Comma." I felt like a very good grammar proselytizer. If you too are in doubt of your comma's salvation, please contact me.

4. One co-worker asked me today what he should put in my father's (belated) Christmas gift basket. My dad doesn't like a lot of foods. As in, he doesn't like cheese, chocolate, wine, or fruit -- you know, gift-basket stuff. My co-worker felt his options were limited to buying him a side of beef because the only thing he knows that my dad likes are hamburgers. I told him to put in the cheese and wine and chocolate so that my mom and siblings and I could eat it.

Hey, that's what we always did when I was growing up. Now that I think of it, I should have told him that I'm a big fan of Merlot and Brie.

3. My dad is a bit of a packrat. He's up to his ears in papers, and his boss likes to say that he's a tree-killer. I keep telling him there's this new thing called a computer that can actually store documents electronically, but he doesn't believe me.

I love working with my dad. I have so much more to tease him about.

2. I'm a lone Mac user in a world of PCs, which makes me a freak in some people's eyes and one of the blessed few in others. I will always defend it as the better computer. Our IT department tried to argue me into accepting a PC today. I stood my ground.

PCs = 0. Mac = 1.

And Number #1...

1. This isn't actually an office anecdote, but I couldn't resist. I went to submit a passport application today at the post office, where I was waited on by a man named Cliff. He had a New York accent, which sounds strange here in the Midwest, but he was polite and thorough. When he saw me writing my mom's birthplace, he said, "Oh, Fort _____. I've been there." I nodded and kept writing, but he persisted. He leaned towards me across the desk and said what was either, "I was taking a prisoner there once," or "I was taken a prisoner there once." I'm not sure which, but I'm still laughing at Cliff the Post-Office Convict.

In short, being at the office is all fun and games.

Except for the work part.

And, ok, there are the snide comments and backbiting at my office, too. I didn't say that I was going to give you a whole episode.

But, no, there is no office romance. Just for the record.

Friday Favorites: Meadowlark Restaurant

2011-01-14T16:49:00.001-05:00

[Editorial note: Please excuse my dust. I've been making various tweaks/updates to the blog for a while now. I think I'm almost done!]

Julie asked today "What's right with the world?" I'll tell you.

Grilled hanger steak slathered in Worcestershire Butter, next to a little mound of buttermilk mashed potatoes and a pile of lightly-grilled vegetables du jour. That's what.

Oh, and a cider-braised pork belly appetizer served with a crisp apple-pecan slaw, splashed with a cider-mustard vinaigrette.

Where is this heaven, you ask?

Right here in my little corner of the midwest.

And, no, I'm not talking about my own kitchen. If you've read my bio, you know that my cooking repertoire is somewhat, shall we say, limited. I make a good grilled cheese sandwich and great banana bread, and it ends right there.

No, I'm talking about a little, hole-in-the-wall restaurant in my town named "Meadowlark."

It's the most ordinary restaurant you've ever seen. It's quite literally a little sliver of a building, sandwiched between a mattress store and a 5/3 bank. Outside there's just a yellow sign that says:

(The picture isn't mine; many thanks to http://www.urbanspoon.com)

Pretty blase, huh?

When you get inside, the walls are a cheery yellow and red, and there is art all over them -- photography, paintings, etc. Local artists are featured, usually one a month, which means that the inside is constantly sporting a new "look." My favorite was a recent exhibition of HUGE photographs, covering nearly half a wall each. One of them was of a large brown cow in the snow, staring right at the camera and chewing contentedly. It was inspiring to the appetite, really.

The tables are a simple light oak, and the napkins are big cloth ones in all sorts of mismatching, brightly-colored prints. The place is so cramped that you are inevitably knocking knees and tripping over other people's coats and handbags, which probably contributes to the intimate feel.

They don't have more than 10 or 12 waiters and waitresses, which means that you get to know them, and they know your favorites. Meadowlark has a special hamburger, which my entire family of six has been known to order all at the same time. If you were there, you'd know why -- it's cooked to perfection in red wine, with a slice of white cheddar melted on top and slathered with their very own mustard-mayo. We were known by our favorite waitress as the "Lark burger family" for awhile.

The food is, well, superb, or I wouldn't be writing this post, but it has a very home-cooked flavor to it. Hoppin' Jon is on the menu, the only coffee they serve is the ordinary stuff that your grandma and grandpa drink (no fancy espresso drinks), and their most popular meal is Sunday Brunch, where everyone from little old ladies to young families gathers and enjoys fresh orange juice, eggs, toast, and fresh-baked banana bread. This almost sounds like Bob Evans, except that the food is gourmet. They advertise on the menu that they get most of their ingredients from a beloved local grocery store named Dorothy Lane -- probably the place where you'll get the freshest groceries in town. It's nice to know that your food is heathy, as well as delicious.

Kate Wiley, the owner, is usually there, bustling around in the kitchen, packing up your take-out order, or chatting with people in the restaurant. Even though the food is gourmet, the dress is casual, and the clientele is a mixed-bag, from the hipster to the granny to the 5 year-old. The place has a very communal feel, and I think that's what I like best about it -- the sense that small-town courtesy and local pride aren't completely dead, even in this lifeless, inland metropolis.

All of this praise for a tiny restaurant might seem extravagant, but the thing is, I don't really enjoy eating out. The atmosphere usually ruins it for me. It's either too loud to talk, too uptight and dressy to really enjoy your food, too hard to get reservations, or the food itself is just sub-par. Most nights, I'd rather eat my cooking -- or even not cook at all and eat pancakes for dinner.

So it's saying a lot to say I love this place. It's pretty much the only place I'm happy to eat out in in my city, and we always go here for celebrations -- birthdays, homecomings, graduations, etc. The atmosphere is jolly, the noise level isn't usually too loud, and the service is prompt. You rarely see anything but smiles on people's faces in Meadowlark, and it's easy to see why. The place, its people, its food -- it's all just so...beautiful.

Sometimes I think this is what Dostoevsky meant when he said that beauty would save the world. I don't think he was just talking about grand, majestic beauties, like his Brothers Karamazov. I think he also meant the little beautiful things we do every day for each other -- the hug, the smile, the pretty outfit, the nice table setting, the Mozart playing in the background, the flower in a vase. Finding a little restaurant that embodies such small beauties encourages me, at least, the infuse more brightness into my day -- like a freshly-cut pear on a butter-yellow plate, or nice cloth napkins for a hurried weekday dinner.

And really, that's what's right with the world. That there still are beauties in it for us to enjoy, and still all of us to enjoy them, and still a God who makes all things new.

Happy Friday!

Top Ten Tuesdays! Inaugural Post

2011-01-11T19:15:00.000-05:00

My mom came up with this idea, and you should go read hers about her favorite things about homeschooling. As for my inaugural Top Ten, I thought I would choose my ten favorite things about living at home as a 20-something.

10. I have fried-egg breakfasts with my 14 year-old brother in the morning when he and I are the only two awake.

9. I still eat dinners at home, around the table that my grandfather made, with all (or most, when Jillian is gone) of my family members.

[Hmm...too many food-related ones. I do like more than the food...]

8. I still get to live with our brown lab Lacey, which means she rubs herself on all of my clothes, bites my hand while we wrestle, and in short gets more love and affection and nibbles from me -- and from all of us -- than any dog should have. See this for the gruesome details.

7. I give my 12 and 14 year-old siblings kisses before they go to bed.

6. My brother and sister still come down to my room and ask Latin questions, read their favorite parts from novels, and tell me about the funny thing that just happened.

5. I re-read children's novels off of our shelves, and they are the copies I loved when I was a little girl.

4. I'm here for family movie nights, which usually involve snacks, loud discussions (or arguments, take your pick), and fast-paced movie quoting. Oh, and way more pausing than my dad thinks you should do while still watching a movie. Favorite movies for this include Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and almost any Pixar movie.

3. I'm still here to watch my dad win all of the games during game night and listen to my mom scream as she desperately tries to beat him. He beat us all at Harry Potter Clue this Sunday.

2. My siblings and I read-aloud when we drive places, and we all giggle at the same parts.

And the number one thing I like most about living at home...

1. My mom still wakes me up late at night to tell me the latest weird/gross/interesting/profound thing she's read. This makes for great conversations and interesting dreams. :-)

You should join us! Write up your own Top Ten Favorites/Best/Worst/etc. and link back to this post!

My Liturgy Buddy

2011-01-10T23:00:00.000-05:00

I'd like to say that I stand in church every Sunday, rapt with attention to each word of our beautiful service, my eyes fixed only on the altar and the icon of Christ above it.

I don't.

I'm constantly shifting about, looking at my neighbor, playing with my music book for choir, and zoning out because I'm tired. This is normal, of course, and every Sunday I do my best to pay attention as well as I can. Being a choir member helps -- I have to really think about the Troparion of the day in order to sing well about Christ's Birth or Baptism.

Icons help, too.

There's no shortage of them in our new sanctuary, and they give my wandering eyes somewhere to rest, something to remind me about the significance of what is going on. I'm so grateful that I get to participate in Divine Liturgy every week, but when you're tired and without coffee and your feet hurt, you need something to help you remember the Divine part of it.

The Saints tell us that our brother in Christ is also an icon, something that draws us away from distractions and reminds us of Christ. I try to remember that, but when I'm struggling to concentrate and the little boy playing in the aisle starts making a fuss, I don't see Christ in him. I wish I did, but I don't. I just get distracted and fidget some more.

As I said, I usually sing in our church choir. Yesterday, however, my singing voice felt pretty overworked, and I thought I wouldn't risk losing it. I filed into the pew after my two sisters and, for the first half of the liturgy, tried to pay attention. Honestly I did. I did so-so on the Litanies, but I still remember the Gospel reading.

Right after the Sermon, as the Deacon began the second major litany, a little friend of mine, Johnny, came over to give me his Sunday hug and kiss. I just started babysitting two year-old Johnny this past Fall, and he's such a sweet little guy. Most Sundays he wanders over to the choir to say "hi" before I return to my music and he to his parents.

But yesterday I wasn't doing anything else, so I figured he could stay with me for a little while. He brought over his apple juice and cereal, and I sat in the pew with him, humming the hymns and whispering with Johnny. Then suddenly I realized three things. 1) The Great Entrance was coming. 2) In a minute or two the priest would be passing right by us. 3) Johnny was full and reaching the point in the liturgy when his parents usually took him out because he was getting loud and antsy.

Now, Johnny reminds me of myself as a child in that he gets easily bored. He just wants something interesting to look at or do, and if he doesn't have it, he'll create it for himself. When I'm babysitting, keeping him occupied usually involves silly faces, a play-food fight, or frantic role-playing in imitation of burlesque comedy.

I'd forgotten a play food set, however, and my escape route back to his parents was about to be cut off by the procession now leaving the altar. The church had gone completely quiet except for Father's low voice as he chanted, and that meant everyone would hear anything Johnny said now.

Still, the sight of three boys and two men in long, golden robes carrying a large wooden cross, a censer, and a variety of silver cups and platters is bound to be somewhat interesting, and I thought I'd try to keep Johnny occupied with that for the moment. The only difficulty now would be in keeping him from bursting into questions and exclamations while Father prayed.

So I whispered in his ear that Fr. Ted (another friend of his) was going to be coming by in a minute with some other little boys. He was going to carry some bread and say some prayers. We had to be patient and as quiet as mice.

Johnny paid perfect attention. I think it was because we were close enough to the procession that if I leaned forward I would crash into Fr. Ted, and also because his parents have taught him well. He clung to my neck, his eyes as big as saucers, and whispered questions into my ear. Where was the bread? Why was it under a cloth? What was Fr. Ted saying? Why were the boys bringing the cross?

I've been attending an Orthodox church for over a year now, so the novelty of the Great Entrance -- which is originally quite impressive -- has faded for me. But as I was explaining it to Johnny, I noticed again how awe-inspiring it is, and even though I couldn't really bow with a two year-old on my hip, my slight head nod was more attentive than any full prostration I could have made at the time.

For the rest of the service, Johnny and I were liturgy buddies. We went to the very front of the church and watched the Blessing of the Gifts. We sang along in the pew to the Hymn to the Theotokos. He even came with me to communion, and we finally got to enjoy some bread, as Johnny noted rather loudly on the way back to our seats.

We talked about the icons, about how he thinks Gabriel looks like a woman and how Jesus saved human beings from slavery. He noticed little things that I had once seen and then promptly forgotten -- the long, curly hair of the Archangel, the skull beneath the foot of the cross, the manacles beneath Eve's grave, Moses' flowing grey hair in the Resurrection icon.

Unlike during some services, I didn't listen attentively to every song and prayer. I was too busy chatting in whispers with Johnny. I didn't stare at the icons, nor did I cross myself much, or bow. But everything I did do had more meaning because Johnny did it with me -- cross myself, say the Lord's Prayer, even commune.

On the drive home, I remembered what the Saints say: that our brother, too, is an icon. And I felt humbled because all the noise that comes from having children of all ages in the liturgy is really just God's way of getting us to pay better attention -- to not focus on ourselves and to instead focus on the real beauty and holiness of what is going on around us, as their innocent eyes see it.

I'm sure parents feel lucky, though exhausted, that they get to spend their Sundays with such wide eyes and eager minds, and the rest of us should feel that way, too. We're privileged to share this service with them. In that sense they're as holy as anything else in the service -- something for us to treasure, another window into the mysterious, beautiful workings of God.

All I Got for Christmas....Was More Books

2011-01-07T14:24:00.001-05:00

That's not strictly true. I actually got more clothes than books, but I didn't think I'd put up pictures of those on my blog just yet. For that I'll need to do a before-and-after -- Kiernan's old jeans (which look slightly hobo-ish) and Kiernan's nice new jeans that her mama bought her. What can I say -- I hate shopping. Just hate it.

Yes, my parents are good to me. They keep me looking semi-socially acceptable. I'm fortunate that my mother has impeccable style.

I'm always excited about getting books for Christmas, even though I have more than I've finished reading as it is. It's like a disease -- the more you have, the more you want. This year, I was particularly hoping to see a few recently-published titles in my stocking, and now I'm so excited about reading all of them.

For starters, we have Peter's Leithart's new biography (of sorts)...

As member of a church that celebrates Constantine as a saint, this book's title fascinated me. Whether I agree with all of Leithart's conclusions, I'm hoping this will spark good conversations that genuinely consider the nature of Constantine's legacy, and not simply dismiss him or, worse yet, make him the scapegoat for failings that can't all be laid at his door.

I saw this book in Books & Co. one day and was captivated. Guy Deutscher is interested at looking at, as he says, "the real connection between language and culture, between our mother tongue and our ways of thought." To me, the knowledge that there is such a connection is intuitive -- it's understanding exactly how they relate that is difficult. The book also includes a long discussion of color, and I'm excited to see how that relates to his main argument.

I've already read this (I'd be ashamed if I hadn't), but now I have my very own copy -- a beautiful Penguin Classics hardback at that. I've been drooling over these new editions for the past several months: they have lovely copies of Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and numerous others.

Oh, and my favorite chapter of Wind in the Willows? Without a doubt "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."

[Note: I tried to link to these editions, but for some reason Amazon wasn't bringing them up. I've bought them there before, so when I find them again, I'll link.]

I have no idea how my mother knew that I wanted this book. I barely knew myself; I looked at it idly on Amazon one night while looking for good translations of early Scottish and Irish poetry and then promptly forgot it because I have a bad habit of not taking notes. The poetry is taken from a variety of languages: Old Welsh, Latin, Gaelic, Old English, Norse, Scots. I'm particularly excited to sit down with the translations of Taliesin's Welsh mythological poetry.

I've already started this one, and therefore I can already tell you that it is brilliant. Esolen plays a sheep in wolf's clothing and highlights destructive tendencies in our culture by "recommending" them as ways to destroy your child's imagination. You should read it -- especially because it begins with Beowulf and with a captivating analogy between children and books.

What did you get for Christmas? Or what are you reading now?

Not that I need to spend my Christmas money on even more books...

"Well, I'm back."

2011-01-05T15:21:00.001-05:00

...to quote Mr. Sam Gamgee.

Quite a Christmas break it's been. I know that I'm getting older when my favorite part of the holidays is that our whole family is together -- my sister is back from college, my dad isn't on any long business trips, for the first time in four years I'm living at home full-time. We traveled out to upstate NY to visit my grandmother and then spent the rest of the break coughing and sneezing on the couch. But with Christmas leftovers to eat and movies to watch and a big, red couch to take naps on, sickness can even be a bit fun.

I've been reading around a bit, and many of you have been posting your New Year's Resolutions. I've never been one for making special resolutions on New Year's Day, mostly because I make resolutions all year round. Perhaps I should call them "Friday Afternoon Resolutions" or "Sunday Morning Resolutions," because those tend to be the time of the week when I look back, regret, and resolve to do better when Monday morning dawns.

My youngest sister, however, suggested a much better New Year's Tradition. Around the table on New Year's Eve, she asked everyone to list things that they were grateful for -- the best thing, or things, that happened to them in 2010. Regretting the past and resolving to do better is quite easy to do, but giving thanks for what has happened -- that I find difficult.

So, without further ado, the best events of 2010!

1. I wrote my thesis on John Donne's religious poetry. It was 100 pages long, I opened a vein to write it, and I grew more as a writer during those three months than I did in the three years before that. It's the writing project that I am most proud of.

2. I was chrismated in the Orthodox Church on Pascha of 2010. It took me some time to reach that decision, but six months later I'm completely confident that I made the right choice.

3. I graduated from college. At last. And graduation weekend -- with my grandparents and family visiting, seeing all of my old friends one last time -- is a perfect memory.

4. I started my first "real-life" job as a data administrator for a government contractor. It's not my 'dream job,' but I enjoy what I do, I love the people I work with, and I've learned so much about the difficulties of adult decision-making.

5. I worked in Washington, D.C. for two weeks. Living, eating, working, and going to church in that city was an adventure, and the weekend that my dad and I got to spend together trekking around the city to famous old libraries (especially the Folger Shakespeare Library) was delightful in every way (even the humid rain!).

6. In June, my college roommate got married, and I stood with her at the altar as her maid of honor and witnessed her vows. It was beautiful, and I cried.

7. I was able to attend two other weddings of dear college friends. It was an honor -- and we had such a good time!

8.I moved back home, which means I have the joy of eating dinner with my family, teaching my younger siblings literature and language in our homeschool, and hanging out with my mom on the weekends.

9. I've had 5 months of free evenings and weekends to read, write, sleep, and discern my future vocation. In short, I've truly taken a "Gap Year" from academic life, and it was much needed.

10. I traveled to a new state -- Kansas -- for my friend Erin's wedding.

I've no idea what all will happen in 2011. In fact, I couldn't have predicted everything that happened this year on January 1, 2010. It was an adventure, and along the way I grew closer to my friends and family, read more, laughed more, and even slept more! I have only one resolution for the New Year....

Resolved: To live even more fully in 2011 than I did in 2010.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

2010-11-20T16:53:00.002-05:00

..to announce that this blog will be on a hiatus for the next month.

Since I have graduate school applications and various other projects to complete in the next month, I'm taking a break from the internet. The Nativity Fast is a good time to do this, even if I did decide a bit belatedly. :-)

Obviously, feel free to rummage around in the archives. I'll be back after Theophany (Jan. 6).

In the meantime, a most blessed Christmas celebration to you all!

Liberal Arts: Who Needs 'Em?

2010-11-15T19:10:00.010-05:00

Once, my mother was talking to another homeschooling mom of some fine, grown young men. This is when I was around eight or nine, and my mother wasn't quite sure what to do with my wild, passionate self. In a moment of quiet during the homeschool convention ruckus, my mom asked,

"But really, what did you do with your boys?"

That's my mom -- like a hard news reporter, always out for the facts.

The older mother smiled a sweet and somewhat nervous smile, leaned in, and responded:

"Well, honestly...they played with Legos a lot when they were little."

That was it. Her sons are lawyers and pianists, and she talks about Legos. It didn't make sense.

This seems like a meaningless anecdote right now, but it won't be later. Trust me.

Julie, at "The Corner with a View," and I have been having a very fruitful debate about our college years that I think really boils down to a discussion of the liberal arts. She has a quote from John Henry Newman at the end of her post, and that got me thinking about the liberal arts again. I'm not a teacher, at least not professionally, but my Junior year I thought about the liberal arts quite a bit because I took a class called Artes Liberales ("The Liberal Arts" in Latin).

During that semester, I don't think I thought about anything except the liberal arts. Every time I did something -- brushed my teeth, ate in the cafeteria, walked to class -- I was thinking about them. Every time I read a book or wrote a paper, I would wonder, "Am I doing this liberally?" It was becoming a bit of an obsession, mostly because I couldn't figure out how to define the darn things.

Dr. Whalen pulled the rug out from under me in that class. He told us that we should not pursue the liberal arts simply to become good people. That was to be illiberal. Or, rather, un-free. Bound. In prison.

Which left me asking -- what am I here for if not to become a better person? I had always believed that we studied the liberal arts to become more virtuous. And Dr. Whalen did say that studying them might make us more virtuous. Emphasis on the might.

I was unsure, however. Liberal arts had made me a better person, I felt. It still seemed to me that the cultivation of virtue was their purpose.

The book that convinced me that Dr. Whalen was right and I was wrong was John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University. It's hard not to find Newman convincing; the power of his prose could knock down a telephone wire. To the idea that liberal education will make a man a better Christian (i.e. a more virtuous person), Newman writes:

Liberal education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life; these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University; I am advocating, I shall illustrate and insist upon them; but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness, they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate, to the heartless, -- pleasant, alas, and attractive as he shows when decked out in them. (pg. 91)

According to Newman, liberal education can become a more clever sheep's disguise for the wolf. There's almost a sense here that liberal education will make vice worse, as well as virtue better. If you have any doubts on this fact, read Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey and doubt no more.

Newman talks at length in his discourses (my favorite is number 5, "Knowledge Its Own End") about man's knowledge of the world forming a unified whole, the outlines of which a student must see in order to be liberally educated. He rails against an "unmeaning profusion of subjects" in favor of concentrated study in one or two things. He advocates a community of disinterested, philosophic learning. He praises the "philosophical habit of mind." And all of that seems very lofty and very far off from our daily, peanut-butter-and-jelly concerns. What do we get out of it? we ask. Who needs this "philosophical" kind of mind?

Apparently, Newman was asked the same question by quotidian minds such as mine and yours. He offers a rather round response:

I am asked what is the end of University Education, and of the Liberal or Philosophical Knowledge which I conceive it to impart: I answer, that what I have already said has been sufficient to show that it has a very tangible, real, and sufficient end, though the end cannot be divided from that knowledge itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it really be such, is its own reward.

"Its own reward"? What? So we study things like English and history and mathematics and physics for their own sake? Just to enjoy them? Just because the human mind hungers for them?

When you put it like that, it seems so obvious that it's embarrassing. Of course we read and question and experiment for their own sake. Of course we do them for the love of them.

And what a poor excuse it is to try to justify our pursuit of learning as something that we do for honor or virtue or practicality. Knowledge does give us wisdom, yes. It does cultivate us. But even more than that, it simply satisfies our need to know, to use our mind, to understand, to be human. It is the earthly echo of God's resounding "it was good" toward creation. And our own creations -- the writing and the pictures and the buildings and the machines that result from our study -- are our feeble attempts to imitate the spirit of delight and love in which God created the world.

After all, God didn't need to create monkeys or clouds or language or people. He did it for its own sake. And so should we.

Which brings me back to my opening anecdote. The other mother's "Lego" response reminded me of something else that Newman proposes in his Idea of a University. He makes the odd and somewhat startling claim that a group of young men, thrown together without books or discipline, will learn more real knowledge in a year simply by living together than they would in a year trudging through our modern system of education, where we stuff ourselves with a "meaningless profusion" of facts and then vomit it up on the page for a test. I can think of no demonstration of that claim better than of those little homeschooled boys playing Legos. Fighting, laughing, experimenting, building. Imitating the world as they observe it. Working out ideas in 3D. Forced to share with others, and learn from them.

No wonder they learned more from that than from reams of workbooks and curriculum and tests. They didn't play and build to earn a grade, to prepare for a job, or to become better people. They were simply learning because they are humans, and we humans desire to learn, to delight in the world, to take it in and have it become part of us. They looked around, asked questions, experimented to find answers, and then built castles and bridges and police stations with their Legos to show others what they'd discovered.

There is no other reason to play with Legos than Legos themselves. And there is no reason to learn the liberal arts, to study anything, and in particular to study the way different subjects fit together, to try to roll up the world into a single "overwhelming question" (as Prufrock would have it), than for itself. We do it because we are human. And in doing so we become more human. We cannot escape the desire, the inner need to understand and create, any more than we can escape our need to eat, to breath, to love, to pray.

We call them "liberal" arts because that ability to appreciate the world as something outside ourselves frees us. We're no longer trapped inside our own mind -- our fears, our thoughts, our perceptions, our stupidity. We are free in the way God is free. Only God could create the world out of delight, not out of need. By understanding the world that way, we participate in His freedom. And its a freedom that we then need the wisdom and virtue to use wisely.

In that sense, education is the concern of everyone. If you are human, you should be concerned about education, about the liberal arts. And you should be concerned about the way our education system dehumanizes education, how it kills our student's love of knowledge with endless lesser pursuits: of personal honor and glory, of wealth, of power. And, yes, even the noble pursuit of personal virtue.

If we believe that we can educate ourselves or our children into virtue, we believe that virtue is something that we can cultivate ourselves, that we need nothing outside of this world in order to make virtuous children. But isn't the soul in need of deeper healing than our own weak attempts can provide? Is this not the purpose of Christ's incarnation? I copied many excellent quotes from Newman into my notebook that year, but one of my favorites is this:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.

Sir Thomas More urged his children's tutor to put "virtue in the first place, and learning in the second." By the implication of his syntax, More agrees with Newman: cultivating virtue on the one hand, and learning on the other, are not the same thing.

As teachers, as parents, as human beings, let us guard our children against education that seizes their freedom, that limits their minds and ruins their innate love of learning, of understanding the world, of responding to the world with their own acts of creation. And let us work to make our children virtuous through the traditional means: prayer, Scripture, the Church. Let us not mistake education for salvation. Rather let us let our children's education participate in their salvation. Let us help them to become more fully human, more free, and then teach them to use that freedom. And if this means that we must question every exam and every homework assignment that we give, then so be it.

None of this is to recommend some sort of revolutionary, Legos-only approach to education. It's simply meant to help those of you with children to educate, your own or others, think how you can keep your role in perspective and how you can humanize your classroom, your assignments, and your tests. Good luck. I have a box of Legos if you run out of ideas.

Kiernan's Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Good Grades

2010-11-11T14:58:00.008-05:00

[Subtitle: What I learned (and didn't learn) in college. Somewhat inspired by this column in The Guardian.]

My sister, a first-semester freshman, sent me a plaintive email last night. It said this:

"I know I should be able to make straight A's, but I don't know how."

Don't get me wrong -- she gets excellent grades. But not quite as good as her intelligence, hard work, and hours of study seem to deserve. And, really, her complaint is about more than grades. It's about college, about her exhaustion, her frustration, and her disappointment.

I can identify. For my first two years of college, I felt that way every day. At the end of those two years, I was more depressed than I had ever been in my life. I wanted to do one of three things:

1) Quit college forever and finally be happy again.

2) Transfer to another school and see if it got better.

3) Die in my sleep before finals' week came.

Sometimes during that year I would go out into the courtyard late at night (or rather early in the morning) and just cry because I was so tired, because I wanted to go to bed, and because I would stay up and study several more hours for this exam and still get an A-/B+. After doing all of the homework and starting my exam studying the week before.

Again, that's not a bad grade. But when you haven't slept in days, it feels like a slap in the face. "What else could I have done?" I thought.

I didn't transfer. I finished, with a B.A. in English summa cum laude. And I said a very happy farewell to a necessary, interesting, and not-overwhelmingly-pleasant chapter in my life.

In the course of my last two years at college I burst a few bubbles and learned a few tricks of the trade that ensured that I survived and thrived, that I got the high-class degree that I wanted and needed as a ticket into grad schools and jobs without dying or becoming chronically depressed in the process.

I don't mean to complain, to sound ungrateful. I loved my professors at school, I loved the books that I read, I loved my friends. They were the bright lights that often got me through a dark day. But, I did not love college. It was not everything I expected it to be. Unlike many people, I will never consider it the best years of my life.

You see, I was homeschooled, or, to put it more bluntly, I was raised completely outside and with no experience of the modern education system, with its tests, academic papers (surely the most unusual, least enjoyable writing genre ever invented), and grades. This might seem a disadvantage, but in consequence of this education, I loved learning, had an absolute passion for books, and was determined to become a writer someday. After I met the wonderful English professors at Hillsdale, I decided that I would go there to learn how to become a writer.

After four years, I will says this: I both did and didn't learn how to write. What I did learn is a credit to my professors, and what I didn't is a comment only on the system, not on them.

So, Jillian, here are my tips, tricks, frustrations, etc. Learn from my mistakes and be happier than I was my first two years at school. I know you aspire to be a lawyer, to go to one of the best law schools. Here are some suggestions for getting you through.

Things I Did Learn At College:

1. How to structure arguments (Kudos to Dr. Jackson for this one - look for someone like him to learn that from.)
2. How to analyse a text (Again, many thanks to Dr. Jackson, Dr. Smith, and Dr. Somerville here. Sounds like your Dr. Stryer might be an equivalent.)
3. How to persevere even when you are tired
4. How to cut corners, or simplify when necessary
5. How to persuade people of almost anything (even if you don't believe it)

Things I Did Not Learn At College (and that you therefore should not expect to learn):

1. How to be creative
2. How to enjoy literature (or history or art or music) more deeply as a person, not an intellectual
3. How to write, not merely according to the rules, but with my own panache and flair (The practice that my professors gave me with writing did help with this somewhat. And Tracy Simmons is, of course, the great exception to this.)
4. How to enjoy learning
5. How to be a life-long learner

Other Things I Learned (that I wish I hadn't):

1. How to be a cynic
2. How to cut other people down intellectually
3. How to be a snob
4. How to B.S. just about anything
5. How to pretend I had done work that I hadn't done because I was doing other work
6. How to hate reading
7. How to forget that we learn about things like Dickens and Monet and Bach for the love of it, not to look intellectual, save the West, or get a good job.
8. How to tell people what they want to hear
9. How to discourage others and myself

What I Did About It (in no particular order):

1. I took only professors whose style of teaching I got, who cared about me as people, who encouraged me when other people didn't. Thank you, Dr. Smith, Dr. Jackson, Dr. Somerville, and Tracy Simmons. Thank you for believing in me when other professors were calling me "crazy" to my face. Taking your classes, especially later in my college career, was one of the best things I ever did. Don't worry if you love professors that campus rumor names as easy or not as good as [fill-in-the-blank-with-popular-professor's-name]. There were many wonderful professors at Hillsdale whom I never took, or never took again after the first time, because I didn't like their style or because I was happier where I was, with the professors I was studying with. If you find a good thing, stick with it -- and don't let people persuade you away from it.

2. Similarly, I took classes that I enjoyed and in which I could do well without killing myself. I went for my strengths -- which is why I quit taking the history classes that frustrated me and took French, which was more fun and in which I got better grades. I wanted a history major when I went to school, but I sacrificed that for my sanity. I also sacrificed an Honors Program degree because I didn't want to take Calculus. It was worth it.

3. I didn't take a lot of credits. This enabled me to concentrate on the things I was learning instead of trying to learn everything at once. For me, five classes was the point of diminishing returns: I learned less and was frustrated more. Remember, you don't have to take a class or have a major to learn something. You are there to get a degree, not to do all the learning you haven't gotten to yet. This isn't the last time you'll learn, so take it easy.

4. I didn't get wrapped up in very many social things -- at least, I tried not to, and when I did I regretted it. It is tempting to do this, especially when a group promises to give you those kindred-spirit intellectual friends that every girl has wanted since reading Anne of Green Gables. I promise -- rarely will the discussion be as fruitful as promised and the friends as kindred. Instead, look for the few close friends who can offer something much better than just intellectual kinship over a common interest: loyalty, kindness, and love. Though, it helps if you like the same things, too. After all, my best friend from college is a poet.

5. Don't consider the criticism that you get in college as the last word on your talents and abilities. It seemed to me that every single thing I did at college was torn down until it was nothing but a heap of my disappointed hopes. I felt like I was a failure at everything in everyone's eyes: my friends and my professors. And I was guilty of doing the same thing to other people. When I think of the way I judged many of the pieces submitted to my Tower Light (if you're reading this and I discouraged you, accept my apologies right now), or the way my friends and I made fun of people we tutored, I redden with shame. I tore people down instead of building them up, simply out of competition and perfectionism. I wasn't the exception, but I should have been. Don't accept all criticism as a final word, and extend more grace to other people than I did. "Critique" is the watchword in college, and it's rarely tempered by a word that should always be its counterpart: "encouragement." You're one of the most loving people I know -- let it show.

5. Don't make your pet projects into papers. What I mean is, choose as paper topics small, focused arguments that you can easily prove but which show off your intelligence and wit. Do not turn them into your magnum opus. I didn't even make my thesis topic into a "pet project." Just pick something interesting, but keep it something you are detached from.

6. Always sleep. Always. Even if it is only two hours. And always eat. Don't skip meals. Drink lots of coffee. Wear college pullovers to class when you are tired -- when you've plastered the college name all over your chest, you're a bit more acceptable as bleary-eyed and unwashed. At least, it made me feel better.

7. Don't get caught up in college study-hype. I can't tell you how many times I reworked something that was fine because I started "freaking out" with other people. Do your work, do what works for you, and shut out the other voices. That's the only way you will stay sane.

8. When you study for tests, simply go over all of your notes and flip through all of the books. Do not re-read books. Do not take in-depth notes on books. For language tests, simply re-read the passages on the test one or two times. Only try to remember the major points and the professors's trigger topics (a.k.a. the stuff he likes best). Think in terms of broad argument outlines. Memorize a few pieces of minutiae, but for the most part just try to weave together the major strands of the class. Oh, and come up with one original thought about the material with which to wow your professor. Not two. Just one. You can't remember or do justice to more than that, and besides the point is to know the material, not invent new material. That way you tell the professor what he wants to hear, and extend his ideas by using your own intelligence. Works every time.

9. Do not study for more than three evenings for an exam. Do study a lot the night before, and do keep reviewing the basic material right up to the second before the exam. Do not do any of this frantically. You'll forget it all.

10. Can I repeat - NEVER PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER! ESPECIALLY BEFORE AN EXAM!

11. Study mostly alone, but have worthwhile conversations with your closest friends. Rarely do people have the same study style, so study groups are mostly pointless. But fruitful discussions over dinner or during a study break in the library are often the food for thought that sparks a great paper topic or exam essay. Cara and Manuel have been my inspiration many times when my ideas were about as interesting as Wonder Bread.

12. Remember: this is not the last time you will learn something. This is not the only place you can learn something. You are here to master one or two things and get a degree, not to learn everything.

I'm sure not everyone agrees with me, either with my frustrations or my advice. The rest of you, please offer your comments if you have additional suggestions. And if you're still in school, take heart -- you'll finish. You'll finish well. And there's still a great, big, wonderful world, much bigger than the fishpond you're in at the moment, to discover when you're finished.

Some Favorite Childhood Novels [Or, when I was little, I read in bed]

2010-11-09T17:34:00.002-05:00

I know it's not Friday and I'm not due to give you a list of my favorites, but we just got new shelves in the basement. They're right outside my bedroom, so every night on my way to bed I walk past a wall of my best childhood memories -- dog-eared paperbacks, library rejects, and heirloom-quality hardbacks all jumbled together. I've talked quite a bit about my childhood memories of reading when I was a child, but what exactly was I reading under those covers late at night? I remember obvious ones: Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Eight Cousins. But here are a few of my other, less well-known favorites. Please chime in with your own.

There's no better way than Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to strike fear in the hearts of dirty and lazy children. "The Radish Cure" is by far the most gruesome thing I've read to date (radish seeds planted in the skin of an unwashed child -- I get sick at the thought), but "The Fighter-Quarrelers Cure" and "The Never-Want-To-Go-To-Bedders Cure" were the ones that made this little girl drop her head with shame, little quarreler-never-in-bed-but-always-up-late-reading thing that I was.

This novel is not only for children; it has the artistry worthy of any literary novel, and adults will find its evocation of Anglo-Saxon England just prior to the Conquest fascinating as well as children. Harold of Wessex is the chief hero of The King's Shadow, though books themselves, particularly the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, come in for a close second. I think I owe it to this novel that I took two semester of Anglo-Saxon literature in college, and after reading it, my trip to Hastings in high school was like a pilgrimage to the gravesite of a lost hero.

I read The Bronze Bow while watching my youngest sister, then around two years old, during her nap. I still remember -- it was late in the evening, the room was almost too dark to read, and it was raining outside. My mom came in and noticed that I had tears streaming down my face as I read the book's final pages. When she asked me why, I just told her that the book was "so good." And it is. It's the only children's book set in Judea during Christ's life that I've found to be well-written, honest, and beautiful. No matter what your age, go buy it and read it.

Anna of Byzantium has an unusual, but captivating narrator: Anna Comnena, daughter of 11th cen. Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comena I, and a prominent medieval historian. It's easy to read about the glories of medieval Byzantium, but this book helps you live it -- the political infighting, the danger from the Turks, and the astounding learning. This novel, coupled with Landmark Book's The Fall of Constantinople(a book I cried over while reading about Emperor Constantine's death), opened my eyes to the other half of the medieval world, one that we often only mention as a rest stop along the way to Palestine during the Crusades. In addition, Tracy Barrett's prose is excellent -- elegant and spare, but moving.

I'm not quite sure how she accomplished it, but Elizabeth Goudge succeeds in telling a lovely, almost fairy-tale like story that is also full of lively, vivid characters with Dickensian names like Miss Heliotrope and Maria Merryweather. The Little White Horse is childhood fantasy at its best: well-written, funny, and beautiful. And the cover of this edition is so lovely. Not that you should buy a book for its cover...

Friday Favorites: Scott Cairn's "Love's Immensity"

2010-11-05T19:32:00.004-04:00

Despite my best intentions, I always leave theology on my bedside table and pick up a novel instead. It's a weakness which I blame on adulthood. I have only snippets of time in which to read, and when I'm cozied up in my hoodie and blankets, a cup of something warm in my hand, I rarely want to challenge myself with a discursus on the essence and energies of the Divine. I've had Morna Hooker's Paul to catch up on for Bible Study all week, but every night I set it down in favor of Wolf Hall (which, I'm thrilled to say, has finally come out in paperback and is now suitable for under-the-blankets-late-at-night reading. You simply cannot cuddle with a hardback.).

There's one exception to my laziness, however, and that's a little book of poetry by Scott Cairns, professor at St. Katherine College in San Diego. I know that doesn't sound like theology. Let me explain.

Last May, I stayed in Hillsdale for an extra month to finish off some nasty science credits, and one Sunday I found myself staring at the church bookshelves in hopes of finding some short book for relief from Chemistry in the evenings, since most of mine were packed and returned home. Among the large theological tomes was a little, pretty book called Love's Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life. And because I always gravitate toward the little and pretty, especially if there's poetry on the inside, I asked Fr. Joshua if I could take it home.

For the next four weeks, I read St. Basil, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and St. Denys on my wet walk up the hill. I consumed the book at breakneck seed up through St. John of the Ladder before I had to return it to the church library and wait until I was moved back into my house in Dayton to buy it for myself. For the past several months, I've gone back to the beginning and savored each mystic's poems. I'm finishing my last few this evening.

The theological ideas in this little book are weighty, but the poetry is so elegant, the language so concise and expressive, that I could digest its deep concepts while jostling underneath an umbrella and juggling a mug of coffee. They are equally clear and piercing late at night when I read them with bleary eyes. Cairns uses both free verse and deft meter to capture the prose writings of the mystics, and each poem distills the theology and the mysticism into an arrow of truth that hits home every time. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, Cairns tells the mystics slant, and that helps us to see them straight.

The selections center around the mystics on "noetic prayer," the prayer of the soul that allows you to experience the presence and love of God, and though the selections draw from ancient, catholic, orthodox, and modern mystics, the poems speak with a single voice about man's relationship with God. Many theological concepts about life in Christ which I before knew with my head I felt move towards my heart as I read. In that sense, Cairns poetry helped me to truly understand -- to ingest these truths, not simply nod my head at them. I don't know where else I would have read St. Athanasius or St. Augusine without approaching them only intellectually.

That is perhaps the greatest strength of this little book. It gets us to listen to the mystics as mystics, not as intellectuals. We approach these poems as literature, and therefore we open ourselves up to the very real power of their ideas on our lives. They help us to see truths as living and breathing, as water that drink and air that we breathe. And they help us to see Christ clearer.

All of that is to say that I think this belongs on the shelf of every Christian, every reader, and every poet. The book flags a bit in its translations of the medieval mystics around the middle -- the poetry lacks the concision and power of Cairns' translations of the church fathers. But the translations of Julian of Norwich and St. Gregory Palamas near the end are splendid.

To whet your appetite, I'll give you "The Death of Death," a translation from St. Athanasius.

Put fear aside. Now

that He has entered

into death on our behalf,

all who live

no longer die

as men once died.

That ephemeral occasion

has met its utter end.

As seeds cast to the earth, we

will not perish,

but like those seeds

shall rise again -- the shroud

of death itself having been

burst to tatters

by love's immensity.

From the Draft Pile: Review of "Slumdog Millionaire"

2010-11-01T23:02:00.003-04:00

[I think I wrote this review right after the Oscars, during some spare moments over break. It's been awhile since I've seen the movie, and I know its success is old news, but I see this cultural tendency played out every day.]

The Oscars like it dark, so wide-eyed Jamal Malik, hero of Slumdog Millionaire, seems an unusual favorite. As the credits rolled, cast and crew bopping about in jovial Bollywood style, I wondered what about this fairy tale won the critics.

The story isn’t new. As John Podhoretz observed in The Weekly Standard, Charles Dickens is the grandfather of this Indian waif, and although Podhoretz compares Millionaire to Dicken’s Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist, it is perhaps David Copperfield, of Dicken’s eponymous novel, who is Jamal’s most direct predecessor. Like Jamal, he never knows his father; like him, he loses a beloved mother. Both heroes wander the streets, stealing money and begging for bread. Both fall deeply in love in childhood. Both prosper only after unmasking a rapacious villain.

But the Oscars do not welcome David Copperfield. Dicken’s story is today considered sentimental, cliché, and at worst, sappy, important more as a cultural artifact than work of art. But where the Oscars could similarly condemn Slumdog Millionaire as stereotypical and maudlin, they acclaim it as passionate and sincere. When lil’Emily is ruined modern critics sneer, but when Jamal begs Latika, “Come away with me,” they weep.

And those tears are not just the tears of an average American moviegoer, who bawls over a five-dollar romance novel and pastes a poster of Edward Cullen on their wall. The enlightened among us, our critics, the ones who are supposed to tell us what is art and what is not, weep, and their weeping confounds them. A well-educated friend of mine complained, “I saw this movie before all the hype, and I loved it then. I was disappointed that everyone loved it so much.” A civilized skeptic like us all, she could not bear her honest response. She hated loving the film.

Dicken’s novel, however artful, is essentially moralistic, which is why we moderns love to hate it so much. To Dickens, David is good, but he must mature. When he does, he is rewarded. Such fiction, Victorians thought, nurtured the young; it encouraged both youthful hopes and maturity, and they did not consider the promise of reward these stories offered as unrealistic. This Bildungsroman quality persists in Millionaire. From the beginning, Jamal’s virtue charms us, but he must mature in order to win Latika and his happy ending.

Or does he? In one sense, Jamal’s attention to detail, his persistence, his cleverness, his willingness to learn from the trials in his life, earn his happy ending. But Boyle dislikes this simple answer as much as his cultivated audience. How could it be that growth in virtue is rewarded with happiness? So the characters declare the ending their “destiny,” and the directors choose answer D. It is written. Karma. Then Western intellectuals can sigh with relief. David Copperfield sheds his Western mores and wraps himself in a Hindu turban. Of course, had the filmmakers labeled the ending as sheer “fate,” they might have been accused of superstition. But when fate wears henna, it is wisdom.

Still, Millionaire ultimately betrays itself. It advertises itself as a story about destiny and instead tells a story about maturation, mostly because no one would love Slumdog Millionaire if karma killed Jamal rather than giving him a happy ending. We want a happy ending, and we want it for the good guys because they are good, because we hope that if we are good we will get a happy ending too. Like the Victorians, we want to tell our young people that goodness is rewarded. We just have to wear a turban to do it.