Looking down the road

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the appalling violence at the Boston Marathon today.

Let us turn now to our Hubris Corner. I’ve decided to make another of my legendary long-term predictions.

As you may recall, I have (or believe I have) a kind of knack for spotting long-term social trends. I’m no good at picking lottery numbers (actually I’ve never tried), and I generally get elections wrong. But over the long haul I seem to be able to sight along the lines of current events and predict what’s coming in a decade or two. I have a good record with that sort of thing. Or so I believe.

So here’s what happened. I woke up from a dream early Saturday morning filled with a sense of conviction about the future of the liberal churches and their seminaries.

I speculated a while back about why liberal churches even exist anymore, since their theology makes piety unnecessary and their social views turn charity over to the government. I read an article recently – wish I remembered where – which pointed out another aspect of the same situation. That was that, while conservative churches seem to be winning what might be called the “church wars” (in that conservative churches are experiencing growth, at least in some areas, while liberal churches are steadily declining everywhere), the liberal churches are winning – or have won – the culture war. That means that while a majority of the people in churches may believe what conservatives believe, the majority of people not in churches believe what the liberals believe. And there are more people not in churches than in churches.

So will the liberal churches just die, like a salmon that spawns and expires? Continue reading Looking down the road

Dickens Did Not Meet Dostoevsky

Thanks to Richard Pearson for pointing out a Times Literary Supplement article on Dickens meeting Dostoevsky. We talked about that meeting a good while back. It appears this story of a meeting of great authors has been repeated by reputable news outlets a few times, while the scholars who should know all there is to know about it say it never happened.
Eric Naiman writes, “The newspaper’s collective unconscious was unable to give the story up. It demands retelling, and by now Dickens and Dostoevsky can be found meeting all over the web. Their conversation appeals to our fancy while, as Gates realized, comforting us with a reaffirmation of what we already know.”

Tomalin regarded publication of the article in the Dickensian as an authentication of the encounter; moreover, the meeting had subsequently been mentioned in monographs by two leading Dickens scholars, Malcolm Andrews and Michael Slater. “We were all caught out”, Tomalin wrote. “The hoax was a clever one precisely because it convinced so many Dickens scholars.”
This is odd, backwards logic. The hoax wasn’t clever because it convinced so many Dickens scholars; rather, it was clever for the same reason it convinced them: because it was modest.

Apparently, Michael Slater’s biography brought this encounter to the attention of book reviewers, which raised it’s profile among scholars of Dostoevsky. Then, the koshka was out of the sumka.
But there’s more. If you read Naiman’s lengthy investigation, you will discover that the name of the writer who foisted this mythical story on us is but one pseudonym of many for an independent scholar who could never get hired to a British university. The story of how Naiman tracked him down is incredible and vulgar, but if you want a literary mystery, read this one.

Link sausage 4/12/13

Just a couple links tonight.

First of all, Kevin Holtsberry of Collected Miscellany has posted a review of Hailstone Mountain.

Also, it isn’t often I see personal acquaintances in national stories. There’s been some outrage on the conservative side over an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about how the firearms industry is supposedly seducing kids to buy guns (which of course they can’t actually do legally). Patrick Richardson of PJ Media deconstructs the article here.

The little girl with the pretty pink AR-15 in the Rolling Stone photo is Morrigan Sanders, daughter of my friend, Baen author Michael Z. Williamson. I met Morrigan once, long ago, when she was very small. I paid little attention to her at the time, but remember thinking she was likely to break some hearts in a few years.

Little did I know she’d become a celebrity.

Mike Williamson is a libertarian, so we agree on some things and disagree on others. But he’s a powerful writer, and he’s always encouraged me. Good luck to him and Morrigan both.

I Sit, I Write, I Change the World

How has your decision to write affected your health? Has it had negative effects on your personal life?” asks a survey. Kvetch for us about your life, they say, to which Neal Pollack responds, “How do I even know whether writing has had negative effects on my personal life? Maybe I would have been a jerk no matter what I did, and my being a writer at least keeps me in a room by myself so I can’t bother other people as much.”

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, c.1875. AKA Lewis Carroll

Evil: Eight Reason Media Ignore #Gosnell

Trevin Wax has eight reasons to explain media editors’ decision to ignore Kermit “the Ripper” Gosnell’s trial over the past several days.

1. The Gosnell case involves an abortionist.

Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the abortionist must be portrayed as a victim of hate and intolerance, not a perpetrator of violence. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps “abortionist” separate from testimony about dead women and children.

2. The Gosnell case involves an unregulated abortion clinic.



Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the clinic must be portrayed as a “refuge” for women in distress, not a “house of horrors” where women are taken advantage of. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps “abortion clinic” away from negative connotations.

3. The Gosnell case involves protestors who, for years, stood outside 3801 Lancaster and prayed, warning people about what was taking place inside.



Whenever we see news stories about abortion, the protestors must be portrayed as agitators and extremists, not peaceful people who urge mothers to treasure the miracle inside them. But it is impossible to spin this story in a way that keeps the abortion protestors from looking like heroes.

Keep reading. One reason Trevin doesn’t give is that a 15-year-old girl helped kill babies too.

You Americans! Ha, Ha!

On a note related to Lars’ last post, here are ten American habits which at least one Brit cannot understand. Take flossing, for instance, or talking to strangers.

By contrast, here are ten British habits which apparently don’t jive with Americans. Take avoiding eye contact and direct intentions. I wonder how many times I’d be tempted to tell a Brit to shut up.

Into the "Grey"

Over at Lileks.com, my close personal friend* James Lileks was complaining about paint today. He’s repainting his office, and can’t seem to get the color he wants, once it actually dries. I have no comment on that subject. I moved into a pink office in the library several years ago, and have just lived with it because getting it repainted would be a lot of work.

What caught my attention was that, by my count, he used the word “gray” twice, but he spelled it “grey” both times.

I’ve seen this spelling come up more and more frequently lately, and it amuses me. All my life (which is another way of saying “from time immemorial”) I was taught that “gray” is the American spelling and “grey” is how the English do it. But “grey” seems to be winning out now. I suppose that’s because of the Fifty Shades of Grey books.

This may surprise you, but I’m not actually unhappy about this development. I’ve always thought spelling “grey” with an “e” was kind of cool. There’s something a tad bleaker, colder about that spelling. Grayer, you might say. Or greyer.

I remember reading an interview, probably in Writer’s Digest, with Colleen McCullough quite a few years ago. She was the author of The Thorn Birds, which was a big deal at the time. She mentioned that she always spelled gray with an “a,” except when describing people’s eyes. Gray eyes, she felt, should be spelled with an “e.”

I sympathized, though I’ve always used the “a” spelling myself. I have enough affectations already, without adopting English spellings.

But maybe “grey” will win.

I can live with it, in my grey old age.

*Editor’s Note: This is a lie.

Fade Away, by Harlan Coben

Myron Bolitar, Harlan Coben’s sports agent mystery hero, is primarily a sports agent and (supposedly secretly) a former FBI agent. Once a top NBA draft pick, almost guaranteed a highly paid career and all the perks, he got injured in a pre-season game and never had the chance to play in a major league game.

But in Fade Away, he is to get his chance. A team owner who is also an old friend asks him to join his team temporarily – not actually to play (much), but to sit on the bench, schmooze with the players, and try to figure out what happened to Greg Downing, one of the stars, who has disappeared.

Myron agrees and begins an investigation that will lead to threats and further murder, and will uncover secrets involving drugs, old 1970s radicals and a betrayal in his own life. The plot gets pretty complicated.

But the great joy of this book – even for someone as apathetic toward sports as me – is Myron’s personal character arc. Though established in his new career, a competent, successful, and even dangerous man, once he’s on the basketball court it’s (emotionally) as if he were a kid again. The passion, the love of the game, the competitive instinct, are all back in full force, and his inevitable disappointment is all the crueler for it. This gave the book a genuine poignancy that made it moving indeed, simply as a piece of literature.

As usual with Coben, there are adult themes, but they’re handled in a fairly civilized manner. Highly recommended.

Was the End of Slavery in the South Really About Undermining Scripture?

Thabiti Anyabwile, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman, has been blogging his critique of Douglas Wilson’s 2005 book, Black and Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America. Wilson has joined in freely, and the two have charitably and thoroughly argued on the important issues of slavery in the American South, the authority of Scripture, and how the issues of 1860 were handled in relation to issues today.

Anyabwile posted a round-up of links to the whole discussion here. It isn’t a simple argument, so I don’t think I can adequately summarize it here.

Post haste

Not much to tell you tonight. I have company, and it’s rude to blog while someone is conversing with you. Or so they tell me.

Our friend Dale Nelson sent me a recording of a 1964 interview with J. R. R. Tolkien, from (I assume) the BBC. I listened to it today. An interesting aspect is that he was a very rapid speaker — one of those people who seems to be thinking so fast his mouth can’t keep up with him. Not actually what you expect from a language scholar.