Here’s one of Jared Wilson’s posts from the Wayback Machine: The new legalism is dissatisfied with Jesus. “The Bible is concerned, however, with our finding joy and peace and satisfaction in Jesus Christ. The Gospel is about living being Christ and dying being gain. The new legalism says living is gain and Christ is for after death. The real Gospel just isn’t sexy.“
Housekeeping: Any Sense of Order
I stopped reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping the other day, and I’m not sure I want to finish it. It’s character-driven, but with few characters, and very light on plot. I think I can handle that well enough. I’m beginning to doubt myself on that point.
I’m bringing it up here because I ran across this review of Housekeeping on Good Reads. It’s written by someone who claims to enjoy mostly plotless, character-driven literary novels. He writes:
When I say that I have limited access to these characters and this world, and that it ultimately felt untrue, here’s what I mean (this is Ruthie in the final pages of the book): I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much different if I could ever say, This I have learned from my senses, while that I have merely imagined. Really? It’s character revelations and discoveries like this that pepper the book, and for each one that I could say ‘Yes, I get this, I’m with you,’ there were two or three like that quote above where I just couldn’t grasp the experience or couldn’t relate to the introspection.
I haven’t thought I couldn’t relate to the characters, but perhaps that’s the reason I don’t care about the story anymore. It may also be that the characters make me uncomfortable in a way that repels me. I don’t feel a challenge in the book or tension I wish to resolve. I just don’t like hanging around it, doing nothing.
Real-life Headlines
More from our humor desk--a collection of actual headlines which read like they came from The Onion, e.g. “Service Rat Licks Woman When It’s Time To Take Meds” and “The Caperon, For When You Need An Apron But Also Might Need A Cape.”
Of course, the second headline is crazy for multiple reasons.
Mad Libs Creator Has Bit the ____________ (n)
Mad Libs was my favorite thing to buy at my elementary school book fairs, if I had any money. I haven’t done much with them since. I remember introducing them to my children, and somehow they didn’t take to them well. Kids these days.
Mad Libs creator Leonard B. Stern, 88, has died. He has kicked the bucket, breathed his last, headed to the last round-up. Mr. Stern has resumed room temperature. He has cashed in his chips, dropped his oxygen habit, and is permanently out of print. I didn’t know until reading this article that Mr. Stern was one of the men behind Get Smart, Operation Petticoat, and The Honeymooners. In fact, it was while writing for The Honeymooners that he had the idea for Mad Libs.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Stern from 2003, saying, “If we knew the shows were going to become classics we would have written them better.”
Pressing Ourselves into a Cross-shaped Mold
Aaron Armstrong has a detailed review of a book I’m currently reading, Cruciform: Living the Cross-shaped Life by Jimmy Davis. I like the way Jimmy writes, and though his subject is essential Christianity, his approach is engaging. It’s a good book for study and would make a good study guide for anyone wanting to deepen his faith. Jimmy blogs here.
One Page at a Time
Alan Jacobs on the joy of reading: “Don’t turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens.”
I Am So Cool. Don't you agree?
Researchers Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell tested thousands of college students with statements like “I insist upon getting the respect that is due me,” and “I think I am a special person” to discover a 30% rise in narcissism from 1982 to 2006.
By 2006, 51% of 18- to 25-year-olds reported that “becoming” famous was an important goal to them—nearly five times more than those who said “becoming more spiritual” was important to them.
Some of us are famous for very good reasons, of course. Take myself, for example.
Should Life Be Boring?
Joseph Epstein writes on boredom in Commentary: “Some people claim never to have been bored. They lie. … ‘I have discovered that all evil comes from this,’ wrote Pascal, ‘man’s being unable to sit still in a room.’” (via Books, Inq.)
Words: playing with magic
Roy Jacobsen, over at Writing, Clear and Simple, posts an interesting short video on “The Power Of Words.” (Click on the link to see it; I’ll throw him the traffic rather than embed it here.)
“The power of words” is a subject that intrigues me; I don’t have a fully developed philosophy of it. As a writer I know from experience that finding the right words makes a huge difference. I feel (though I wouldn’t be dogmatic on it) that there’s a mystical power in some words. As I understand it, in Old Testament Hebrew there’s no essential difference between a thing and its name. To name a thing gave you a certain power over it (thus Adam’s naming of the beasts made him lord over them all). God’s essential name, Y*H*W*H, is never to be spoken, in part because He cannot be mastered.
This sounds terribly primitive and superstitious to the modern mind, but is there not some echo of it in the Social Busybodies’ incessant campaign to change the names of things? We just get used to one “appropriate” word for people of African descent, or indigenous American tribes, or people with mental or physical problems, and the busybodies suddenly announce a name change. I assume they do this because the magic they hoped to conjure up through their magic words has failed to materialize. So they need to try a new incantation.
Blogging note: I’ll be out of town again tomorrow (personal, not Viking-related), so no post from me.
Mr Standfast, by John Buchan
Due to a combination of tight finances and the possession of a Kindle, I’ve been reading a lot of old books lately, of the kind you can get cheap or free in electronic versions. So I came to read, at last, Mr Standfast, John Buchan’s second sequel to The 39 Steps.
Richard Hannay, hero of the series, is now a brigadier general in the British Army, fighting in France in World War I. As Mr Standfast begins, he has been summoned to the War Office for a special assignment. He is ordered to take on the character of a South African political radical, go to a village called Isham, and insinuate himself into a group of radicals he will find there. Further orders will follow.
The story that follows is rather discursive, ranging as far as Scotland and the battlefields of France. Hannay is reunited with several old friends and one very dangerous old enemy.
A point of interest here is that the author finally adds to the narrative the major element all film versions of The 39 Steps that I know of add at that earlier point in the saga—a love interest. Hannay meets, and falls in love with, a charming young woman who is also a spy. It’s amusing to the modern reader to see the delicacy with which her part (a rather scandalous one at the time) is portrayed.
Buchan’s portrayal of radicals and pacifists is remarkably evenhanded, in my opinion. There are German agents among them, but he makes it clear (perhaps even giving them more credit than they were really due) that most of them are patriotic in their own way—one of them even heroic.
James Bond can be reasonably called Richard Hannay’s literary son, but the differences between the generations are telling. We read modern spy stories partly to be shocked, to see what technical wizardry or ruthless killing technique the agent will use to save his life this time. The Hannay books are written with moral purpose, and seem boy-scoutish to us. The title of the book comes from a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the whole story is, in a way, a commentary on that Christian classic, except that the subject is courage rather than faith. I enjoyed it.
Cautions for occasional racial and cultural comments which were acceptable then, but are so no more.