I cannot endorse this brand, but this video of the president proposing to save our economy by helping everyone write a YA novel is pretty funny.
All posts by Phil
In the Night: Good Friday Music
Thanks to Andrew Peterson for his great music.
Czeslaw Milosz, “You Whose Name”
You whose name is aggressor and devourer.
Putrid and sultry, in fermentation.
You mash into pulp sages and prophets,
Criminals and heroes, indifferently.
My vocativus is useless.
You do not hear me, though I address you,
Yet I want to speak, for I am against you.
So what if you gulp me, I am not yours.
You overcome me with exhaustion and fever.
You blur my thought, which protests,
You roll over me, dull unconscious power.
The one who will overcome you is swift, armed:
Mind, spirit, maker, renewer.
He jousts with you in depths and on high,
Equestrian, winged, lofty, silver-scaled.
I have served him in the investiture of forms.
It’s not my concern what he will do with me.
A retinue advances in the sunlight by the lakes.
From white villages Easter bells resound.
“You Whose Name” by Czeslaw Milosz
Evolution: Stick to the Facts
Tennessee may pass a law that protects teachers if they allow or even encourage criticism of evolutionary theories. The governor says, “I think the one thing about that bill is this: Nothing about the curriculum of the state of Tennessee will change, and the scientific standards won’t change. So I think some of the discussion about its impact has probably been overblown.”
Say That Again?
Bookseller and poet Jen Campbell has made a name for herself by quoting odd and often hilarious things people say in bookshops. For example: “What books could I buy to make guests look at my bookshelf and think: ’Wow, that guy’s intelligent’?”
Now, that question makes complete sense to me. I remember a speaker, perhaps Ravi Zacharias, saying he overheard someone ask for so many feet of books. It didn’t matter what types of books really, just important looking ones to fill up a shelf behind a union leader’s desk to make him look educated when he spoke to business owners.
Is There a Literary Canon?
Is there a literary canon of books everyone who considers himself educated or maybe civilized should read? I mean, everyone reads Pookie and the Moonlight Vularoo, but what about the stuff teachers put on assigned reading lists?
D.G. Myers talks about personal Best Of lists here, saying the idea of books everyone should read is a quaint throwback to the 20th century. “If literature is no longer a part of every civilized American’s cultural inheritance, you can thank your English teachers, who gladly coughed up their authority over it,” he writes.
Myers also culls together a list of top authors according to how much has been written about them by scholars. Henry James and William Faulkner top the list.
A Walk Across the Sun
World Magazine’s Russ Pulliam highlights the new work of author Corban Addison, who crafts a story Pulliam describes as an Uncle Tom’s Cabin for sex trafficking. He says, A Walk Across the Sun
John Grisham, whom I’m told doesn’t do book blurbs, did one for this book. An Amazon reviewer, who gave it five stars, says it’s “not a feel good topic. It is repulsive and hard to read.” But many people are finding it compelling, and it’s certainly relevant. I learned yesterday that a local message parlor had traffick victims enslaved there. Local police shut it down, but apparently lacked the evidence to go further. I believe we know the story because they have that evidence now.
Inspiration
And now, a moment of inspiration.
Certain Words Need Not Apply
We’ve talked about censorship here before. We’ve noted often that when a government stops a book from being printed or distributed, that’s censorship, but when a parent complains about the appropriateness of a book for her child, that’s not. We hope parents are actually morally and reasonably when they question some of the recommended reading at school. Doesn’t always happen, of course. Recently a teacher was investigated by school and community law enforcement because a parent complained that Ender’s Game is pornographic. Help us.
BTW, you can buy Ender’s Game (with cool cover art) here
But we usually don’t talk about bookstores that won’t sell perfectly good books because of one or more select words. Caryn Rivadeneira writes about a few of these examples, particularly an argument author Rachel Held Evens had with her publisher. In short, Thomas Nelson wouldn’t let her use the word vagina.
Rivadeneira notes the difficulties. “They are businesses after all, and to be successful, businesses need to sell products their customers will read without getting up in arms. The problem with Vagina-gate and similar forms of “censorship” is that, in an attempt to protect customers, publishers and bookstores are making it a lot harder for writers to tell the stories God has called them to write. And when Christians are barred by other Christians from serving God, it dishonors God. In fact, it’s sin.”
I think she’s right.
BTW, you can pre-order Evans’ book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master
Old Words
The verb unfriend was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1659. I wonder what citizens of Jamestown, Virginia, 1659 AD, would have thought a facebook was.