All posts by Phil

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Music, Reading

Ranking Dostoevsky’s Works and Life as the Ice Grows Thinner

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Amazon’s Middle Earth series, The Rings of Power, will begin September 1 and run into October. I don’t know much about it, but I hope to enjoy it if we still have a Prime membership (which seems to come and go regularly of late).

Because of the series, I intend to read The Silmarillion soon. I know I read about half of it before, but I don’t remember where I stopped. One of the chapters, perhaps thirteen, dragged on about geography about as warmly as a fifth-grade social studies text. I aim to push past those parts and enjoy the stories beyond them.

I don’t know if I will attempt to blog about the series if I’m able to watch it near the release days. I probably wouldn’t have enough thoughts to share.

Crime or Punishment? A Dostoevsky enthusiast categorizes all of the famous author’s novels and novellas into must-reads, read-afters, and only for other enthusiasts.

Notes from Underground, Poor Folk, and The Brothers Karamazov are among the must-reads. The Double and The Gambler are on the list for reading after the must-reads. Uncle’s Dream and The Permanent Husband are only for the most dedicated readers.

“I won’t be exaggerating,” she says, “when I say [The Brothers Karamazov] brought me back from abyss. It might not work the same way [for you as] it did for me, but there is an obvious need for more people to read and understand the beautiful intricacies of life and its fallacies, to love life in its entirety.”

Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

“Notes from Underground,” Fyodor Dostoevsky

On Death: R.L. Stevenson wrote, “[A]fter a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.”

Social Media: “How teens use social media often drives how everyone uses social media.” YouTube is the most-used social media platform and the second most-used search engine.

Online Fiction: “China is producing and consuming the largest amount of web fiction in the world, with an estimated 20 million full-time, part-time, and dabbling writers. The grind is hard, and the conditions can be exploitative, but those who do it are on the vanguard of a reading revolution.” (via Literary Saloon)

For Love of a Hero: Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero), performed by The Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin.

Photo: March Mobil Gas, Mount Clemens, Michigan. 1986. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

What Would You Do If You Could Become Invisible?

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Heist movies have many examples of criminals slipping into a crowd and becoming essentially invisible. Either there are too many similarly looking people to spot the ones the cops want or there are too many people period. Without an identifier of some kind, the criminals have gotten away without consequences, at least for the moment.

In H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, a gifted chemist works out his theory for making things invisible. Recklessly, he applies his experiment to his own body and becomes an inhuman and invisible man.

His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep.

“Measure for Measure” Act 2, scene 2

When the invisible man tells his own story, you see his arrogance runs deep. He attempts to live without any social obligations, taking food or clothing for himself without payment, assuming these things would simply disappear like he has. He quickly learns it won’t work that way, because he isn’t an incorporeal ghost; he’s a naked man that no one can see. If he weren’t such a hot-tempered fool, he might have worked more methodically and converted a set of clothes into invisibility before converting himself.

After a few months of experimental living as an invisible man, the chemist wants to terrorize people. He wants to pursue his scientific interests without having to earn anyone’s favor or deal with normal social pressures. He probably blames his father, his old boss, and all of his research colleagues for his jaded view of the world, but I think Wells may intend these people to represent everyone. There are no contrasting noble characters in this story. Even the chemist’s closest friend may have been just as self-seeking as everyone else.

Wells provokes readers to ask what anyone would do if he or she could be invisible, or to put it another way, what would you do if there were no consequences to pay? Would you plagiarize? Steal someone’s research? Slander someone’s character to get rid of them?

Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash

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Photos of Gorgeous Roman Mosaic Found in London

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Earlier this year, archeologist found the largest Roman mosaic floor ever uncovered in London. It’s in the Southwark area about a couple blocks from the Shard skyscraper.

Smithsonian Magazine states, “Red, white and black stones make up the tessellated floor. Its pattern features large lotus flowers, colorful blooms and intricate twists of closed loops known as ‘Solomon’s knots.'”

Experts believe the floor was created in the late 2nd or early 3rd century.

Authors, Reading

David McCullough: ‘Things Didn’t Have to Turn Out as Well as They Did’

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The engagingly readable historian David McCullough, 89, died this week. In 1992, he said he wanted readers to know “that things didn’t have to turn out as well as they did. I want them to know that life felt every bit as uncertain to people back then as it does to us today.”

McCullough was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for two books, Truman and John Adams. He also received two National Book Awards for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. He wrote many other books, those most recently published being The Wright Brothers, The American Spirit, and The Pioneers.

He made the case for reading history much like we’ve made a case for reading literature.

History isn’t just something that ought to be taught or ought to be read or ought to be encouraged because it’s going to make us a better citizen. It will make us a better citizen; or because it will make us a more thoughtful and understanding human being, which it will; or because it will cause us to behave better, which it will. It should be taught for pleasure: The pleasure of history, like art or music or literature, consists of an expansion of the experience of being alive, which is what education is largely about.

“Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” Imprimis, April 2005
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School Libraries Should Not Have Certain Content

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Are schools getting more transgressive in your community? The national push will suggest a righteous war of librarians and school officials against parents who, I don’t know, want their kids to be safe and not exposed to content that can’t be read in a school board meeting.

Do educators allow parents to have a say in whether a book in the school library is pornographic? In a sane world, yes, but we live in 2022.

Music

Sunday Singing: ‘He Leadeth Me’

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‘He Leadeth Me’ preformed by the Norton Hall Band of Southern Seminary

Today’s hymn, “He Leadeth Me,” is by Baptist Minister Joseph H. Gilmore (1834-1918) of Rochester, New York, who was also on the faculty of the University of Rochester to teach English. The tune was arranged by William B. Bradbury (1816-1868) of York, Maine, after seeing the hymn text in a publication. He was a born musician and inspired the regular study of music in New York City public schools.

1 He leadeth me: O blessed thought!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Refrain:
He leadeth me, he leadeth me;
by his own hand he leadeth me:
his faithful follower I would be,
for by his hand he leadeth me.

2 Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
sometimes where Eden’s flowers bloom,
by waters calm, o’er troubled sea,
still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. Refrain

3 Lord, I would clasp thy hand in mine,
nor ever murmur nor repine;
content, whatever lot I see,
since ’tis my God that leadeth me. Refrain

4 And when my task on earth is done,
when, by thy grace, the victory’s won,
e’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
since God through Jordan leadeth me. Refrain

Authors, Reading

Fake Reads, or I Loved That Book I’ve Never Heard of Before Now

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I’ve run out of time to do a blogroll post this morning, so let me share a couple things before I install someone I love in a college.

Reading: In the U.K. Critic, Simon Evans writes about pretending to read books: “‘I am writing a book,’ says the man at the drinks party, in the old Peter Cook cartoon. ‘Neither am I,’ replies his companion. 

“Still makes me laugh. But would now work with ‘I am reading a book’, too.

“’The larger the island of knowledge,’ goes the old Reader’s Digest phrase, ‘the longer the shoreline of wonder.’ I used to find that thought reassuring, even awe-inspiring. It is now absolutely terrifying. That’s before you factor in the fractal nature of the coastline. When you get there, there is no ‘there’.”

I have never pretended to have read something I haven’t read, but plenty of times I have suggested, discussed, or recommended books on the scantest of knowledge about them, which is something entirely different.

Southern Literature: Warren Smith notes that Marion Montgomery and Flannery O’Connor were close friends for a few years and gave us “perhaps the greatest definition of Southern literature anyone has so far come up with, certainly one of the most quoted.”

Music

Sunday Singing: ‘Holy Spirit Faithful Guide’

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‘Holy Spirit Faithful Guide’ performed by Fountainview Academy

Today’s hymn, “Holy Spirit Faithful Guide,” was written and arranged by Marcus Morris Wells of Cooperstown, NY (1815-1895). He was a farmer and said he was working in the cornfield on Saturday afternoon when the concept for this hymn came to him. He worked it out the next day and sent it to the editor of the New York Musical Pioneer, who published in the November 1858 issue.

1 Holy Spirit, faithful Guide,
Ever near the Christian’s side;
Gently lead us by the hand,
Pilgrims in a desert land;
Weary souls fore’er rejoice,
While they hear that sweetest voice
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

2 Ever present, truest Friend,
Ever near Thine aid to lend,
Leave us not to doubt and fear,
Groping on in darkness drear;
When the storms are raging sore,
Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o’er.
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

3 When our days of toil shall cease,
Waiting still for sweet release,
Nothing left but heav’n and prayer,
Wond’ring if our names were there;
Wading deep the dismal flood,
Pleading naught but Jesus’ blood,
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reading

Who Gets Hurt, The Scandal of Holiness, and Norman Lear

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I was reading some introductory sociology texts recently, and in trying to encourage students to critique their own biases and lay aside their cultural preferences, the author brought up infanticide as an example. Other cultures practice infanticide for their own reasons, and while it would be easy to condemn them for it, who are we to judge? The author didn’t actually say we should not condemn this cultural difference. She said it would be easy to believe we are right to condemn it, in the context of paragraphs on being open-minded and meeting diverse people where they are.

What is easy to believe is that this example of cultural differences is a stand-in for abortion. If the example were honor killing or the less lethal shunning, would the author be willing to simply roll with it? In both cases, the natural remedy to work toward would be to work against the social groups who accept these things. Because two of these things are evil and the third can be.

Is this where our current secular mindset takes us, the belief that we are above all morality and everything is mere difference of opinion? I keep thinking the reason this sociologist is willing to dismiss infanticide as a mere social difference is she isn’t the one getting hurt.

Reading: In The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson argues for reading fiction to see God at work in the others and expand Christian imagination. Reviewer Justin Lonas found this true for him. “The Holy Spirit used those who influenced my learning to read literature and poetry to protect me from making a shipwreck of my faith.”

Comedy: Norman Lear, the comedy writer who gave us shows such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, turned 100 on July 27. He drove America’s morality to the left, Albert Mohley writes, “by creating the stories that made America laugh … and sometimes cringe. In any event, Americans watched Lear’s television shows by the millions. They could hardly avoid them.”

Brisket with the Best: This article on eating at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is remarkably funny and goes in an unexpected direction while keeping its feet on the ground.

Noting: I try to read my books gently–as few wrinkles as possible, but I also am fairly ready to grab a pen or pencil and mark them up. Here are reasons for writing marginalia.

Gothic Novels: British historian Jeremy Black is written a literary series of series. The Age of Nightmare is coming in November. “The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution.”

Photo: McDonald’s, Azusa, California. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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Heat Wave Reveals Historic Garden Outline at Chatsworth House

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The summer heat has scorched the South lawn of Chatsworth House in Devonshire so much you can see the outline of an ancient garden that once grew for 30 years.

Head of gardens and landscape Steve Porter told the Yorkshire Post, “We can clearly see the intricate patterns of the historic garden at the moment. The current heatwave is causing us issues elsewhere in the garden but here it has revealed a hidden gem not enjoyed properly for nearly 300 years.”

Those other parts of the garden are described here in an announcement of the completion of the major renovation of an area called “Arcadia.”

Chatsworth House is the one used as Darcy’s Pemberley in the 1996 BBC adaptation.

Photo: “Chatsworth across Canal Pond 1” by Ian Parkes. Creative Commons 2.0.