Some used to say, “The treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu.” Now researchers and scholars are rushing to preserve those treasures. “The French are developing a database, while the United States has donated a device to digitize the damaged documents. The Norwegian cities of Oslo and Bergen are training locals to become conservators.” They hope to capture the ancient wisdom before the ink recording them fades completely.
All posts by Phil
Can Protestants Do Good Art?
Harrison Scott Key says, “I’m just not convinced that the Protestant Evangelical Church can do art.” He lists several problems.
On this subject, I came across this passage in Les Miserables last night, which I believe gets to the heart of the matter.
We must say, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, among churchmen, beyond their rites and ceremonies, luxury is a crime. It seems to disclose habits which are not truly charitable. A wealthy priest is a contradiction. He ought to keep himself near the poor. But, who can be in contact continually, by night as well as day, with all distresses, all misfortunes, all privations, without taking upon himself a little of that holy poverty, like the dust of a journey? Can you imagine a man near a fire, who does not feel warm? . . . The first proof of charity in a priest, and especially a bishop, is poverty.
Trolls
The Times Magazine as a piece on “several popular and well-known trolls who share their expositions and explanations of what they do and why.”
The article opens with an account of a child who killed himself, was honored by friends on MySpace, was dishonored by trolls online, and then dishonored by them offline. They started calling his parents’ home. They kept calling for year and a half.
How do you tell a whole generation not to waste their lives?
I suppose this is another reason the Internet is terrible place.
Another Reason the Internet Is a Wonderful Place
You can review candy, like “The Original Celebrated Altoids, Dark Chocolate Dipped Mints – Creme de Menthe” which I would not have know about had I not seen this post.
Commentary Magazine on Solzhenitsyn
Commentary Magazine’s website has several links to reviews of Solzhenitsyn’s work and articles on the man himself. In this blog post, John Podhoretz described Solzhenitsyn’s auto-biography, The Oak and the Calf, as “a book about temptation — the temptation to give in, to let the Soviet censor have his way here and there, to do what will make its author more comfortable even if doing so means bowdlerizing his own unmistakable vision of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist tyranny. . . . [H]e knew his path was one only a very few could possibly follow, because it required that one’s soul be made of oak, and humans with that kind of solidity come along a few times a century.”
In an essay called “Why Solzhenitsyn Will Not Go Away, Joseph Epstein quotes the author: “In Invisible Allies and The Oak and the Calf he speaks of carrying “the dying wishes of millions whose last whisper, last moan, had been cut short on some hut floor in some prison camp.” And again: “My point of departure [was] that I did not belong to myself alone, that my literary destiny was not just my own, but that of millions who had not lived to scrawl or gasp or croak the truth about their lot as jailbirds.”
Um, Did You Actually Read the Book?
Nothing But the Blood
I watched I am Legend tonight. I enjoyed it. It will make a great discussion film for those of us who enjoy talking philosophy and such after seeing a film. The gospel is in this movie, and I suspect some reviewers saw it and hated it.
The darkness hates the light to a degree.
If you don’t know the story, I’ll brief it for you. An air-born and contact virus breaks out in New York City and spreads across the world. 90% die; 9.9% become dark-seekers. The remaining are immune to the virus somehow. Robert Neville is the lone man on Manhattan island, what he calls Ground Zero. He believes he can stop the virus by staying there and working out vaccine.
Neville believes he is one man against a world turned bad, and in that role he plays a type of Christ. “God didn’t do this,” he says, “We did.” We made the world a hellish place. We turned ourselves into monsters—seekers of darkness.
And what does God care? He sits in his heaven, and all is right with the world as far as he’s concerned. But God is not absent. He still has a voice, directing, moving. Why he’s whispering may be a good question, but does it matter how he speaks if we refuse to listen? “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”
The cure for humanity is in the blood. Whose blood? That’s the final question.
When I got to the end of the story, I wondered how many bad ideas have some of us dressed up in biblical language. We need redemption. The closing song in this movie said we could find that redemption only in ourselves. That’s the human struggle, isn’t it? Can we save ourselves? Are we the hope we’ve been looking for?
If we saw ourselves as dark-seekers, we’d know there is no hope in us.
Hoping You’ll Judge By the Cover
“Having cottoned on to the fact that chick lit books sell like cupcakes, publishers are now adding chick lit-style covers to any book written by a woman whether it fits the genre definition or not,” writes Diane Shipley. One of her examples points to three dissimilar books with similar covers. Does she have a point? [via ArtsJournal]
The Bond Between a Man and His Profession
Primo Levi said, “The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one’s country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.”
What do you think?
Movies Again
We’re all about movies here at Brandywine BOOKS . . . Ahem . . .
I’m having trouble with my mic here . . . are we live already? Can you hear me now?
All right. We’re all about movies here. As Orson Scott Card said, when modern Americans read a great book, they often say it would make a great movie because when a story succeeds as a movie, it has been perfected. Don’t deny it. You know it’s true.
So I watched the 1931 film Arrowsmith last night. It was great. I think the end could have had more to it. Maybe I needed Ronald Coleman to monologue a bit at the end. “Here’s why I’m going to leave my success and wealth behind. This is the reason I will cut ties with this place. I did make the right decision back in the West Indies. I’m not turning back! I’m am American. We never turn back!” Or something like that.
It’s a sad story overall. It’s based on a Sinclair Lewis novel about a young scientist who marries a nurse in his hospital, begins his career as a doctor in South Dakota, and distinguishes himself enough to be invited to join a research institute in New York. He’s a good man, but he may not make the best decisions throughout the story. Feel free to rent it and judge for yourself. Dr. Arrowsmith’s poor little wife puts up with a lot and I’m not sure he understands her sacrifice in the end. The viewers do understand his devotion to her, which is a strong point for the film.
More importantly as far as movie news goes, Disney has released a trailer for its new princess movie, The Princess and the Frog. I wish them all the best for this one. I hope they do it up right.
Also from Disney (What? I have four girls at home who love this stuff. Is that the reason you’re looking at me that way? Stop it. Here’s a Tootsie Roll, so chill.) comes a good-looking cartoon called Bolt. Could be a strong film, even though my sweet wife couldn’t get over the fact the dog looked like a bear to her at first.