If you’ve read J. R. R. Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories,” you’re familiar with the fact that folk tales can trace their origins back through millennia and through countless cultures. Stories are adapted by each culture to meet its own peculiar needs, as outlined in this Telegraph.co.uk article.
However, you’ll also recall that Tolkien was very adamant in insisting that the fact that one story is descended from another does not mean they are the same stories.
Tip: Cronaca.
I have to admit I was surprised by the turnout for the 9/12 rallies. I’m not often surprised, expecting the worst as I do, most of the time.
I read a biography of Jefferson (way over my head; I didn’t understand half of it) back when I was in Elementary School. One thing I took away, though, was that Jefferson cherished a basic belief in the wisdom of the people. Let discussion be unfettered; let every party have its say, and the people (he believed) would choose the right argument most of the time.
Lincoln, coming along later, at a time when public debate was the most violent it’s ever been in this country, seemed a little less sanguine, but still generally confident in common sense of the people, when he said (reportedly), “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Me, I’ve grown cynical, living in a day when truth has ceased to be even a matter of interest for many of the most respected thinkers in the world. I remember C. S. Lewis’ line from That Hideous Strength—“They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived.” I’ve never used the word “sheeple,” but I’d begun to fear that was what we’d become.
But I read about all those people in Washington D.C. on Saturday, and suddenly I have a little hope. There are (it appears) limits to the amount of nonsense the American people can be force-fed before they react.
Maybe that’s why Minnesota’s so liberal. Maybe we’re just too polite up here to tell our jailers, “You gave us gruel yesterday, and gruel today, and we’re sick of gruel! Especially when you’re billing us for it.”
Norman Borlaug is dead. He is of particular interest to me because he was a Norwegian-American boy, and he came to Luther College, Decorah, Iowa (which claimed him, as I recall, for some reason. Maybe because he came from nearby Cresco. Apparently he didn’t go to Luther) to speak during the year I attended the school. I think I heard him speak. I’m not exactly sure (and no, I wasn’t on drugs. I just have a bad memory). Through the use of high-yield crops, he saved the lives of billions of human beings. Yet he’s almost unknown.
I remember that for years after I’d seen him at Luther (I think I saw him) I heard critics complain that his “Green Revolution” was a fraud. “It’s unsustainable,” the critics said. “It depends too much on chemical fertilizers and technology.”
For leftists, saving billions of lives isn’t enough. You’ve got to do it the right way.
And, preferably, kill some capitalists in the process.
I saw it years ago, on the Minnesota State Fair grounds, in the area we call “Machinery Hill.” A bronze plaque on a low concrete base, if I recall correctly. It proudly proclaimed that the first group of Minnesota volunteers had mustered in this spot, on their way to fight in World War I.
“Our sons were here,” the message seemed to be. “They gathered solemnly in this place to put their young, hopeful lives on the line for a cause they believed in. We, their parents, dedicate this plaque so that their courage and sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
But of course it was forgotten, I thought. Who stops to read the plaque today? Who remembers those young men? Especially the ones who died in France and never came home to beget children, who might remember their names for a few generations?
It’s one of the tragedies and mercies of human life that (with rare exceptions) we always say “We will never forget,” but we always do. One of my ancestors fought in the Great Northern War. How many people today—even in Europe—know anything at all about the Great Northern War?
It’s obvious that we’re beginning to forget the 9/11 attacks. We say we don’t. The broadcast networks are making time for commemorations, but we can all tell that, behind the pieties, a lot of people consider it old news. It’s done. It’s over. What’s the use in opening old wounds?
That’s the way it is. That’s the way, in fact, it has to be. Because we’re transient beings. Our lives are too short to spend in constant mourning (and if they are spent that way, it constitutes a compounded tragedy). Our wounds heal, or at least grow over. Eventually we die, and our children can’t understand, and have commemorations of their own to mark. Our species has long-term memory loss.
So when we say “We’ll never forget,” we’re making a vow we can’t keep. We’re writing a check beyond the balance in our account.
But that doesn’t make it wrong.
It’s a matter of faith, really. When we use words like “forever” and “never,” we’re implicitly appealing to God (like it or not). The words have no meaning unless they cry for the attention of some Mind that can know all things, some Mind which doesn’t lose track, which marks the fall of a sparrow.
Christian theology doesn’t answer all questions concerning injustice and suffering, the whole theodicy issue. There are many questions to which our Scriptures simply give no answers.
But Christianity does present “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” a declaration that Jesus is the full expression of God. It proclaims that if we trust Him (who Himself suffered pain and injustice), we can trust that all things will be made right, somehow in the fullness of time.
Blessed be the memory.
Update: On re-reading this piece, I think I’ve committed my besetting sin of letting my head rule my heart. Just to avoid confusion, let me say that I don’t mean to suggest that it’s time to forget, or that there’s nothing we can do to remember that’s worth the trouble. It’s far too soon to forget. That would be a crime both against the victims of 9/11 and against victims of future attacks which would certainly follow from our neglect. My point is merely that we should not despair because we know we can’t remember as well as our hearts say we ought to.
(Cross-posted at Mere Comments)
I’ve been making the mistake recently of occasionally looking at reader reviews on Amazon when I set up the links for my blog reviews. Because of one of these lamentable lapses, I see tonight that reviews of Randy Wayne White’s Black Widow are decidedly mixed—and widely polarized. Some readers loved it. Others thought it signaled the demise of the “Doc Ford” series.
List me with the people who loved it. Approaching it as a pure escapist novel, I thought it was one of the best I’ve read recently.
I was particularly impressed with the opening. It’s a platitude (and becoming a cliché) that authors (thriller authors especially) need to grab the reader at the very beginning and keep things so tense that they can’t lose him.
In a single day and night in the first few chapters of Black Widow, Doc Ford (marine biologist and occasional government black ops agent) flies to Aruba to make a blackmail payoff on behalf of his goddaughter, Shay Money, who was guilty of certain excesses on a pre-wedding Caribbean holiday with three of her friends. Shay is engaged to an extremely wealthy and influential young man, and can’t afford a scandal. Then, instead of going to bed, he takes his boat, along with his hippie friend Tomlinson, to rescue a woman whose transmission they pick up on a short wave radio, who claims that she and her family are being attacked by sharks. This ends up involving an encounter (in the water) with hammerhead sharks. Then, again before he can get to bed, he’s attacked by a man with a gun in his own house. After handling this guy, Doc gets a call telling him that Shay has been in an auto accident, and one of her friends has attempted suicide. Then, after a hospital visit, he goes to bed with a different friend of hers.
And the next day he’s scheduled for a performance evaluation session with his government employers.
That got my attention.
The blackmailers come back for more of course, and Doc makes a trip to a very exclusive Caribbean island retreat, where a voodoo cult operates a health spa and resort which is actually a blackmail factory. He teams up with a too-good-to-be-true retired English secret agent. He gets drugged, gets beat up and imprisoned, and then kicks serious butt.
It was a lot of fun. Plenty of sex, but not explicit. Not up to the Klavan or Hunter standard, but perfect summer beach reading, in my opinion. It’s still warm down in the Bahamas, even in September.
[I’ve started a project of scanning a series of letters which I have in my care, so that I can send them to some relatives in Norway. These letters were written by my great-great-grandfather, Ole Olsen Kvalevaag, to my great-grandfather, John Walker (whose original name was Jan Olsen Kvalevaag). I translated them some years back. It was almost my first job of Norwegian translation. I found them fascinating, for more than family reasons, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading edited excerpts here from time to time.
Kvalevaag farm is located on a rocky island called Karmøy, in southwestern Norway. The picture above was taken by me on that farm, and shows three of my Norwegian cousins in front of a large stone (I think they had a name for it—the Church, I think, but I might be confused) in the valley called Tobteskarsdalen, which is mentioned in the letter. “Dalen” means valley, but this one is actually a valley in a rather high part of the farm.
The first letter is only a fragment. Its beginning pages have been lost. My guess is that it was written around 1889, a year after Jan had emigrated to America. See if you can identify the subtext. Bracketed notes in italics are mine. lw.]
…but so we believed it was from you, and we didn’t get your letter before Christmas Eve; and then 3 came at once, one to me and one to Marta and one to Lava [sisters]. And then I had written a letter to Iver and Helvik [sister], to ask them whether you had come to them or not, for we were afraid that you had gotten sick in Dakota before you set out. You can’t imagine how worried we were about you before we got the letter. Mother, mother, how she wept and wailed, “Now he’s lost too.” Oh yes, we certainly have our troubles, you may believe it. When Marta got to the post office and got all 3 letters, she didn’t send mine, but came home with it, because she knew it was from you.
Yes, you say that we will come to America too, ja, ja, but in God’s name it would be hell in America for us who are old. What in the world would we do there? No, we won’t do that, for our time remaining does not suffice to lay upon ourselves and others the burden of getting us to America. No, the time we have left in this world we will spend in our dear Norway. We have wanted for nothing here, for we are content here and at peace in soul and body, so that we couldn’t possibly have it much better. So I will ask you, for Jesus’ sake, never to mention it; then your mother gets to crying again so that it’s terrible to hear. “Is that the promise that Jan made before he left?” she says. You must keep your promise and come home again to us, for all your saws and tools are still hanging and lying at home just as when you left; for we have touched none of them before you come yourself. Continue reading Olsen letter #1
I’ve made my first post over at Touchstone Magazine’s Mere Comments. Check it out if you like, but it’s pretty much a re-hash of my previous post here about the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the homosexuality issue, and the authority of Scripture.
Regular readers here are already aware that I’m a man of many prejudices, so it won’t surprise you to know that I approached Marjorie Burns’ Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth with suspicion. I fully expect any book written by a female academic to be tailored for the Women’s Studies Department—full of anger at men and contempt for the Christian religion.
So I’m delighted to report that this book, written by a female English professor at Portland State University, was a very pleasant surprise in almost every way.
Burns notes that many scholars have traced the Norse and Anglo-Saxon themes in The Lord of the Rings. But she is convinced that Tolkien also drew (less openly, because of the fashions of his day) on Celtic myth and folklore as well. She examines all of Tolkien’s fantastic works (not only The Hobbit and the Trilogy, but the Silmarillion and the later gathered works) and points out (quite convincingly, it seems to me as a non-expert) Celtic parallels that may be nearly as important as the Norse. (Tolkien, she explains, loved Wales but did not care for Ireland. Also, there was a general opinion that Celtic matters were in some sense effeminate, lacking the practicality and fatalism of the Viking world-view. [Reviewer’s note: When you think of it, Tolkien and Lewis were an odd pair of friends—a Catholic Englishman and a Protestant Irishman.])
Gender issues are certainly in Burns’ mind as she examines the accusation that Tolkien’s work, with its vast majority of active males and small minority of (generally) passive females, is a mark of misogyny. But she stands up for him in what I’d call a courageous way. For one thing, she thinks that Tolkien (based on the prejudice mentioned above) had the Celts in mind, and therefore a sort of vital femininity, in his portrayal of the Elves. She also makes much of the manner in which males frequently assume traditionally feminine roles in the books—cooking, nurturing, housekeeping, nursing, etc.
She also spends much time refuting the accusation that Tolkien’s characters are cardboard, either all good or all evil. She not only points to the weaknesses, frailties and near runs with temptation that the good characters display. She also notes the way Tolkien “doubles” his characters—each good character being matched with an evil one. Thus, while Gandalf clearly embodies many of the more positive characteristics of the Norse god Odin, Sauron (who, like Odin, has one eye) displays the god’s wicked traits.
Burns ends the book with a short chapter outlining three questions about the books, and giving her own answers. These answers are blessedly free of radical feminism or condescension towards Tolkien’s Christian faith. In fact, she seems to appreciate the significance of the doctrine of the Incarnation.
So I enjoyed the book very much, and recommend it.
Philip Pullman (of His Dark Materials fame) is going to publish an alternative version of the life of Christ. It “strips Christianity bare.”
Have the publishers considered the fact that Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet? That a book like this might insult Muslims? I mean, I know they despise Christians, but what about the Religion of Peace?
Tip: Dale Nelson.
I woke up this morning and the sun wouldn’t shine. I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine. I loaded sixteen tons of Number 9 coal, and the strawboss said, “This is a Bible school. We don’t even use coal. Have you ever considered more productive uses for your time?”
OK, OK. It wasn’t sixteen tons. But I did work today (my annual orientation talk to the incoming students), while the rest of you were enjoying your bourgeois, degenerate cookouts and picnics. I don’t mind. I’m glad to do it.
Because it makes me better than you.
And when you get down to it, isn’t that what we’re all working for, really?
I did a little web searching about my new exercise regimen, “Walking with weights.” I found that fitness experts are almost unanimous in their opinion that it’s a very, very bad idea. High risk of injury. Likely to cause dangerous high blood pressure levels.
Just what I’d expect. I finally find a discipline that really makes me feel good, and it turns out to be a dangerous drug.
Too late now, though. I’m hooked.