Category Archives: Non-fiction

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, The Press

‘Unsure Whether We Have the Right to Talk’

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From “The Interrogation” in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. (alt link – Internet Archive)

My interrogator had used no methods on me other than sleeplessness, lies, and threats — all completely legal. Therefore, in the course of the “206” procedure, he didn’t have to shove at me — as did interrogators who had made a mess of things and wanted to play safe — a document on nondisclosure for me to sign: that I, the undersigned, under pain of criminal penalty, swore never to tell anyone about the methods used in conducting my interrogation. (No one knows, incidentally, what article of the Code this comes under.)

In several of the provincial administrations of the NKVD this measure was carried out in sequence: the typed statement on nondisclosure was shoved at a prisoner along with the verdict of the OSO. And later a similar document was shoved at prisoners being released from camp, whereby they guaranteed never to disclose to anyone the state of affairs in camp.

And so? Our habit of obedience, our bent (or broken) backbone, did not suffer us either to reject this gangster method of burying loose ends or even to be enraged by it.

We have lost the measure of freedom. We have no means of determining where it begins and where it ends. We are an Asiatic people. On and on and on they go, taking from us those endless pledges of nondisclosure — everyone not too lazy to ask for them.

By now we are even unsure whether we have the right to talk about the events of our own lives.

I worry we’re getting to this point of silencing ourselves without Soviet interrogation.

The Press: CBS has reportedly “confiscated the records of” Catherine Herridge after firing her last month. Many suspect she wasn’t toeing the narrative line (or kissing the ring of the Right Side of History).

Ukraine: The aggressive invasion of Ukraine began two years ago this week. “. . . you have to gather all your strength and keep living — it’s easy to go mad from the onslaught of emotions and experiences. Sometimes I feel like we’ve all collectively gone mad.”

Real Men: Praise for the male lead in Helprin’s The Oceans and the Stars as the type of man we need everywhere. “As a leader, for instance, Rensselaer maintains the perfect distance from his crew. Though they know they can approach him for help and advice, he does not pretend to be their buddy. Nor is he aloof or self-absorbed. Rensselaer is all about the mission at hand, preserving the lives of those under his command, and winning in battle.”

ICYMI, Lars review The Oceans and the Stars last October.

Darwin’s Sequel: Robert Shedinger has a new book about the sequel to Origin of Species, which “promised evidence for natural selection” that was not included in the original. He says Darwin just kept promising his supporters, because he would never have the material to finish the book.

Western Canon: A college attempts to replace the Great Books with those aligned with a proper ideology. “‘Attempting to read many of the works set forth as resentment’s alternative to the Canon,’ Bloom groaned, ‘I reflect that these aspirants must believe . . . that their sincere passions are already poems, requiring only a little overwriting.'” This isn’t post-modern, the writer notes. It’s as old as the iconoclasts of history.

Photo: Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Non-fiction

Orwell Reviews ‘That Hideous Strength,’ and News from the Wars

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George Orwell both liked and disliked C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. In his 1945 review printed in Manchester Evening News, Orwell outlined the plot and mad scheme of the enemy, saying it was not “outrageously improbable.”

Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical. Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters, and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable.

But he disliked the supernatural elements in it. Bringing in God and demons tips the scales, as it were, “one always knows which side is going to win.” (via Andrew Snyder on Twitter)

And one other thought:

Culture War: Daniel Strand reviews Russell Moore recent book. “Losing Our Religion would be more persuasive if—instead of affecting to be a simple piece of pastoral counseling—it straightforwardly acknowledged its own agenda. Moore has an argument to make, and he wants to advance his project and defeat his opponents. But his book frames the gospel as some pure, otherworldly abstraction that has little to do with power or politics.”

More Lewis: Joseph Pollard has three posts on Lewis’s Till We Have Faces. Here is a link to all three. “While the Narnia series positively oozes with Christian symbolism and biblical allusion, in this, his final work of fiction, Lewis effectually communicates what so many thoroughly orthodox theology textbooks tirelessly aim to do: Till We Have Faces (1956) gently coaxes the reader to come to terms with both the futility of quarreling with the Almighty, and the resplendent beauty of the thrice-holy King.”

Economic Freedom: When Howard Ahmanson “heard [author John M.] Perkins speak, he heard something like his father’s message from the 1960s: free enterprise works, and small banks help people with modest incomes get mortgages so they have better homes. In India, the free enterprise message would take five more years to sink in, but in 1989 voters threw out Congress Party socialism. The result? India in recent years has been the world’s fastest-growing major economy.”

From History’s Wars: Patrick Kurp shares a few words from letters from a Civil War soldier. “Historians attribute more than half the 618,000 Union and Confederate deaths in the war not to battlefield wounds but disease: dysentery, pneumonia, malaria, typhus, chicken pox, enteric (typhoid) fever.”

Photo: Main Street, Iowa. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Non-fiction, Publishing, Reviews, The Press

Sacramone on ‘God, the Bestseller’

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Over at Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach blog (which is, lamentably, paywalled), he linked today to Anthony Sacramone’s review at acton.org of Stephen Prothero’s God, the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time. (I’ll let you order it, if you like, from the review. I came to praise Sacramone, not to pick his pocket.) I had never heard of the book’s subject, Eugene Exman:

… “who ran the religion book department at Harper & Brothers and then Harper & Rowe between 1928 and 1965,” and who published some of the most recognizable names in the world of religion (and quasi religion) of that period, from Harry Emerson Fosdick and Albert Schweitzer to Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA.

…if there’s one phrase that’s repeated mantra-like in God the Bestseller it’s “hidebound dogma” (note the modifier). The books Exman would publish at the helm of Harper and Rowe’s religion division would seek that which transcended mere doctrine, a “perennial philosophy,” as Aldous Huxley’s own bestseller would be called—a common thread that supposedly runs through all religions, tying the earthly to the heavenly, matter to the spirit.

Exman, raised a Baptist, had an intense spiritual experience, but it led him, not into the Bible or orthodoxy, but into a generalized search for spiritual truth, which he believed he could find in all faiths.

His greatest star was Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a hugely influential writer in his time, almost forgotten today (a fact which gives me hope for the future). I once borrowed a book on the life of St. Paul from my elementary school library. My mother noticed that Fosdick was the author, and cautioned me against it. This was wise. I did notice a tendency to downplay the supernatural.

As a short history of the American religious publishing game in the mid-20th century, and the signal role one man… played in that history, virtually transforming what passed for religion in the broader reading public’s imagination, Stephen Prothero does yeoman’s work in God the Bestseller. Anyone in the publishing trade will find this an enjoyable, if somewhat repetitive, read.

Non-fiction

Did Anyone Ever Believe the Earth Was Flat?

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In the beginning, when people lived in growing, unorganized communities of farms and villages, they may have thought the world was a shape other than spherical. Maybe they didn’t think of it at all. Why should they?

Considering how several ancient civilizations were avid astronomers, we could easily imagine they had creative ideas about the world and maybe its shape. That the Mayans or Egyptians even asked what shape the land might be is not a given. They may have asked a thousand other questions, and if they were oriented around time or the spirit world, not space or the material world, they may not have asked the question.

Dr Josho Brouwers of Bad Ancient takes up this question, saying once people began to explore the world, it became apparent we live on a globe. By the time Plato was writing, it was a common question, the assumption being in favor of a spherical planet. Aristotle proposed the Earth and all of the heavens were fixed in spheres, each inside the other.

Brouwers writes, “This idea – that the world was spherical – became pervasive in the Hellenistic period. The work of Aristarchus of Samos [310-230 BC], the first known scholar to argue that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around, assumes that the earth was round.”

There’s even a suggestion that the educated of ancient India believed the world was spherical too. So, ancient scholars worked out and believed the world was a globe and the medieval church did not oppose them. The idea that Columbus wanted to prove the world was round (and other silliness about the medieval world believing in flatness) is something pushed by people with a beef against the church.

Blogs, Socials, Music, Non-fiction, Poetry

Rejected Book Tour and Reading Dante in Ukraine

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An original limerick for your weekend.

In meetings at Kensington Cross 
For lingo I searched at a loss. 
One word—marinara 
Was all I could bear, uh, 
For the spots on my shirt were all sauce.

No shirts were stained in the composition of that limerick. Now, on to the links.

Memoir: Rob Henderson has a memoir releasing next month called, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. J.D Vance praised it for a “gripping” message. Others called it “extraordinary.” But major city bookstores don’t want to schedule tour events for him, even though he had tens of thousands of social media followers (over 137k on Twitter).

Sherlock Holmes: Getting the great detective into print was a challenge for Conan Doyle in that he hoped to publish one of the better markets. Historian Lucy Worsley, who has a new BBC series on the author’s relationship with his detective, says the first stories were rejected thrice.

The rejections scarred Arthur and made him slightly ashamed of his character, because he wanted to be a high brow writer. Nevertheless, he persevered because he was short of money, and he had a family to support, and he was also very, very hardworking, and energetic.

After Sherlock’s first two outings, both of which were lacklustre in terms of readership, his literary agent suggested a new magazine called The Strand, which was a mid-market magazine aimed at commuters, who were hustling and making a life for themselves in the busy throbbing urban world of London, in the 1890s, that Arthur struck gold.

Self-Awareness: We seem to be overly aware of ourselves, don’t we? But we aren’t yet schizophrenic. “The cult of the ironic, distanced observer, aware of his own awareness, unable to break out of his solipsistic construction of himself and his world, has displaced what is now seen to be the naive, immediate relationship with reality as it is felt. This point of view has developed its own orthodoxy, even if most of us go about our lives as though we were actually involved with things, events and people not entirely of our making.” (via Rob Henderson)

Enraptured: February 12, 2024, will be the 100th anniversary of the first public performance of George Gershwin’s Rapsody in Blue. World Radio had a segment on it earlier this month, discussing the piece and how it’s been altered in many recording.

Dante’s Inferno: “Somewhere in Ukraine right now, my friend who publishes books orders printers in the bombed out city of Kharkiv to produce thousands of copies of Inferno. The trucks deliver weapons into Kharkiv. And, going back, empty, they decide to pick up thousands of copies of Dante’s Inferno.

“This is an image of war that happens as I write it: cars are bringing weapons into the besieged city that’s bombed daily, and they leave full of books.” (via The Book Haven)

Photo by Danya Gutan on Pexels.com

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Non-fiction, Writing

Had the Crew Dealt in Books They Would Have Gone Broke

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An original limerick for your weekend.

A ship with a creative crew
would trade in Newport and ports new
their haphazard wares,
their slapdash and spares,
for the loan on their ship had come due.

Live within your means, readers, and stay ahead of any judicious loans you take out. And now, on with the links.

2023 Books: Bookseller and podcaster David Kern offers “eight novels published in 2023 that I’ve been handing to people because they remind me why I love novels in the first place.”

And more recommendations, this time of the spy-thriller nature from John Wilson—”more than enough regional and global conflicts to keep spies and spymasters busy and readers turning the pages.”

Writing in the Woods: The writing life can take many forms, like when a friend lets you live in a cottage on their land for a summer.

Writing about Magic: During the Renaissance, the practice of and the writing about magic produced mixed results. “Renaissance magicians were often bookish.” Sounds like Mr. Norrell.

Photo by Hector John Periquin on Unsplash

Non-fiction

Is America in a Dark Period?

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The extent of mafia money and influence within the corridors of American power in the middle of the past century is a familiar story, told in fictional form in iconic movies like The Godfather. Given the extent of these connections, it wouldn’t be surprising if the shadowy realms of the government now known to have been involved in illegal covert activities—such as COINTELPRO and the CIA’s Operation CHAOS—turned to the mafia to handle certain jobs; for one thing, they could offer the services of experienced hit men sworn to omertà. For his part, Hoover famously denied for decades that the mafia existed, whether because he owed any mob bosses favors—or simply because he preferred to stay focused on political subversives like King.

Seneca Scott, Did the FBI Kill MLK? | Compact Mag
Fiction, Non-fiction

Movies Are Made of Moments

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British host Michael Parkinson interviews American actor Jimmy Stewart (and later Stewart’s wife, Gloria)

In the 1973 interview above with British TV presenter Michael Parkinson (1935-2023), actor Jimmy Stewart shares a number of interesting trivia from his life and career. They embarrass him in the beginning by sharing a clip from a romantic musical he did, and then at 9:25 shift to It’s a Wonderful Life. Stewart says the film didn’t do well at the box office, but it’s both his and director Frank Capra’s favorite movie.

He goes on to say he has a theory that “creating moments in movies” is most important. “Nobody knows exactly how it happens. What you should do is prepare yourself as best you can to make these moments happen.” Movies are less about the overall performance and more about moments like George Bailey’s desperation in the bar, crying out to God to show him the way.

I found this interview via Anthony Sacramone, who is very smart and a film buff. He added to Stewart’s comments with moments of his own.

Think about Bogart at the bar. Or the look on Hackman’s face as he sees the woman pushing the baby carriage in the middle of the street under the El. Or the “Ba-da-bing!” scene in The Godfather (or the expression on Michael’s face just before he shoots McCluskey and Sollozzo and changes the trajectory of his life forever). Think about that shot of John Wayne through the doorway as he turns and walks off into the distance in The Searchers. James Dean crying, “You’re tearing me ap-a-a-art!” in Rebel without a Cause. Rocky screaming for Adrian at the big fight’s end.

Fiction, Music, Non-fiction

Christmas Ghost Stories, Music, and Bad Ideas

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Frittering. I’ve been sitting here frittering like a River City school boy at a pool hall. It often goes this way, even when I have a good idea to write about. This time I didn’t have a good idea, so let’s share some links.

Christmas Carol: Hope Media Group and Compassion International have produced an audio adaptation of A Christmas Carol with the voices of Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davis. Find it on your podcast platform of choice or on the official website. (via World News Group)

Ghost Stories: Loren Eaton is hosting a storytelling fest for Christmas-related ghost stories. The stories are flash fiction, only 100 words each. My contribution is in another post.

Musical Delight: “What do Armstrong and Waller have in common? Both are artists who dispense joy without compromising their art.”

Machen’s Classic Book: “On topic after topic, Machen demonstrates liberalism’s misunderstanding of the enormity of sin: ‘If sin is so ­trifling a matter as the liberal Church supposes,’ Machen writes, ‘then indeed the curse of God’s law can be taken very lightly, and God can easily let by-gones be by-gones.’ But if God is holy and sin is as the Bible describes it, the state of the sinner is desperate.”

Photo: University of Washington Libraries, “Two skiers on Lyman Glacier near Red Mountain, northwest Chelan County”/ Unsplash

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction

The Office Above the Man, Justice, and Gingerbread

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I was thinking about the Roman Republic and Empire lately, and, no, it wasn’t a leftover from the Tik-Tok curiosity the other week. It was for my job, working on a humanities course. The text described how Romans formed their government initially with two political bodies, one restricted to families with old Roman blood, the other for plebians. The plebians pushed for political opportunity and got laws in place that allowed them to stand for election to important offices. This was an important shift from appointing a man of good standing from within the ruling class to establishing an office with legal responsibilities for anyone who holds it. It elevated the law above the man.

Liberty within the law is an important democratic principle. If a governor is just the man in power, he rules in his own interest, and if he’s wise, he will build up the whole region, but if he’s interested only in his own leisure, he will consume what he can for as long as he can at the expense of the people. But if the governor is an office with legal responsibilities and accountabilities, then whoever is put in the office has a public role to fulfill. He is a public servant.

This idea is being threatened by those who wish to redefine us into categories with rights and privileges inherent to those categories. They are working on us to view each other as types, some with innate goodness, some with innate justification, and some with innate wickedness who can do no good apart from submission. It undermines our liberty within the law and argues for those with the right blood lines to take control.

On this subject, I heard a good conversation this week on Cairn University’s defragmenting podcast with the author of Reforming Criminal Justice. Attorney Matthew T. Martens explains how politics has divided terms and concepts incorrectly, and how justice is a matter of Christian love. As host Dr. Keith Plummer puts it, there’s something in this book to ruffle everyone’s feathers, but it sounds like a well-composed argument for respecting our fellow citizens within the responsibilities of the law. Look into the book here.

What else do we have today?

Farming: Here’s an outside list I think you’ll find interesting: 22 Books about Farming, Food and Agricultural Innovations

Ministry: The Gospel Coalition 2023 Book Awards has some good titles, including an encouraging book on “’dechurching,’ why they’re leaving, and how we might thoughtfully engage them.” The media paints its own picture of people leaving the church; the truth is far more complicated and hopeful.

For comparison, look over the 2023 books selected by For the Church.

Gingerbread: The OED offers an interesting etymology of the word “gingerbread,” which is a seasonal food I enjoy year-round.

  • In the 13th century, gingerbread was preserved ginger, spelled as “gingebrad” or “gynbred.”
  • By 1450, the word was recorded as meaning the “cake, pudding, or biscuit” we know of today, though ginger isn’t a key ingredient, if included at all.
  • In the 17th century, it began to be used as slang for money. “Without commission: why, it would never grieve me, If I had got this Ginger-bread” (1625).
  • There’s also an obsolete use from 1664 meaning “superficially attractive,” whether that’s a person, word, or action.

Photo: Socks the Cat Standing Next to the Gingerbread Replica of the White House: 12/05/1993 (The U.S. National Archives, Public Domain)