I have neglected to point out the national scope of the War over Poe. Who killed Poe and far more here. John Ball suggests:
[Last night was] an occasion to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe, the secular patron saint of American Gothic Horror, and when we’re talking about Poe, the drinks should come first:
CELEBRATE LIKE POE:
1. Gulp a double shot of the cheapest rotgut available.
2. Fall down because your body can’t handle it.
3. Suffer posthumous defamation by an envious hack journalist.
On November 1, 1871, Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey. Crane is the famous author of the poem “Content,” among other works, which begins:
A youth in apparel that glittered
Went to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin . . .
And it’s downhill for the rest.
Speaking of Colbert and H.S. Key, the latter points out an interview with the former in Vanity Fair. “His getup,” says Seth Mnookin in the article, “combined with the swagger he affects onstage, made him seem like Clark Kent, if Clark Kent acted more like Superman in his everyday life.” As I suspected, Colbert appears to be a normal, admirable man. I’m going to have to read his book now.
I know the law is the law, but the FEC needs to lighten up on Stephen Colbert’s “presidential” run. He’s not really running for the White House. He can’t, because he is America. As can be seen on one of his websites (for the moment), 27% of supporters believe he should be his own running mate. So, I’m going to be disappointed if some lawyer or federal gook roughs him up over this. Now, if he gets his name on the general ballot, he has probably going to far, but until then–he is America, and I can too!
J.K. Rowling has been talking about her books lately, and in New York someone asked a question about Professor Dumbledore’s, the headmaster of Rowling’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, love life. The author answered hesitantly, “I always saw Dumbledore as gay.”
According to at least one report, the audience loudly applauded that revelation, to which Rowling responded she would have revealed it earlier had she known it would be well received.
Of course, this doesn’t sit well with me, but I guess we’ll have to live with it. Rowling appears to be in her right mind and not slipping into loony post-story “revelations,” ala George Lucas. When I first heard of this news, I doubted it. Even if she did say Dumbledore is gay and it isn’t an inference drawn from an unclear statement, I thought we may have to wait to hear what other statements she makes about her wildly popular series. If next year we hear her tell readers the hero of her stories is actually Hagrid, then we’ll know she’s flaky. But this appears to be genuine backstory, never before guessed or hinted at in the books. In a few decades if these books are still popular, many readers will probably doubt Rowling ever said this.
In related news, Rowling said the books have Christian inspirations. The Telegraph reports:
At one point Harry visits his parents’ graves and finds two biblical passages inscribed on their tombstones.
“They are very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones,” [Rowling] said.
“But I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones …they sum up, they almost epitomise, the whole series.”
She confessed that she does have doubts about Christianity and the afterlife, but she has not given up on her faith. To the reader who responds to this by asking how she could be Christian and have a major character, admirable in many ways, be a homosexual, I recommend practicing a bit of Christian tolerance. Did the Lord say, “Ye will know my disciples by their stance of current issues?” No, he said his disciples would love each other, even when we disagree.
I hope you trust I don’t lie to you for whatever perceived gain I could get. I have no idea how I could gain from false claims on a blog, but you and I are honest with each other, right? Good. So I’m not lying when I say that yesterday I thought about writing Prime Time America to ask about doing book reviews, mostly of Christian fiction, and maybe they could also interview Mark Bertrand about his new book, Rethinking Worldview. I didn’t, and yet Mark will be on the radio today during the first hour of Prime Time America. I’ll be listening.
File this under Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone. Authors Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza will debate the merits of the Christian faith at The King’s College next week. The debate, coming October 22 at 7:30pm, will be moderated by World magazine Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky.
On D’Souza’s website, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, is quoted saying, “As an unbeliever, I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read.” D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity, comes out this week.
The impressive artist Makoto Fujimura toured a bit of China with professor Ralph McInerny, author of the Father Dowling mysteries. Fujimura writes about it for World:
“The activity of the practical intellect divides into human actions to be done … and the works to be made; in other words, it divides into moral activity and artistic activity … Art is a virtue – not a moral virtue … Art is a virtue in the larger and more philosophical sense the ancients gave to this word; a habitus or ’state of possession,’ an inner strength developed in man … Art is a virtue of the practical intellect.” (Jacues Maritain, Creative Intuition)
The “habitus” of an Aquinas scholar could include mystery novels, or to consider all creative activities to be a significant intellectual work. Whether art and poetry, a Sunday afternoon baseball game or gourmet cooking, we do not need to segregate art and creativity into a corner, an exiled “extra” of our lives.
Ralph confided to me, though, that he really began to write mystery novels as a side business; to put his kids through school. I told him that my wife is a mystery novel fanatic, and knew of his books. I, on the other hand, first “met” Father Dowling as Tom Bosley, in a TV mystery show in the Eighties. “They loosely based it on my novels,” he said in his jovial voice, “but paid me well.” Having a son at NYU, I nodded, knowing that a financial opportunity a purist may resist, a parent grabs onto for dear life. I began to even ponder what kind of a mystery novel I would write … Murder at NYU (a parent gets mysteriously murdered on his way to paying his son’s tuition)?
It appears the debating Oxford fellows had a warm reception in Birmingham. Recordings of the debate will be available soon from Fixed-Point Foundation, and it will be rebroadcast tomorrow on WMBW at 3:00 p.m. eastern. You can listen online, if you are not in southeast Tennessee during that time.
Editor Naomi Riley reports on her experience at the debate in today’s Opinion Journal.
Perhaps Mr. Dawkins was surprised by this reception. He recently referred to the Bible Belt states as “the reptilian brain of southern and middle America,” in contrast to the “country’s cerebral cortex to the north and down the coasts.” This debate marks the first time Mr. Dawkins has appeared in the Old South. Maybe his publishers suggested it would be a good idea. After all, “The God Delusion” and similar atheist tracts have been selling like hotcakes (or buttered grits) down here.
But why? Are Christians staying up late on Saturday night to read these books and failing to show up at church on Sunday morning, as Mr. Dawkins might hope? So far, the answer is no, according to Bill Hay, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church just outside of Birmingham. He tells me that there hasn’t been much of an exodus from his church as a result of these books. But he does think that his congregants are aware of them and want to know how to respond to such arguments. He notes that 200 men show up to church at 6 a.m. once a week for a class on Christian doctrine.
[Thanks to Dave Lull]
The 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Doris Lessing, born to British parents in Iran (formerly Persia) in 1919, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire, and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” Nobel’s Swedish Academy writes:
The Golden Notebook (1962) was Doris Lessing’s real breakthrough. The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship. It used a more complex narrative technique to reveal how political and emotion conflicts are intertwined.
Harper Collins has a reading guide to The Golden Notebook.