Category Archives: Blogs, Socials

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

The Progressive Era Didn’t End Well and Alban Buns

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Last week, I told I was almost done with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and couldn’t talk about it in full yet. Now that I’ve finished it, I can say I appreciate it overall and it won’t make any list of recommended reading from me. It was a little long-winded, unevenly humorous, and the point driven home at the end is an ugly one.

Twain’s Yankee engineer is an ideal man, in a sense, and very lucky. He applies knowledge to a variety of fortunate occurrences and builds a brilliant reputation for himself. He quickly earns the loyalty of people who pull him through other scrapes, even to when he takes full credit for all actions afterward. He can practically create the entire nineteenth century in Medieval England on his own. And at the height of it, when Camelot falls apart as it does in the historic legend, he says, now we must push to destroy the Catholic Church and the order of chivalry. The final chapters depict this push with horrific bloodshed that could be taken as comic if there weren’t so many bodies on the ground.

Aside: I was offended by Merlin’s stunt at the very end, because when has he demonstrated any skill of this kind before? Is or is he not a charlatan?

What should readers take away from this application of Progressive ideals on the medieval world? Does the Yankee triumph? Does he accomplish his goals?

A Connecticut Yankee was published in 1889, the end of a pretty good decade in the United States. That was before the Spanish-American War for Cuban independence, the Philippine-American War against Filippino independence, the Russo-Japanese War in which the US worked for a balance of powers, and conflicts over the building of the Panama Canal. Theodore Roosevelt was a player in all of these. After these came World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, so one would understand if viewers came away with the impression that the great Progressive Era ushered mankind into the position he’s always wanted–to play God. If the Yankee’s ideas would not be accepted by rubes too thick to see the wisdom of them, then the rubes could die, and should die to out of the way of progress, and would die in front of the Yankee’s superior technology.

Twain was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League that opposed the U.S. war effort against the Philippines and various conflicts that gave a sense of an expanding American empire. Twain may have asked, if we were a free nation, why would we fight to subjugate other nations? Which is the very thing the Connecticut Yankee attempts in the end. He presses his ideals into tryanny and in a manner of speaking murders everyone. Maybe that was Twain’s point.

Anyway, let me share a few links before I let you go for the day.

More on Connecticut Yankee: James Turner has a long piece on Medievelists.net. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court found some of its greatest and most engaged champions with Soviet artists, perhaps unsurprisingly when you consider the novel two-pronged critique of both the inherent corruption and excesses of aristocratic society and its cautious approach to the cold heart and supposedly self-defeating exploitation of workers under the capitalist system.”

Recommended changes: Agrarian author Wendell Berry offers revisions to the Marvel cinematic universe in this piece by Jeff King. “The villains have just not been believable. Why a squinting, purple monster looking to eliminate half of life in the universe when the strip mining industry is right there?”

Hot Cross Buns: Alban Buns (the precursor to our Hot Cross Buns) were first baked in 1361 and given to the poor on Good Friday. This and more history of one of my favorite rolls from Richard Baxter.

Role Models: With Purim starting, Mijal Bitton suggests American Jews look to Esther as a role model. “Esther symbolizes the way too many Jews feel today — confronted by rising hatred against their Judaism.”

Good Fun: A little love for Don Quixote. “Cervantes is ingenious.”

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Poetry, Publishing, Uncategorized

We Are the Best Obv. and Some Links

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I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and have not finished it, but I wanted to share some thoughts today. Blogging is designed for that, updates along the way.

The point almost from the beginning is that this engineer from 19th century America is an intellectual paragon among sixth century rubes. Their superstition and gullibility make them victims of every charlatan (usually of a religious or magical flavor) who comes into town. Hank the Yankee sees through all of them and will deliver them from all bondage, if he can devise a way to do it. I’m near the end of the book, and though luck has saved his neck many times, his progressive prowess has prepared him for that salvation just as often.

His progressive acumen is as good as magic, because Hank’s been able to create a telephone and telegraph network, school system, railroads, various consumer goods, and many kinds of explosives. He intends to create a thriving democracy in Camelot, if not all of England, and I’m wondering if that’s where Twain will leave it–19th century America triumphing overall. We see a little tension in the story here and there, because Hank is not brilliant and has been successful largely by force of plot and luck. So, I’ve wondered if the satire will turn back on him, and the story will end with everything crashing around him. Will the 19th century man be shown to be the greatest product of society, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, the smartest and the best of all, or will his Social Darwinian hubris trip him up? I may find out later today.

What can I share with you today?

First, let me apologize for missing the Sunday Singing post last week. Circumstances disrupted by routine and by Sunday afternoon, I decided not to post it. I’ll get one up tomorrow, if I don’t fall a roof in the morning.

Boycotts: The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, has the U.S. Army and defense contractors as sponsors and participants for years, but this year, helping Israel defend itself against the neighboring monsters is too much for some.

Publishing: A new publishing house formed by three experienced executives intends to forego advances and offer “authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model used by some other types of hybrid publishers.”

Food: What is corned beef? It’s an innovation of Irish-Americans who lived near Jewish Americans and took a shine to this kind of meat in Jewish delis.

Poetry: “Trash” by Lowell Jaeger.
“… in the old days there was no such thing as trash”

And slightly related to trash, this post on road kill and opossums.

Photo: Bomber gas station, Milwaukie, Oregon. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Poetry

How We Conceive of Conversion and Pushing Against a Classic Separation

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I didn’t make any progress on The Road this week. (Perhaps I should write about it before I finish, make two posts.) I’ve been reading other books too, which is new for me. Last year, I bought a few books to challenge myself and have picked up more since then, so now I’m reading four at once sorta kinda. Saying it that way doesn’t sound right, because I’m not reading four books together. I just have books I intend to but have yet to finish.

One of those books is Karen Swallow Prior’s The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. It describes the recent history of several ideas in Christianity, such as spiritual awakening, conversion, sentimentality, and materiality. They may not be ideas emphasized by our church traditions, but I’m sure I’ll find some challenging thoughts as I keep reading.

In talking about the concept of conversion, she notes a reader of Pride and Prejudice who remarked that Mr. Collins doesn’t appear to be a Christian at all. How could he be a minister? He could be a minister, she says, because the state church made political appointments to these positions. This was the context of the Great Awakening. She writes that evangelicals emphasize reaching the lost among those in the world or of other faiths, so there’s a bit of irony in the development of evangelicalism from a society that claimed to be Christian on the whole. How we imagine the conversion experience shapes our faith and influences how we teach others, especially children, to think about their commitment to Christ.

That’s the kind of thing Prior gets into in that book. I’ll write about it again another time.

Christian Nationalism: Hunter Baker reviews a couple books on the Christian Nationalism debate for Modern Age. “For Wolfe, the answer is to become a transgressor against the boundaries of church and state that today appear to be so firmly drawn by the liberal regime. . . . You can’t fight the something of secular progressivism with the nothing of a disarmed faith that lives in the confining pen made for it by modernity, so set forth a vision of the nation as one that is unashamed to call itself and its people Christian.”

Poetry: Five poems from Dorothy Sayers

I sit within My Father’s house, with changeless face to see
The shames and sins that turned away My Father’s face from Me;
Be not amazed for all these things, I bore them long ago
That am from everlasting God, and was and shall be so.

Humanities: The good people at The New Criterion had abandoned the annual Modern Language Association conference, saying, “we felt that, like Macbeth, we had ‘supped full with horrors’ and resolved to leave those annual exhibitions of narcissistic nullity to others.” But this year, they looked back again and found a curiosity or two.

Scripture: Luther on “the chief point of all Scripture” being the certainty of God’s promises.

Photo: Norwest Bank terra cotta detail, Owatonna, Minnesota, 1988. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Poetry

On the West Side of the Red Sea

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I started reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road this week, and I’m having a hard time flipping over to the bright side of things. That’s where I’m going to lay the blame anyway.

He pushed open the closet door half expecting to find his childhood things. Raw cold daylight fell through from the roof. Gray as his heart.

We should go, Papa. Can we go?

This year, as was last year, is going to be filled with difficult news. I’m asking myself, on which side of the Red Sea am I going stand, the west side or the east? Will I ask, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness” or say, “The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Exodus 14:11; 15:2 ESV)?

I’m on the west side today, but I can see the east bank from here.

Let’s move on.

Ukraine: “Talking with Ukraine’s own ‘Generation of Fire’ who came of age during the past decade of Russian aggression against their country reveals a keen understanding of the hand they’ve been dealt, despite moments of despair or near disillusionment.”

“We’re faced with paying for the mistakes of previous generations,” Serhiy, a 21 year-old from Chernivtsi, lamented.

From the Shadows: Gina Delfonzo reviews the paintings and stories found in Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women by Hannah Rose Thomas. “I am so happy. I have never held a pencil in my life before, and this is the first time I have been able to write my name and even to draw my face!”

Poem: Here’s a poem that could be plucked from a fairy tale by Marly Youmans (via The Palace at 2:00 a.m.)

Real Food: Advocates for the environment need to wake up and enjoy the bacon. “They strive to protect bees from suffering by embracing policies that will extinguish all bees; they embrace no-animal policies that in the name of animal welfare will end all livestock animals being alive—and with them, the manure upon which plant agriculture has always depended will vanish.”

Photo by Jamie Hagan on Unsplash

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

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

Things Napoleon Said and Award Censorship

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May I share some quotes and marginalia from my old quotation book with you today?

Cervantes said in Don Quixote, “There are no proverbial sayings which are not true.”

To say, “a man has an axe to grind,” first appeared in print in “Essays from The Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe” by Charles Miner, published in 1811 in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner, a Pennsylvania newspaper.

Another phrase, that sounds out of fashion to me, is “to mix with brains.” English portrait painter John Opie was asked what he mixed his colors with. He answered, “I mix them with my brains, sir.”

During a debate, when one of Phocian the Good’s (402-320 BC) statements stirred up applause of the audience, he asked a nearby friend, “Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?”

Napoleon (1769-1821) has these words attributed to him (without sources):

“Imagination rules the world.”
“I made all my generals out of mud.”
“There are two levers for moving men–interest and fear.”
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
“Independence, like honor, is a rocky island without a beach.”

Greek general Aristides (530-468 BC) said, “The Athenians will not sell their liberties for all the gold either above or under ground.”

And, finally, the Stoics had this proverb, according to Plutarch: “The good man only is free; all bad men are slaves.”

Do all of those right true? They aren’t all proverbial, so we could cut them a bit of slack. What else do we have?

Volcanos: Seven years after Vesuvius erupted, a Jesuit priest climbed it to make his observations. “I thought I beheld the habitation of hell.”

Books: Simon Leys asked, “Are books essentially useless?” Well, they aren’t food.

Sci-Fi Award Censorship: The Hugo Awards are being held in China this year and some notable works were declared ineligible without explanation. Authors conjecture the Chinese government is to blame. Two members of the nomination board have resigned in response.

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

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.

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

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

Culture War and the Once Great Britain

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What are other people talking about?

Screwtape: Susannah Black Roberts tries her hand at Screwtape’s voice in this letter encouraging the “proper” use of culture war arguments online.

Meekness! Humility! Gentleness! Patience! Kindness! It’s a revolting brew – when someone brings those things that are called fruits of the spirit into a cultural conflict on our enemy’s side, along with stoutheartedness. There are dangers for us there.

But the opportunities – they are so rich! Only convince your patient that those fruits of the spirit are not applicable, or not manly (if he is on the right) or are psychologically unhealthy and undermine the fight for justice (if he is on the left) and you’re home free.

Culture War: A judge rules out parts of an Iowa law. “The State Defendants have presented no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting, much less to the degree that would give rise to a ‘substantial and reasonable governmental interest’ justifying across-the-board removal.”

British Library: The British Library was attacked by hackers last October, and its digital resources are still offline, projected to take a year to rebuild and cost £6 million. (via Purfrock)

Shakespeare: Henry IV plays and adaptations. “More importantly, the greatest flaw of Chimes at Midnight is that Orson Welles sentimentalises Falstaff, removing much of his nasty side and turning him into a harmless fun-loving old man.”

British Post Office: A TV series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, tells the incredible true story of a massive scandal in the British postal service, one that accused hundreds of subpostmasters of financial mismanagement and avoided finding fault with the source, the computer system they all used.

“Having Jones and Dolan as our entry point to the human cost of such horrifying corporate skullduggery is the perfect choice. But there were many hundreds of people who found themselves being gaslit by a helpline, and the cast is massive, and excellent, throughout.”

Photo: Opposition, England. From the Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division