It’s snowing again. Coming down pretty heavy. The weather man says five to eight inches this time.
I was going to call it an insult, but no. The last one was an insult. This is the one there’s no alternative to laughing over. Even if it puts down a foot, I declare here and now I won’t shovel it. It’ll be gone in a couple days anyhow.
I’m beginning to think we need to draw lots to figure out who offended the Almighty.
Only I’m afraid it’s me.
Anyway, our friend Grim at Grim’s Hall has posted a review of Hailstone Mountain, with a call for discussion on a theological point which I, frankly, had never actually connected to the scene in the book he’s talking about. But now that he mentions it, I guess he’s right.
Re Kundera: Those Czechs have something.
Havel too.
That’s very close to what you said the last time I reviewed one of your books.
I’m famous, among writers, for my lack of originality.
I doubt that’s quite right. What I was thinking of, though, is that it is remarkable how much you put into these stories without carefully thinking it out. I think this richness comes from your deep participation in your religious tradition, which carries much of this weight for us. You’ve got a serious philosophical problem there, and a good proposed solution to it.
You didn’t have to think it out, and if you’d tried to think it out from first principles, you might have fallen into the error you describe in the townsfolk: seeing the manifest value of the peace, and electing that peace in preference to the fundamental need for human dignity and freedom. That’s an error quite common today among those who are in fact thoughtful and well-educated. Indeed there’s a good example of it in TIME Magazine this week.
While you know I am a great believer in education, especially in history and philosophy, I don’t think our best traditions are disposable. They carry more wisdom than any living group of people, however wise and well-educated, can develop or even understand in one lifetime. You are wise in your devotion.