Today I offer you this classic to set up the Irish-American song that mocks it. Mick Moloney says all the lads and lasses are singing, humming, or whistling “Daisy Bell,” and it’s driving him batty. No doubt that’s a short trip.
Writing in Search of a Thesis
Tony Woodlief reviews a book that claims to answer the problem of our loneliness “in a world mediated by screens,” but doesn’t appear to be comfortable with any answer it offers.
And so we move from confusion to confusion, with Jacobsen dipping his toe into a deep topic only to withdraw it, his attention suddenly drawn elsewhere. “Why are we so busy all the time?” he asks. Fear of death is the answer he lands on, only to back immediately away: “Regardless of whether a fear of death is behind the busy condition,” he writes, we’re busy. Then he jumps to other causes: fragmentation, consumerism, acedia. It gets worse; by the end of the chapter, he’s blaming the acedia on the fragmentation and consumerism. In Jacobsen’s narrative a primary cause is a possible cause is a consequence is an OH LOOK, A SQUIRREL.
Happy Are the Unknown, Contented on Their Own Land
“Ode on Solitude,” by Alexander Pope, written at age twelve about 1700 AD
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
Bible Reading
I have often wanted to read the Bible through again. They ask officer candidates in my church whether they have read the whole book. I think they leave it at that, not asking how many times they’ve read it through, just whether they have.
I have never read the Bible cover to cover in a systematic way. I can only say I’ve read all of it because I had to read through the Old Testament for a survey class in college. I’ve read the whole New Testament in the course of many studies, but I think if we could look at the data, I’d be surprised to see how little I’ve read of some books (I may have read 2 Corinthians only once).
This year I wanted to read all of it, and here at the end of August I’m probably far more behind than I realize. I’ve read from Genesis to 2 Samuel 1, most of Psalms, Matthew, half of Mark, Galatians, and Ephesians, I think. I don’t like skipping around as some reading schedules recommend, but after getting through the Pentateuch, I needed to change the pace.
Reading long passages of the Bible has always been a problem for me. I tend to read slowly, and when reading the Bible, I can barely stop reviewing what I just read prayerfully or studiously. A passage spelling out geographical details can get me thinking I need to remember what’s north and what’s east. And the weeds are just too deep most of the time.
My greatest reading aid has been listening to David Suchet read from the NIVUK on BibleGateway.com. He has a marvelous voice and delivers passages more smoothly than other readers I’ve listened to, but the main benefit is that he doesn’t stop. He reads one paragraph of land rights for a tribe and moves on to the next. When I read that paragraph and find that I starting thinking of something else, I go back to the beginning and read it again, and consequently do not get through a day’s reading. But because I take in so much by listening, I still hope to finish the book by the end of the year.
Listening to Suchet reading Judges in two sittings drove home the darkness of that history. Samson wasn’t a detailed story plucked out of context. It was a noir tale told in an alley with a hint in the air of burning homes. It may have been when Samson was praying for final vengeance against the Philistines that I thought, “This isn’t about to let up. It’s only getting darker.” Had I been reading, I may have stopped at that point, but I was listening and kept on to the end.
What ways have you found helpful for reading long passages of the Bible, or do you recommend it?
Reading report 2: ‘Children of Ash and Elm,” by Neil Price
Ever see one of those old comedy movies, set in the Middle Ages or sometime, in which the orchestra suddenly breaks into swing music and everybody starts jitterbugging? (I recently watched “A Knight’s Tale” for the first time, and they did the same sort of thing , with different pop music. I fear this will not age well.)
I had much the same feeling today as I was reading Neil Price’s generally excellent book, Children of Ash and Elm. In a chapter called “Border Crossings,” he takes a break from a mostly well-informed and insightful study of Viking Age history to impose 21st Century concepts on an alien culture.
There are clear suggestions of queer identities in the Viking Age (with a caveat for the retrospective application of contemporary vocabularies).
Give him points for self-awareness, anyway. Retrospective application is precisely what’s going on here. I speak from a position of prejudice, of course, but it saddened me to see a good study like this marred by what I consider (I could be wrong, of course) a transient intellectual fad.
In fact (except for the admittedly problematic Grave Bj. 581 in Birka, which I can’t explain, but neither can anyone else), he is able to demonstrate nothing about the Vikings themselves other than that they had an extremely “gendered” (his word), male-dominated culture, in which there is evidence of a certain amount of deviance. You could say the same about the Victorians. He admits it plainly at one point, saying, “There are no positive depictions of same-sex relationships in the textual sources.”
To put it in terms comprehensible to current academics, Price is “appropriating” Viking culture, forcing his own paradigm on them in a way that they would have found offensive.
Friday Quartet: Memory by Marcelo Zarvos
I wasn’t finding what I wanted from a barbershop quartet today, but I did come across this recording from the 2013 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. It’s saxophone quartet playing “Memory” from a set written by Marcelo Zarvos for a string quartet. Here you see soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones played at a breathless pace by the Kenari Quartet of Indiana University, Bloomington.
Reading report: ‘Children of Ash and Elm,’ by Neil Price
After a couple weeks with Rodney Riesel’s light – and short – Dan Coast books, I have plunged (with some relief, actually) into a little more challenging material. I’m reading Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price. It’s a long book, and it will take me a while to get to the point where I can review it. I’m finding it a good object to wrestle with – I like parts very much, and I disagree now and then. Here’s a nice passage from near the beginning:
When properly recited in appropriate surroundings, Viking-Age poetry can taste like cold iron on the tongue, its complex rhyme schemes building upon one another like layers of frost—treacherous but beautiful. We gain something old and true in this language, even if only understood in translation, and for that reason I have included a selection here.
Tolkien would have liked bit that very much. Even if you disagree with a historian, prose like this can make reading his book worth your time.
‘Most Likely To Die,’ by Rodney Riesel
The saga of Dan Coast, Rodney Riesel’s self-destructive, alcoholic lottery winner living in Key West, continues with Most Likely To Die, in which Dan tries to clear a man unjustly accused of murder. Unless Dan is wrong. Which he often is.
Dan Coast doesn’t like the nurse Reatha Davis. She spoke condescendingly to him once, and corrected his grammar. But she works with Dan’s girlfriend Maxine, and Maxine likes her. So when Reatha asks Dan to find evidence to clear her husband, who’s been arrested for murder, Dan reluctantly agrees. Her husband, Reatha says, is a good man and had no enemies. And neither did his old friend, a schoolmate, who was murdered. Dan figures nobody gets murdered if they have no enemies, so he’s pretty sure somebody’s lying.
With the help of his ever-expanding posse, his big friend Rick, his surfer dude friend Skip, and now his childhood hero, astronaut Kip Larson, Dan runs around annoying people and interfering in the police investigation. Eventually they’ll figure it out, but only by crossing some legal lines.
I think I’m beginning to weary of Dan Coast’s act. The books are fast, and they have some laughs, but they’re not well-written (this one brings in a character from a previous book at one point, then forgets about him completely). They’ve never quite found their balance between comedy and tragedy, but this one was pretty much farce from the git-go. And not very believable.
Still, I won’t pretend it wasn’t fun. I’ve got something more serious to read now, but I may go back to Dan Coast when I need to rest my brain. Cautions for language and juvenile humor.
‘Double Trouble,’ by Rodney Riesel
Book 5 in the Dan Coast series by Rodney Riesel is Double Trouble. Dan starts out doing a divorce case with the help of his friend Red (who still has to drive him around until he gets his license back after a DUI). They are discovered snooping, and have to make tracks.
Then Dan’s dog finds a body buried in the sand in front of his Key West house. Dan calls the police, but leaves the scene, and when the cops get there the body has vanished.
That mystery is explained (partly) when a man shows up looking for his missing sister. He had come to the Keys with his twin brother, who has also disappeared. Dan recognizes him as the spitting image of the guy in the sand. The surviving brother hires Dan to help him find the sister.
I keep complaining about the writing in the Dan Coast series, but then I keep buying the books. So they can’t be that bad. I still have some trouble with the tone – it alternates between buffoonery and deep tragedy. Often the characters don’t seem to be realistically affected by death, even deaths of people close to them. Author Riesel seems to have trouble hitting any notes in between Bottom and Othello. It can be disorienting for the reader.
Also, the big surprise in the book was kind of a chestnut. I saw it coming a mile off.
But I’m continuing reading the series. Cautions for language, inappropriate jokes, and misspelling.
‘Coasts of Christmas Past,’ and ‘Ship of Fools,’ by Rodney Riesel
Dan yanked his pistol from his waistband, ejected the magazine from the grip, and looked at the bullets. Then he jammed the magazine back into place with the palm of his hand.
“What was that for?” Red asked.
“I have no idea, but they always do it on TV.”
(Coasts of Christmas Past)
I’m just tooling along through Rodney Riesel’s Dan Coast novels, because they’re short, mostly likeable, and not too demanding. I’ll do two books tonight – Coasts of Christmas Past and Ship of Fools.
Dan Coast, Key West lottery winner and dilettante private investigator, aims for a life of quiet self-destruction on the beach, drinking heavily to suppress memories of his great personal loss. However, in Coasts of Christmas Past, his friend Red and his parents have different plans. His parents show up unexpectedly, organizing a big Christmas for him, whether he wants one or not. Christmas was once his favorite time of the year. But that was before…
The preparations get interrupted when a close friend gets injured. The police believe he was hurt in a botched drug deal, but Dan and Red know better than that. So they ride to the rescue in Red’s borrowed pink Volkswagen. There’s also a touching subplot in this book that will break your heart.
Ship of Fools finds Dan where he’s been headed for some time – confined in a mental hospital, drying out at a judge’s orders. That’s how he gets to know “Officer Mel,” a fellow patient who wears a cardboard badge and thinks he’s a policeman. Nobody believes Mel when he says that somebody has kidnapped his sister, but Dan starts to think there’s something there. So, ruthlessly using his money and snooping skills, he orchestrates his own release and takes Mel with him. Thus begins a madcap adventure with some interesting twists.
I liked the serious aspects of these stories better than the humor. Humor is hard to do, especially the wisecracking kind. One expects drunks to be inappropriate, but even when he’s sober, Dan can be a real jerk. On the other hand, when he gets his priorities straight, he can be a pretty good guy.
The author still needs a proofreader.
Mild cautions for language and adult themes. Good light entertainment, if you can get through the annoying parts.