Your guide to “the world’s wondrous and curious places” now has everything on one map, “the definitive map of the world’s extraordinary sights.” Atlas Obscura invites you to at least consider planning a trip to the Royal and Ancient Polar Society in Hammerfest, Norway, not too far from the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel, which is made of ice. If you like cute animals, perhaps you’ll like Japan’s Cat Island or Zao Fox Village, both near Sendai. But if obscurity is really what pops your doldrums, check out the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum of Logan, Ohio or the Spam Museum of Austin, Minnesota.
Seeing With Rather Than Through the Eye
Flannery O’Connor’s desire to help us see.
Critic and editor Christopher Ricks suggests that this process is actually a good litmus test for determining the literary quality of a sentence, image, or phrase: if the words come to you, unbidden, as you are driving down the road or drinking a glass of water, then the writer has succeeded. Personally, after reading Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” I cannot look at a bare tree on a bright winter day and not admire the play of light through branches: “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.” So, too, Saul Bellow’s description of a water glass in his novel Seize the Day is now firmly etched in my mind, and I find it true of even bottled water when the sun hits just right: “And a glass of water is only an ornament; it makes a hoop of brightness on the cloth; it is an angel’s mouth.”
“To believe nothing,” she says, “is to see nothing.” (via Prufrock News)
Aborted review: ‘Wall of Storms,’ by Ken Liu
I call this an “aborted” review because I didn’t finish the book. That shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of the quality of the writing. I set the book aside unfinished because of my principles (or, if you prefer, my prejudices).
I’ve already reviewed The Grace of Kings, the first book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series of fantasy novels. Think Game of Thrones but in a sort of Chinese setting, and somewhat less nihilistic. I enjoyed that book immensely, and gave it a glowing review.
Wall of Storms is also a brilliant piece of world-building and storytelling. The world of the book is wonderfully imagined, intriguingly detailed, and multifaceted. Author Liu is a fine prose stylist. His writing is evocative, his characters complex and layered, and his dialogue sparkling and nuanced.
What I didn’t like was the political correctness. Early on we are confronted with not one, but two homosexual relationships, treated as normal in the culture. Later on, an important (and highly sympathetic) character argues for sexual egalitarianism.
I suppose I lack imagination, but I think fantasy ought to hew close to actual human nature, however much it may play with the cultural furniture. No human society has ever normalized homosexual marriage before ours did it (artificially, through legal maneuvering), and no human society has ever treated men and women interchangeably. This element of the story was plainly adopted by the author to ingratiate himself to right-thinking readers. So I don’t imagine he’ll miss my readership.
I’ll be seeing more and more of this sort of thing as time goes on, I’m sure. But (at least for now) nobody can force me to finish a book that’s obviously trying to correct my thinking.
Otherwise, it’s a really good book. You may love it.
A Norman review
Nathan James Norman has written a generous review of my novel Death’s Doors.
I found myself highlighting numerous passages in the book. Like C.S. Lewis I find Lars Walker quite quotable. Typically, I don’t go out of my way to notate fiction. I marked twenty-nine passages in this book.
Read it all here.
Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016
The Luke Cage stories of 1972 Marvel comics are not what you see in the new Netflix series. The new writers deliver a more mature story than their source material, Sam Knowles says, in many ways.
One clear improvement is apparent to anyone who happens to see cover art from the old comics. Luke was known as a ‘hero for hire.’ He used his abilities as a way to earn a living, which in the real world makes some sense, but what other superhero does this? The mercenaries are usually the bad guys. The good guys are heroes for the sake of justice. Knowles states,
Luke’s identity as a self-proclaimed ‘hero for hire’ sets him up in opposition to white superheroes, whose racial privilege enables the narrative of ‘superhero-ness’ to be about altruism. As a result, others look down on Luke’s attitude–most obviously Dr Noah Burstein [the scientist who gave Luke his power]: “I’ve heard how you’ve helped neighborhood merchants against Syndicate protection men. For a fee / Bit disillusioning from a so-called hero, isn’t it?”
http://www.aaihs.org/luke-cage-and-the-evolution-of-the-superhero-narrative/?utm_content=buffer8e65f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
The Netflix story explicitly drops this idea early on. In the beginning, Luke doesn’t want to get involved at all. His father figure, ‘Pop’ Hunter, urges him to use his gifts to help others and later suggests he hire himself out, but Luke refuses. Though he struggles with whether his efforts to help amount to kicking the criminal hornets’ nest, he continues to help those he can because it’s the right thing to do. He loves the people of Harlem. Continue reading Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016
Romanian Choral, Folk Music
If Halloween turns your thoughts to Dracula’s Transylvania, then I have a bit of a remedy for you. This is a recording of part of the Suită Corală din Ţara Oaşului by twentieth century Romanian composer Dariu Pop. This may be only one of the folk songs in the original suite of songs, but both sound and visuals are wonderful.
Friday Fight: Boarspear
Good sparring here. For more spear fights, see below:
Lewis on Politics and Natural Law
Today at Power Line blog, Steven Hayward writes about C.S. Lewis and a new book on Lewis and politics. He mentions having wondered in the past whether Lewis and Leo Strauss, whose thought he considers highly compatible, were aware of each other. Although he still doesn’t know that Lewis had ever heard of Strauss, he now has evidence that Strauss knew (and admired) Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.
He plugs a new book, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, by Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson. No reason why we shouldn’t get in on that business too.
The Girl with the Bestselling Novel
Why do so many bestselling novels have “girl” in their title? Maybe it was inspired by Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and such. But author Emily St. John Mandel says the trend in titles started before Larsson’s books were released. Perhaps it’s a natural phenomenon. Mandel notes this interesting data point:
The “girl” in the title is much more likely to be a woman than an actual girl, and the author of the book is more likely to be a woman. But if a book with “girl” in the title was written by a man, the girl is significantly more likely to end up dead.
We Can Burn Books, So Why Not Teachers?
“We train as researchers but spend our days managing the emotions of late adolescents, haggling over budgets, and figuring out how to use Moodle’s gradebook,” writes Jonathan Malesic, who used to teach at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, before he burned out.
“Eventually, I came to dread every class meeting.”
He describes his experience and some lessons learned.
Chronic dislocation produces the three main components of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism, and a sense of professional ineffectiveness. Burned-out professors, then, are people who cannot muster the strength to do the intellectual labor of their job, who see students as problems, and who feel their work has no positive effect.
Introverted teachers and students appear to be at greater risk for burnout in increasingly social learning environments. English teacher Michael Godsey tells this story:
After 11 years of teaching English at a public high school, Ken Lovgren left the profession, mostly because he was drained by the insistent emphasis on collaboration and group work. Engaging in a classroom that was “so demanding in terms of social interaction” made it difficult for him to find quiet space to decompress and reflect. “The endless barrage of ‘professional learning community’ meetings left me little energy for meaningful interaction with my kids,” he told me.