Authors, Religion

Spurgeon Walking the Dark Valley

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Christian George is Curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has written about Charles H. Spurgeon’s depression in this article, “Spurgeon Almost Quit,” and talks to Charles Morris of Haven Today about the subject here.

George quotes the great preacher as saying, “I have gone to the very bottoms of the mountains, as some of you know, in a night that never can be erased from my memory . . . but, as far as my witness goes, I can say that the Lord is able to save unto the uttermost and in the last extremity, and he has been a good God to me.”

Authors, Fiction, Religion

Is There Beauty in Sodom?

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“What appears shameful to the mind, is sheer beauty to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the great majority of people it is in Sodom and nowhere else.” — Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Dmitri Karamazov, in the “Confessions of an Ardent Heart in Verse,” rants with great feeling about the two ideals of beauty that haunt the heart of man: the Ideal of Sodom, and the Ideal of Madonna. Dostoevsky expanded on this idea in one of his journals, calling the Ideal of Sodom the “Second Beauty” — the beauty which sin has in the eyes of those who are tempted to commit it.

Dostoevsky was criticized, of course, by those who felt that his works sank too far into the darkness without offering any “real” solutions to the problem of human sinfulness. D. H. Lawrence wrote that, “He is like the rat, slithering along in hate, in the shadows, and in order to belong to the light, professing love, all love,” while Freud lamented that “Dostoevsky threw away the chance of becoming a teacher and liberator of humanity; instead he appointed himself as jailer.” Such criticisms are typical of a certain critical tenor that sees literature, and art more generally, as a force for reworking the social order and rewriting the heart of man. It is a critical pose that leads to a kind of puritanism, and it is found just as commonly amongst atheistic reformers as amongst Christians.

Melinda Selmys writes about this second beauty and where the incarnation comes in.

Authors

The Nightmare of Tolkien’s Success

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Who is the more enduringly important of the two? Tolkien wrote the greatest work, as evidenced by Germaine Greer’s backhanded compliment: “It has been my nightmare,” she snarled, “that Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the 20th century. The bad dream has materialized.” Lewis’s claims are broader. A half-century after his death, does any other writer turn up on so many shelves of good bookstores and libraries?

Michael Nelson reviews another one of those books about the Inklings. (via A&L Daily)

Religion

Birthday Meditation

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Icon of the Good Shepherd. Public Domain.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. (Isaiah 46:3-5, ESV)

Today is my birthday. I will not tell you my age; suffice it to say that I have reached the age at which I expected to die, when I was a kid. (I place no prophetic weight on that expectation, by the way. Nothing else in my life has gone as I expected, why should this?).

The passage above is from a chapter that intrigues me, because its meaning is implicit. It’s not spelled out. You have to put two and two together. The message of the chapter as a whole is, “The heathen have to carry their gods from place to place with them. Our God carries us.”

This is the testimony of a man who has reached the full span of years he expected in his youth — Jesus Christ has carried me all the way. If I had not been carried, I would not have made it this far.

Authors

Edward Gorey’s Cover Art

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“Commercial book cover design is a minor portion of Gorey’s award-winning legacy, but not a lesser art. His linear expression and droll comedy are integral ingredients. There are also covers that are stunning for their hidden allusions. The barren landscape, for example, on the cover of The American Puritans evokes an otherworldly quietude, but speaks to concealed psychological demons as well.”

Steven Heller writes about a part of the much-loved illustrator’s work that has been overlooked. “Gorey’s covers and jackets were not done anonymously or as mere throwaways, as many others were. Nor was this a strategic compromise until he found and embraced his true calling.”

I want to look into that Puritan book.

Non-fiction, Religion

Some Commentaries Read Like This

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A parody of biblical exegesis by New Testament scholar Moisés Silva:  “The author of this piece, moreover, makes clever use of word associations. For example, the term glamorous is etymologically related to grammar, a concept no doubt reflected in the comment about Marilyn’s ‘verbal skills.'”

Authors, Writing

#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

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Twitter is channelling writer angst, gripes, and chuckles over things people say to established writers.

“Oh, you’re a writer? When I retire, I want to write a book too.”

“So are you still writing or are you working now?”

“I really like your work! Will you write for us? Oh, we don’t pay.”

How do you spell conflabigation? You’re a writer, aren’t you?

I love your work. It’s just like, oh, that other guy, you know?

And then there’s this one from Guy Gavriel Kay.

Writing

An Artist’s Failure to Work

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An artist’s failure to work is rarely mechanical—fingers that fail to curl around a pen or a brush—but spiritual: a fear that has rendered them artistically blind or deaf. The solution to them all is to draw closer to God, the source of all order, rest, and freedom, and of every image, sound, and word. — Carey Wallace

Book Reviews, Creative Culture