Jonathan Rogers tells a brief story about vision. “My father-in-law loves his native country; no wonder he planted longleaf. If they take forty years to grow to maturity–well, then, they take forty years. He is a man of imagination and hope.”
How Important Are a Writer’s Connections?
The Blunt Instrument answers questions about the necessity of an MFA and how well-networked a writer must be to succeed. Among other things, he says,
Writing and reading and doing the rest of the administrative work required to get published take up a lot of time, most of which is uncompensated, especially at first.
You can do all of this (find a community, carve out dedicated writing time, etc.) without getting an MFA, but an MFA is a structured system that makes these things easier to achieve in a short time period. In my opinion, that’s what you’re paying for, more than the largely useless degree.
How Fantasy Films Disrupt Our Imagination
“Too often the movie takes the place of the book,” Dwight Longenecker writes, “and when this happens there is a curious change of direction and affection. The dynamic of interaction is totally different when viewing a film as opposed to reading a book.”
He says fantasy is best when it isn’t as materialized as it is in film. When a movie locks our minds into the way a story looks, sounds, and feels as it moves, then we coast with it instead of imagining it ourselves. That dulls our imagination, which is something we need.
“The imagination is the tool not only of creativity, but of worship. It is through the imagination that we meditate and dream and contemplate and pray.”
Orson Welles’ Comeback That Didn’t
“The Other Side of the Wind” was supposed to be Orson Welles return to power or something close to it, but Josh Karp tells the story of what happened to leave it unfinished in the end.
During production many people asked Welles what his movie was all about. To his star, John Huston, he once replied, “It’s a film about a bastard director…. It’s about us, John. It’s a film about us.”
The answer, however, was different one evening when comedian Rich Little, who was also in the cast, found Welles propped up in bed, making script revisions.
“Orson,” Little asked, “what does The Other Side of the Wind mean?”
Looking down over his reading glasses, Welles, in his rich baritone, said, “I haven’t the foggiest.”
Lights On Empire State Building For The Whitney
The Whitney Museum of American Art has a new building, and in connection with the 84th anniversary of the Empire State Building, interpretive lights displayed with the Empire State Building’s crowning LEDs gave New Yorkers something like a slow, quiet fireworks show. The lights intend to interpret twelve iconic works of art in The Whitney’s collection. Considering New Yorkers inability to sit through a single song, I wonder if many of them gave this show much notice.
And yet, I think the world belongs to things many New Yorkers don’t notice.
On the streets of Rome
A conversation like this, or something like it, must have happened during the persecutions of the Christians in Rome.
Marcus, a Christian, meets his friend Gaius on the street.
Marcus: “How are you?”
Gaius: “Fine. Just got back from sacrificing to the emperor.”
Marcus: “Sacrificing to the emperor? When did you leave the Faith?”
Gaius: “Oh, I’m still a Christian. I just realized how ridiculous this whole business of refusing to sacrifice to the emperor is.”
Marcus: “How can you reconcile confessing Jesus as Lord with calling Caesar lord?”
Gaius: “See, this is where we’ve been getting it wrong. We’ve been making a big deal out of nothing. Look in the gospels. Do you see one passage where Jesus says we can’t sacrifice to Caesar? No. Not one. You’d think if this thing was so important, He’d have mentioned it, wouldn’t you?”
Marcus: “Jesus is the God of Israel, and He doesn’t allow worship of other gods!”
Gaius: “There you go. You’ve got to go all the way back to the Old Testament to find your rule. Aren’t we free from the Law now? Are we going to stone people for wearing mixed fabrics or eating shellfish?”
Marcus: “There’s a difference between the ceremonial law and the moral law.”
Gaius: “And there you go with the moral law. You realize that refusing to sacrifice makes our neighbors uncomfortable, don’t you? They feel judged. My God is not a God of judgment. He’s a God of love.”
Marcus: “You’re not a Christian anymore.”
Gaius: “You’re not a Christian either! You’re just a hater!”
Gaining the World Through Book Reading
Hugh McGuire talks about and perhaps demonstrates the negative effects of giving ourselves to digital media on our minds. He says though he loves books, he wasn’t reading them. He had too many distractions. This year, he has set digital boundaries and seen positive results.
“When the people at The New Yorker can’t concentrate long enough to listen to a song all the way through, how are books to survive?”
If that’s the norm in New York, they need a revolution.
#ClickbaitBooks on Twitter
Somebody Told This Guy to Go to Hell, and He Did – You'll Never Guess What He Found There! #clickbaitbooks pic.twitter.com/MFqOcXthsu
— Penguin Classics (@PenguinClassics) April 30, 2015
Trending on Twitter today are SEO headline takes on classic or popular books. #ClickbaitBooks gives us “9 Shocking Ways to Kill a Mockingbird”
Andrew Klavan has contributed several, including this:
Everlasting life? 1 Simple Trick Doctors DO NOT Want You To See. #clickbaitbooks pic.twitter.com/ooQe8nlr4k
— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) April 30, 2015
Life-Changing, But Quietly Dramatic
“The best new films you’ve never heard of tell the stories of working-class women—a real estate agent and a factory worker—with scenes of ethical crises and life-changing decisions as compelling as higher profile films like American Sniper.”
Jeffrey Overstreet writes about the movies Something, Anything and Two Days, One Night. I haven’t seen the second one, but I’m sure it’s moving.
Sin as a Damaged Form of Love
Rod Dreher has written a personal reflection on Dante’s Divine Comedy in a book called How Dante Can Save Your Life. Readers are posting mixed reviews, partly, it seems, because they don’t understand the depth of the subject matter. Dreher quotes a review and offers some reflection on the family matters he revealed in his book:
Given his life experiences, it would have been easy for Dreher to paint himself as a victim and blame everyone else for his woes. But neither God nor Dante allows him to do so. Rather, as he descends the levels of the inferno and then ascends the cornices of purgatory alongside the Florentine poet, he comes face to face with his own propensity to make golden calves out of his family and his tradition: in a word, southern ancestral worship. Yes, his father and sister must bear some guilt, but Dreher alone allows himself to become bound to these false idols.
He says, “For me, Dante’s understanding of sin not as lawbreaking but as a damaged form of love was important to understanding my crisis situation, and how to break out of it.”