Pastor Anthony Carter, who has written a very good book on Christ’s work on the cross called Blood Work
“If you write for national attention,” he says “you are writing for the wrong reasons. I would encourage any pastor to remember and take to heart this sobering reality: Most people won’t even know that you have published a book, and the rest won’t care.”
In writing my final paper for the library science class I took last semester, I decided I wanted to quote Dr. Samuel Johnson’s statement that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” In a research paper, I have learned (the hard way), you can’t just give a quotation, even if it’s a famous one. You have to actually cite the work. So I downloaded Boswell’s Life of Johnson to find the page number. And since I had it on my Kindle, I figured I might as well read it.
I’m glad I did, but frankly it was a little tough. It’s a very long book – and this is the abridged version. The original is six volumes. Yet it was a unique reading experience. I’ll get to that later.
Dr. Samuel Johnson is best known for two things – he compiled the very first English dictionary, all by himself except for some secretarial help (the French, he liked to remind people, though they had a smaller language, needed a whole college of scholars to do their own), and getting his biography written in memorable fashion by his friend James Boswell.
Johnson was famous for his wit – but it’s not the kind of wit we generally think of today. Today we picture wits in the Oscar Wilde mold. Johnson would have considered Wilde flippant and contemptible. Johnson’s wit was mostly aimed at defining fine points of meaning and moral truth. Most of his great lines aren’t really rib-ticklers, though he had his moments: “A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern as the KNEE of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, ‘Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.’”
Tall, fat, ugly, near-sighted and hard of hearing, with annoying behavioral tics, Johnson was nevertheless one of the most beloved men in London, one whose society was much sought after, though he had little power or wealth. He was a feared debater, who sometimes took a side of an argument he didn’t actually hold, just for the mental exercise. And he wasn’t above resorting to cheap shots to win – Oliver Goldsmith observed that “there is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.” Yet his friends remembered him as an extremely kind and generous man, though prone to moods and fits of bad temper.
And that’s the value of The Life of Samuel Johnson, for those who care to take it on. James Boswell produced one of the world’s great written portraits – describing the man as he knew him for many years, and quoting him as exactly as humanly possible from notes he schooled himself to write down while his memory was still fresh. We come away with the impression that we’ve gotten to know a remarkable man – incisive, clever, opinionated, frustrated by fortune, plagued by fears, struggling with his faith – as well as many of his friends must have. A remarkable achievement in English (or any other language).
Long, though.
“More publishers investigate Mark Driscoll: Crossway and NavPress begin reviews of the megachurch pastor’s books amid concerns of plagiarism.” The company Ithenticate labels this the #3 plagiarism story of 2013.
In other news, ABC plans to stop immediate release of its shows for free online. On January 6, Hulu.com and ABC.com will release broadcast episodes 8 days after to non-paying viewers.
And here’s an odd article complaining about works that are not moving into public domain.
In 1964, author Issac Asimov wrote to describe a world’s fair in 2014. “Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. The I.B.M. exhibit at the present fair has no robots…
“Consider Manhattan of 1964, which has a population density of 80,000 per square mile at night and of over 100,000 per square mile during the working day. If the whole earth, including the Sahara, the Himalayan Mountain peaks, Greenland, Antarctica and every square mile of the ocean bottom, to the deepest abyss, were as packed as Manhattan at noon, surely you would agree that no way to support such a population (let alone make it comfortable) was conceivable. In fact, support would fail long before the World-Manhattan was reached.
Well, the earth’s population is now about 3,000,000,000 and is doubling every 40 years. If this rate of doubling goes unchecked, then a World-Manhattan is coming in just 500 years. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!”
For what it’s worth, Manhattan’s current population density is a little over 70,000 per square mile. For the entire city of New York, it’s about 27,500 per sq/mi.
Hangoverium by ~nino4art on deviantART
Here’s a large handful of predictions for 2014. What will Joe Biden do? How will Europe continue to dissolve? Will Republicans take YouTube by storm? Will Miley Cyrus host a series on Masterpiece Theatre? Will Jonah Goldberg develop a new book?
In other news, How Many Novelists are at Work in America? Look at that list of stats at the top of the article. Wow. Across all genres, 1% chance of a published book being stocked in a brick-and-mortar store.
Below find my traditional list of achievable new year’s resolutions for 2014. Disclaimer: I am a professional. Do not try this at home.
I resolve to give up twerking.
I resolve to cut my caviar expenses by at least 50%.
I resolve to eat no komodo dragon meat.
I resolve to be gracious in my forgiveness, when the Minneapolis Star and Tribune finally apologizes for failing to meet my information needs, as inevitably it must.
I resolve to help Peter Jackson fix his last Hobbit script, if asked.
I resolve not to run if nominated, and not to serve if elected.
I resolve not to let the Balrog pass.
I resolve to read no books by Dan Brown.
I resolve not to wear knee-britches.
I resolve to permit my enemies one more year of life before I defeat them, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Happy New Year!
In looking over news from the past year, I was a bit discouraged to remember that Mr. Obama was reelected. But that wasn’t the only news from 2013. Here’s a roundup.
Our friend, The Very Right Holiness Prophet Dr. Hunter Baker, joins other friends of NRO to give the year’s highs and lows. “The fear, uncertainty, and loss experienced by Americans because of ill-conceived legislation and incompetent management, however, are unrelievedly negative.”
World Magazine has their 25 of their most read articles from 2013. They also offer this column on the year’s propaganda. Marvin Olasky notes:
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell stated in May, “IRS agents did nothing wrong.” Even in November Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post claimed, “This has been a really relatively scandal-free administration, first term and second term.” If that statement is relatively true, it’s only because most reporters haven’t looked.
Andrew McCarthy reviews American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character by Diane West.
Her purpose was to explore the Cold War paradox: Despite our seeming victory over the evil empire, we lost the same Cold War at home, to a lasting, corrosive effect, thanks to a “riddling, corruptive drive against what we now regard as ‘traditional’ morality, Enlightenment logic, and cultural memory.”
Collin Hansen on the best of 2013, including a piece recommending the legalization of murder.
“The Eight Kinds of Commenters in the Christian Blogosphere” as told by Dale Coulter(via Jared Wilson)
You may recall that I wrote a review of the Netflix TV series Lilyhammer for the American Spectator Online last year. I won’t be doing that again this year, though I recently watched the second season all the way through. I just didn’t like this one as much. That is not to say that the writing or the production are inferior the second time around. In some ways they’re superior (the season resolution was more plausible, certainly). It’s just that I could find a message to love in the first season, and I got nothing from this one.
The first season, as I noted, had as one of its overarching themes the recovery of manhood in a neutered society.
This year’s theme seems to be “embracing your inner Gay.”
If there’s a third season, I’m undecided whether to even watch.
(One scene I did kind of enjoy was the appearance of a group of Norwegian-Americans from Minnesota in the last episode, when the main character and his friends have traveled to New York City.)
Neither season is actually recommended for our readership. Lots of f-bombs, and the occasional nudity of the first season has been upped to about one scene per episode. Also each season contains one shocking murder of an annoying but essentially innocent character.
Strong stuff. You’ve been warned.
Andrew Barber connects Tolkien’s elves to the Christian life. “This place, once so full of life and sustained by the Lady of Light, Galadriel… has become a glorious ruin. For Galadriel, like the rest of her kin, has left the world to the rule of man; the elves, in all their splendor, have reached their end. [She says,]’. . . together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.'”
A group calling themselves The Lutheran Satire offers this holiday video.