On Sunday I watched my weekly Netflix rental, this one a movie I’d only seen once before—Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan.
I’m going to have to buy the whole Whitman trilogy, delightful films that yield increasing rewards with each viewing. Stillman is apparently a Christian of some kind (for years he’s been trying unsuccessfully to do a movie about believers in the Caribbean. Metropolitan opens with the chords of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”).
Stillman delights in turning cultural expectations on their heads. In Metropolitan, his first film, he portrays Manhattan “Yuppies” (one character insists they ought to be called “Urban Haute Bourgeouise”) as sympathetic and even mildly disadvantaged. In Barcelona, two American cousins, a businessman and a naval officer, deal with the European narrowmindedness and prejudice. And The Last Days Of Disco, set in Manhattan in a strangely ambivalent time period, celebrates the discotheque as a place of joy and a strange kind of innocence.
At one point in Metropolitan, Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) quotes a Lionel Trilling review of Mansfield Park to debutante Audrey (Carolyn Farina), in order to explain his dislike for Jane Austen. Audrey asks him what books of Austen’s he’s read. He says, “None. I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.” The great joke is that the film itself is pure Jane Austen, though the comedy of manners has been transported to a small fortress of civility in a barbarian land. Continue reading The wit of Stillman
Luther on the Call
“Those who operate without a proper call seek no good purpose. God does not bless their labors. They may be good preachers, but they do [not] edify. Many of the fanatics of our day pronounce words of faith, but they bear no good fruit, because their purpose is to turn men to their perverse opinions.” – Martin Luther
Spiders in Pakistan
Here’s a story worthy of April Fool status, if it were not true. “With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters.” As a result, many trees are knit together with spider webs. The eery pictures look like a Ted Burton creation, but in a more positive light, the mosquito count is way down.
Harsh reality
DATELINE HOLLYWOOD: A spokesperson for the Me Too Channel announced today the addition of an exciting new reality to show to their fall lineup.
The program is to be entitled, “Reality Show Reality Show,” and will feature four teams of contestants who will be transported around the nation by livestock truck, following a route determined by a GPS device set on “Random.” The object of the competition will be to find some area of life that has not yet been covered in a reality show. Participants will have points deducted from their scores for any sign of taste, modesty, or empathy for others. Weekly losers will be forced to remain on the program.
In related news, attorneys in Los Angeles announced a class action suit on behalf of every person in America who has not yet been a reality show contestant. “We are suing because it’s obvious to the meanest intelligence that absolutely no talent, brains, or skill of any kind is necessary to be a reality show contestant,” said chief litigator E. Cleveland Weckmeyer. “Therefore all Americans, however feckless, ignorant, or maladroit have the same right to be on such a program as the people who’ve already made money off such appearances. Let me add that if anything ought to be a basic right in a great country like America, it’s reality. Our plaintiffs have been denied their right to reality, and we intend to redress that wrong. Additionally, they’ll get a full dose of reality once they see our legal fees.”
Old school
Every Thursday I get a copy of my home town newspaper, The Kenyon Leader, in the mail. It doesn’t take me long to read it. It wouldn’t in fact take long if I read it all through, but generally I just go to the back page and look at the obituaries, to see if any more of my classmates have died. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was reading about the deaths of my friends’ parents, but now it’s mostly us. Not that we didn’t lose some surprisingly early—a statistically significant number, it seems to me. There was the girl with juvenile diabetes who excelled at playing the piano (she was the first to go), and the most popular guy in class with the girls (whom I envied intensely); he died in Vietnam. And the foreign-born boy who was only with us the last couple years, and never quite fit in. I forget what he died of. The big, tall guy with the Czechoslovakian name we used to tease about being a “bohonk” (but admitted to our circle of friends, a group I personally consider the elite). I don’t recall how he died either. Another guy dropped dead of a heart attack in California, apparently without warning. All within the first decade. I may have forgotten some. Our original strength was only 68 people, mind you.
Come to think of it, I think the rate of death has actually slowed down in the last decade or so. Those of us who’ve made it this far seem likely to last a little longer.
No classmates died in time for this issue, but there was a death of sorts. Our old high school building suffered a major fire. Arson is suspected. Continue reading Old school
Mostly old things, like Beowulf, lead books, and me
First page of the Beowulf manuscript.
Andrew Klavan has read Beowulf, and he wrote an essay on it for an anthology called Thrillers: 100 Must Reads. As would be expected from a writer of Klavan’s sensibilities, he gets the point entirely:
We in the modern West have been so powerful, so dominant, so safe in our homes for so long that we slip too easily into the illusion that we live at peace. We are never at peace, not really. When we go to the ballet or walk in the park or stop to smell a rose or read a book, we only do so by the good graces of the fighters who stand ready to kill and die to defend us. Soldiers on our borders, police officers on our streets—only the threat of their physical force keeps those who would murder, rob, or enslave us at bay. Every moment of tranquility and freedom implies the warrior who protects it. The world of Beowulf is the real world.
There’s big archaeological news today. A collection of about 70 ancient books, written on lead sheets bound with lead rings, has appeared in Israel (Jordan claims that they came originally from its territory, and is trying to get them back). Written in coded Hebrew, they appear to be the oldest extant Christian documents, and scholars are eager to examine them (if they ever get out of court.)
The director of the Jordan’s Department of Antiquities, Ziad al-Saad, says the books might have been made by followers of Jesus in the few decades immediately following his crucifixion.
“They will really match, and perhaps be more significant than, the Dead Sea Scrolls,” says Mr Saad.
“Maybe it will lead to further interpretation and authenticity checks of the material, but the initial information is very encouraging, and it seems that we are looking at a very important and significant discovery, maybe the most important discovery in the history of archaeology.”
This will be cool.
Of course it’s always fun until Opus Dei sends in its paid assassins.
Kidding! Kidding!
(Tip: Cronaca.)
Abbie Riddle of Abbie Reviews gives my West Oversea a glowing review here.
And I got an invitation to lecture on another Norway cruise today. Of course this kind of lecturing is only for the financially flush, which I no longer am, so I politely declined. But it’s nice to know I don’t have a black spot next to my name in the Great Ledger. (Or, alternatively, they may just be very, very desperate for lecturers. Maybe the armadillo juggler got sick.)
"You Are What You Speak"
Author Robert Lane Greene has a good interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm on his book, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity. Many of his points are great, and it’s amusing that people have been complaining about the death of their language for centuries. Greene says slang will always be in a living language, and most of it will pass with times, but the idea that how we speak defines us to a large degree is critical. Perhaps that is another reason memorizing Scripture is vital to healthy living.
A Viking's Story, by John Andrews
A Viking’s Story is a privately published novel by a Wisconsin resident (under a pseudonym), available inexpensively in electronic formats only. I bought it in the first flush of Kindle enthusiasm (order a book, have it ready to read in about five seconds!), and I’m not sorry I bought it.
It’s the story of Harald Fairhair (also known as Harald Finehair), traditionally the first king of a united Norway. Andrews combines the traditional story of Harald, as recorded in the sagas, and weaves into it the findings of modern historical scholarship and archeology. The result is a generally coherent fictional memoir, as Harald himself dictates his life story to an English priest never mentioned in the actual historical record.
The result hangs together pretty well. I think this book would be a good introduction to the Viking Age for a general reader looking to learn more about that period. In my opinion, the author underestimates the superstition of a real Viking. Also, he falls into the rookie error of trying to convey emotion with exclamation points! But these are minor errors, and all in all the book was enjoyable.
The issue of Christianity does come up, and I have to give Andrews credit for evenhandedness in that department. The priest/amanuensis, to the extent that we come to know him, is relatively tolerant and reasonable. Harald himself, of course, scorns the religion (though he does admire its bureaucracy), which is entirely consistent with what we know of him.
A Viking’s Story is not a great Viking novel, but it’s pretty good, and has the special advantage of copious and up-to-date research (mostly. I found some things to quibble about, but I could be wrong about some of them myself).
Suitable for teens and up.
Beautiful Jane
Jeffrey Overstreet reviews Jane Eyre by writing a love letter to his sweet wife, Anne. Perhaps, he says, the essence of the story is that “a sin-scarred man casts off shame, a pious woman casts off her fears, and they’re united in grace.”
My name is Lars, and I'm a cheater
My great achievement this weekend was building a table, for my Viking setup. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a “Viking table,” because it doesn’t actually much resemble any known table from archeology, and is a cheat in any case. This is what I did, and why:
The table I’ve been using for book selling for the last several years was a random thrift store find—a table apparently designed for some kind of display, consisting of a circular pressed board top and three dowel legs which screwed into flanges. It wasn’t even close to authentic, but when I threw a sheepskin over it, it looked OK, because the round legs did look like known Viking table legs.
That table had been working itself loose for a while, though, and it finally died in Minot last fall, when a heavy object (me) fell on it. So I needed a new table.
My plan was to try to do something like the actual replica table described in this article, but with longer legs. However, I couldn’t find the article while I was working, so I worked from memory, which was (as is so often the case) unreliable. The table I constructed looks like this:
