The politics of dreams

Sure, sure I’m happy about Sarah Palin’s success with her nomination acceptance speech last night. Up till then we weren’t entirely sure what we were getting. We were afraid she couldn’t be all that was advertised. Instead we suddenly found ourselves in an altered political universe, one where the party galaxy has a new sun at its center.

But frankly, I want more.

I was cautiously hopeful about the presidential election, before. Now I’ve moved up to guarded optimism. That’s still uncomfortable, though. I demand maximum comfort. I want more than optimism. I want a sure thing. I want to look down in contempt on my opponents. I want to be smug.

There are so many things I want.

I don’t want to have to work at my job. I want to coast, or stay home if I like, certain that I can’t be dislodged no matter what I do.

I don’t want to have to worry about money. I think I ought to live on a trust fund. A generous trust fund.

I don’t want to have to work at relationships. I think people ought to compete for my friendship, and I should be able to be rude to them or neglect them, knowing that they need me more than I need them.

I don’t want to have to exercise or watch my eating. I should be able to take a daily pill that will compensate for all my wrong choices.

I think I ought to have total security in all areas of life, from cradle to grave.

No, cancel that. I think I have a right to never die.

I guess what I’m saying is, in my heart I really want to be a Democrat.

Stephenie Meyer Puts Next Book on Hold

A draft of Stephenie Meyer’s next book in the “Twilight” series, Midnight Sun, has been leaked online, prompting the author to stall the series. “I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.”

Liberals Are Hypocrites

Cal Thomas writes:

One female journalist said to me it makes a mockery out of the Republican Party’s family values platform. . . . Many in the media are now questioning whether Sarah Palin has allowed her career and a “lust for power” to interfere with her family responsibilities. This is laughable. These same people have promoted women who work 12-hour days and dump their preschool children in day care. . . . When news breaks that the daughter of a Republican political figure is pregnant out of wedlock, the media quickly return to our Puritan roots and seek to hold certain people (usually conservatives) to a moral standard that culture has abandoned.

Thomas’ article points out liberal media hypocrisy, which is both shocking and old hat simultaneously. I quote the above in order to air my simple explanation for this rationale. Tell me if you agree or where I’m wrong. The liberal press and many liberals out in the wild do not argue from a coherent philosophy. They have a desired outcome and use any argument to get there. That’s why they throw out crazy statements like this. Their conclusion is predetermined, that Palin is bad. Any argument that might remotely back that up is fair game for them.

Oddments

Today was the first day of classes, one of my busiest times. I don’t have any assistants trained yet, so in between the other stuff I’m doing, I’m answering the bell to sell people textbooks every few minutes. I’ve got no complaints. It makes the day pass quickly. I’ve met my new assistants. One is a doctor from Ecuador, the other a pastor from Africa (not sure what country. Nigeria or Uganda, I think).

We have high employment requirements in my little library.

It’s amazing what you get in your e-mail as a result of being a Writers Digest subscriber. Today I got an advertisement for this book: The Pirate Primer. Teaches you the language of the freebooter. Just what we need to get ready for “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” September 19.



Usually when you get an e-mail that seems to come from yourself,
but with your name spelled wrong, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re the lucky recipient of spam. But I took the risk of looking at an e-mail I got last night from a fellow named Lars Walkler (note the extra “l”), and it turns out he’s genuine. He wrote just to say hello and to warn me I might get some accidental e-mail intended for him in the future.

It’s rather amazing, I think. He’s a Swede, and he invented his unique last name, which he cobbled together from syllables of his father’s first and second names. But his original family name was Ohlsson. Ours was Olson.

He operates an adventure vacation business in Spain.

That’s where the resemblance ends.

Marilynne Robinson Talks About Home

Marilynne Robinson has another novel, Home, and talks about it with Newsweek.

The new book seems less like a sequel than a sort of Faulknerian return to Gilead. How conscious were you of the notion that the town itself is a central character to the story? Was that the intention?

To me it seems true that towns are always characters and that landscapes are as well. Gilead has resonance for me as a repository of a certain history, and as the kind of commonplace, self-forgetful little town you might find anywhere and not even bother to wonder about. These places are full of history and full of meaning. I am not particularly interested in creating my own Yoknapatawpha, but Gilead is where these characters live, and that was the reason I returned there.

The New York Sun’s Benjamin Lytal reviews Home here, opening his article with this: “Marilynne Robinson is an anomaly in the great tradition of American literature. One of our few novelists at peace with religion, she isn’t interested in the post-Puritanical game of unmasking hypocrisy, of entering into darkness.”

The Secret Isn’t Broken

The author of The Secret, the little book that told you to believe your way to happiness, is in trouble.

Dan Hollings, a former associate “whose ‘viral marketing’ helped propel Byrne to global fame via Oprah” claims he wouldn’t trade places with the author for any amount of money. “I just don’t think success has enriched her life,” he says. “It’s like lottery winners who win the lottery and discover their life is worse and they wish they had never won.”

Paul of Dune

Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic, Dune, ends with young Paul Muad’Dib having beaten Voldemort, keeping from him the stone of life, and when the next book opens he is taking exams at Hogwarts several years later. Fans have been wondering what happened in the meantime.

Well wait no more. Authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson who have written several stories in the world of Dune are taking up the action at the close of the first book and asking probing questions about Paul Muad’Dib’s moral core in the book, Paul of Dune, available later this month.

That Wonderful Dark Chocolate

Not only does chocolate rich in cacoa or dark chocolate taste great, it’s good for you too. It improves blood flow by knocking out cholesterol, among other things.

“Many people don’t realize that chocolate is plant-derived, as are the fruits and vegetables recommended for a healthy heart,” said Dr. Mary Engler of the University of California, San Francisco.

Everyone knows this, of course. That’s why chocolate sales are up a few billion.

Inspired by ‘Christian Charity’ (p2)

Here’s part two of our Q&A with Sarah Vowell on her book, The Wordy Shipmates. (Part one here.) In this part, she makes several observations which may spark comment. For example, she appears to call up the cliche that the 80s were the decade of greed with Reagan to blame. But really, read on anyway.

6. Where did Ronald Reagan get the phrase “a shining city on a hill,” which became so identified with him? And why do you write that the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan, but that “we are Ronald Reagan”?

Reagan got his pet phrase from Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” in which Winthrop, inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, called for New England to be “as a city on a hill.” Reagan interpreted this idea to mean that the United States is supposed to be a sparkly beacon of hope. But Reagan pretty much ignored the bulk of Winthrop’s sermon—the parts about sharing, about suffering together, the foreboding ending in which Winthrop worries that, come failure, he and his shipmates will suffer the wrath of God, that they’ll be a cautionary tale. Much of Winthrop’s sermon is Christlike and therefore tough—a call for charity and generosity and selflessness. But charity and generosity and selflessness were not what the Reagan years were about. Just the opposite of course. Reagan just chose to ignore the fine print—a very American thing to do. He chose to focus on Winthrop’s pretty, upbeat imagery and more or less ignored Winthrop’s sober call for communal responsibility. Americans tend to accentuate the positive. We get snowed by cheerful advertising.

7. How did the Puritans create the whole notion of American exceptionalism—the idea that we have been specially chosen and favored by God, and that other nations are eager for us to impose our way of life on them?

I think it all goes back to the official seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the one they brought with them from England. It depicts an Indian saying, “Come over and help us.” That’s comically arrogant, ironic, and sad. Still, they meant well. We still do. The thing the United States got from Massachusetts Bay is the sleep of the just—however undeserved. For better or worse, we inherited the idea of ourselves as saviors and rescuers.

8. A continuing theme in your work is the way that we learn so much of our history from popular art. To wit, a lot of sitcoms have had episodes set in seventeenth-century New England. In fact, one inspired the first epiphany you ever had about colonial New England. Which one was that? And which was the only sitcom set entirely in Puritan New England?

It was a Thanksgiving episode of Happy Days I saw when I was around eight. There was a joke about the teenage daughter showing too much ankle or something which made the Pilgrims seem ludicrous. I hadn’t learned about critical thinking. I hadn’t learned to question historical figures. I was in elementary school. All we learned about seventeenth-century New England was that the winters were hard and the Pilgrims and Indians got along. As for the sitcom set in New England, that would be the short-lived CBS show Thanks about the Winthrop family’s first winter in New England. All the jokes were about how cold and hungry and crabby all the settlers were, and there was one guy named Winthrop spouting really hopeful ideals and all the other colonists thought he was insane. I thought it was brilliant.

9. Who were John Winthrop and John Cotton, and why do you devote so much attention to them?

I think of them as the architects of American exceptionalism. The notion that the English Puritans were divinely destined to save the world was floating around the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, but these two delivered two landmark sermons devoted to this idea, very possibly on the same occasion in 1630—Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” and Cotton’s “God’s Promise to His Plantation.” Plus, with Winthrop being the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s on-again, off-again governor and Cotton as the minister of the Boston church, they are the two most influential, powerful men in early New England.

10. How did Roger Williams come up with the idea of a “wall of separation” between church and state, long before Thomas Jefferson?

Williams was the most purist of New England Puritans. He didn’t want the state (with its accompanying state-sponsored violence) to corrupt the purity of Christianity, which is the exact opposite of Jefferson, who was worried about religion corrupting government. Williams also noticed how conflict was inherent in religion.* Even though he was fanatical in his beliefs, he recognized others’ fanaticism and thought the only way for human beings to live together in peace was to allow freedom of worship. He thought people who disagreed with him were bound for hell, which he saw as punishment enough. He loved arguing about religion but he wanted wars of words, not bloodshed.

11. Why was Williams banished from Massachusetts?

For questioning the authority of the king of England and the magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He ranted that the king had no right to New England because he hadn’t received permission from the natives. Williams also condemned the Massachusetts government for punishing offenders who had broken those of the ten commandments involving worship. He believed an earthly government should have control over crimes against persons and property but had no right to regulate church attendance and the like.

12. How did Rhode Island become the first colony—in fact, the first place in the English-speaking world—with complete freedom of religion?

Williams established Providence and then the later colony of Rhode Island as a religious refuge. Ultimately, freedom of religion was codified by a charter from Charles II.

Review: So Brave, Young, and Handsome, by Leif Enger

From what I’ve seen of readers’ reactions to So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger’s second novel, I think most people liked it, but found it a little less wonderful than his first book, Peace Like a River.

It seems to me it should be noted that trying to write a better book than Peace Like a River is a little like trying to produce a better flavor than milk chocolate.

If Peace had never been written, I think readers would hail this book as the work of a masterful new novelist, and it would immediately go on many favorites lists.

It’s not so much a fantasy as Peace was. I think there are fantasy elements, but they’re buried, running beneath the surface like secret rivers. There’s symbolism in plenty, and the gospel permeates every chapter.

Intriguingly, the second book question is really central to the story. I think Enger’s use of it in the narrative enriches the whole project. Continue reading Review: So Brave, Young, and Handsome, by Leif Enger