I see that Jane Austen is now writing for Bethany House. Nice acquisition, Dave.
Challenging Writing
Crucial in the identity of a writer, especially for those who “write for God,” is the hope that something in the work will resonate in the audience, affecting the reader long after the book has been shelved. I believe that individuals, especially those who hope for a close connection with Christ, are constantly working to discover how to view themselves and others, and that the work is not likely to be finished this side of heaven. May this issue challenge you if you have become comfortable, may it soothe you if you are lost, and may you enjoy every page.
That’s how Kimberly Culbertson, editor-in-chief of Relief Journal, closes her introduction to the spring 2007 issue. She’s dead right.
Relief is an excellent literary journal. The spring issue has the winner of their Daily Sacrament contest, coordinated with the blog faith*in*fiction, which is Don Hoesel’s “Goodbye Sophie.” It’s a beautiful, challenging story of a musician conversing with a fan. Relief stories, non-fiction, and poetry have a wonderful flavor, like a soup with the best ingredients. No wow-factor, just a lingering satisfaction. Do yourself or a friend a favor by subscribing to this journal.
Recommended Reading
Let me pass on this recommendation for The Best $4.03 You’ll Ever Spend
Where Are the Good Christian Books?
Tim Challies echoes a question by R.C. Sproul. How would a worker at your local bookstore respond to the question, “Where can I find a book that will teach me about the depths and the riches of the atonement of Christ?” You may have to define what you mean by “deep” and “rich.” A commenter, Brenda of the blog Coffee, Tea, Books, and Me, said that of the three Christian bookstores in her area, the one selling the good books with strong theology closed.
“Keep Alive the Possibility of Shared Discourse”
Sven Birkerts, editor of Agni, complains about unintelligent bloggers, declining book sections in print newspapers, and the need “to keep alive the possibility of shared discourse” in this article from yesterday’s Boston Globe. Apparently, “shared discourse” means you and I should stop blogging and suck from whatever bottle the critics will hold up for us.
Brikerts is right that blogs can be sloppy. I aspire to better writing than I achieve. He’s also right that blogs can be thoughtless and of-the-moment, much the same way 24-hour news can be. Too bad bloggers were not better educated at their modern grade schools and universities. And it’s too bad there isn’t some intellect barrier to blogging. It’s so darn democratic any fool can start a handful of blogs and waste his life posting to the world (a reminder that the best content filter is the disciplined mind).
That’s the opposite of what Brikerts wants. His quotation of Cynthia Ozick describes his desire:
“What is needed,” Ozick writes, “is a broad infrastructure, through a critical mass of critics, of the kind of criticism that can define, or prompt, or inspire, or at least intuit, what is happening in a culture in a given time frame. . . . In this there is something almost ceremonial, or ceremoniously slow: unhurried thinking, the ripened long (or sidewise) view, the gradualism of nuance.”
That’s what we can get from our metropolitan book review sections if we would only subscribe–unhurried thinking, gradual nuance. (Lately I wonder if the word nuance has come to mean either “stop disagreeing with me so fast” or “don’t be so sure of yourself.”) So, we need the right mess of critics to define or even inspire what culture does, and blogs work against this important societal goal. I think critics will do this very thing just because they are critics, whether they should or not, whether blogs complain or praise, whether paper newspapers stop production or find new life.
Are newspaper book sections defining culture for us now? Where? Ron Hogan mentions this in his post on Birkerts’ article.
Why this should be the case with as ephemeral a medium as the American newspaper rather than the massively archived blogosphere is an issue Birkerts doesn’t address. And by failing to return to the idea of “coexistence” mentioned earlier, Birkerts only widens the gap between the print and online camps—a gap that has no rational reason to exist, since both sides, when viewed in good faith, want exactly the same thing: a viable platform for the wide distribution of serious discussion of contemporary literature.
You could call it shared discourse. (via the Literary Saloon)
Reason and Revelation Are Complementary
Frank Wilson points out an article on Christopher Hitchens’ rant against Christianity, and this statement by Henry Newman is worth requoting. He said, “if anything seems to be proved by astronomer or geologist, or chronologist, or antiquarian, or ethnologist, in contradiction to the dogmas of faith, that point will eventually turn out, first, not to be proved, or secondly, not contradictory, or thirdly, not contradictory to any thing really revealed, but to something which has been confused with revelation.”
Naomi, Ruth, and the Meaning of Words
Speaking of nakedness and the like, here’s a letter from a few months ago which recounts an interesting Bible study on Ruth. About mid-letter, Mrs. Jackson writes, “Ruth, as you may recall, is both listening and following Naomi’s advice to have a kinsman Boaz help them in their impoverished state. Naomi tells Ruth to go to the threshing floor and sleep at Boaz’s feet. This is where the priestess popped out with ‘In seminary, I learned that when feet is mentioned in the bible it means . . .'” You can probably see it coming. (via Videlicet)
Davy Crockett and the corruption of children
The mawn is lone. I mean, the lawn is mown (Sorry. It just came out like that). The clothes are in the washer. I am on schedule to be packed up and out of here tomorrow morning. I’ll be going down to Iowa for family stuff over the weekend, and I won’t be back till Monday night, so I probably won’t post again till Tuesday evening.
Be strong. I know you can endure that long.
Got my Davy Crockett book in the mail today. It’s the same one as this one, except that close examination reveals it to be the Australian edition. I kind of wondered about that when I noticed the seller was from there (or New Zealand. I forget). But as far as I can tell it’s essentially the same. A quick perusal doesn’t even reveal any Britishisms like “colour.”
It was somewhat startling to page through it for the first time in decades. I thought I remembered the book clearly, but although every page is immediately familiar, I’d completely forgotten most of them, as far as being able to summon them up from memory on my own was concerned.
I puzzle over memory a lot. I’m convinced (and experience confirms it) that most of what we call “memory” is a construct, a movie we’ve produced for ourselves. The first time we remember an event, we remember the thing itself. The next time, we remember the event plus our experience of remembering it. That little addition compounds over the years, so that eventually there isn’t much of the original memory left.
That doesn’t mean memory is worthless. But it’s unfocused and palimpsested. It’s not entirely to be relied on.
Which is good and bad, I think.
Another thing that came to mind as I examined the book was the prominence of guns in the thing. No publisher would get away with so much shooting in a kids’ book nowadays, I’m pretty sure. Like all Baby Boomers, I grew up surrounded by the images of heroes (Crockett, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, etc.) who carried and used guns.
Yet—amazingly—we confounded the grownups who worried about the effects of all this “violence on TV.” We grew up to be the most pacifist, anti-gun generation this country had ever seen.
This gives me hope.
Because if it’s a principle that kids will grow up to reject the heroic images they were raised with, we can look forward to the next generation being the pickup-drivingest, huntingest, jingoistest, moral absolutistest generation that ever waged a war of aggression.
Breaking the Laws of Medieval Blogging
Richard Nokes is talking about the Beowulf animation too, saying he must break the second commandment of medieval blogging, which is “Thou shalt not suggest Neil Gaiman is a mere mortal.” He says that Gaiman has Beowulf fight Grendel in the nude. It’s in the poem, Gaiman says, but Nokes can’t quite find it. I need to read this thing again. He concludes:
Regardless, it is disconcerting how often the words “nude” and “naked” are being associated with this new Beowulf movie. If Hollywood is that desperate to have nudity in a canonical work of medieval literature, they might pick something out of the Decameron — it gives lots of options. (via Blogwatch)
(I’m sure this post will up our blog rating. We have been a PG blog for instances of death and murder.)
But getting back to the movie, I’ve always pictured Grendel as a big monster, not a humanoid thing, like this in fact. I can’t read that post, but I think I saw that image of Grendel when I was first exposed to Beowulf. That’s a troll as I’ve always known them.
Another stab at Beowulf
It’s raining this afternoon. This is a good thing, though they tell us we might get some severe weather later tonight. But that’s OK. I don’t mind a little storm damage. As long as it happens to somebody else.
Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard got a link from Hugh Hewitt at Towhall.com today.
I hate you, Gaius. Curse you, and your little animal uprising too!
Dale sent me this link to a trailer for the upcoming Robert Zemeckis Beowulf movie. Looks like they’re going the 300 route, which isn’t necessarily bad. It can’t be worse than the recent Icelandic effort with Gerard Butler, which I reviewed a while back. But it doesn’t look like much effort has been made to get the costumes authentic (which the Gerard Butler incarnation at least got right, pretty much the only thing it got right).
We Viking reenactors don’t ask for much. We’d like to see a Viking movie (Beowulf isn’t technically a Viking, but close enough to get on our radar) with historical authenticity and a good story.
So far, the best Viking movie ever made is still The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. And that movie isn’t really very good (though it’s a lot of fun). The Thirteenth Warrior had its points, but it went so far off the reservation with armor and weapons that it kind of hurts to watch. (Unless you’ve just watched the Gerard Butler Beowulf, in which case it’s like a drink of cold water on a hot day.)
So I’ll see this one. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I don’t think anyone has ever imagined Grendel’s mother (the part Angelina Jolie plays) as a siren before. I suppose it could work.
Just as long as I’m not supposed to like her. I like Robin Wright-Penn all right, even though she has lousy taste in husbands.
Hollywood! Don’t you realize the world is screaming for a film version of The Year of the Warrior?