Kevin Holtsberry is reviewing the Cannongate Myth series and has come to Alexander McCall Smith’s Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams. I may have to buy this one. I’ve sung a lullaby to my children about the scottish Dream Angus, who sells dreams to children with money under their pillows. I haven’t given them money though. They probably couldn’t even answer questions about him.
Does Gligamesh Yet Live?
Also from the Literary Saloon comes questions about Iraqi War literature. “What has become of the land that gave rise to the Epic of Gilgamesh?”
Books 2006: Did You Happen to Read These?
The Literary Saloon links to a list of “most overrated and underrated” books in Prospect, which claims to be “the most intelligent magazine of current affairs and cultural debate in Britain.” Of course, the Saloon notes a few of its own.
On the overrated list, Everyman, by Philip Roth. “A slickly written, shallow and predictable novel of American self-regard and deserved decline.” and The God Delusion. Playwright Samantha Ellis nominates On Beauty,by Zadie Smith, saying it is “massively overrated. Why read a tribute to Forster when you can just read him?”
On the underrated list, Why Truth Matters, by Ophelia Benson & Jeremy Stangroom, Alentejo Blue, by Monica Ali, and The Human Touch, by Michael Frayn. Writer Allan Massie states, “William McIlvanney is the finest Scottish novelist of my generation, but Weekend, his first novel for ten years, received less attention than it deserved. This account of a university study-group meeting at a faux-baronial castle on a Scottish island, is wise, funny and often moving.”
Vince Guaraldi
“In 1963, Lee Mendelson was a young San Francisco filmmaker working on a documentary about Schulz, whose “Peanuts” cartoon strip was fast becoming a national craze. He needed music for a two-minute animated segment of his film. Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, he heard a catchy jazz tune on the radio called ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind,’ which was written and performed by Guaraldi, who also lived in the Bay Area.”
This Washington Post feature on a great jazz pianist and composer notes that “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” was “one of the last instrumental jazz tunes to be a crossover hit — and earned Guaraldi a Grammy Award in 1963 for best original jazz composition.” This piece lead to Guaraldi composing the music to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” among other classics.
(via Cranach)
By the way, how many things on God’s green earth are better than good piano jazz? Probably just a dozen or so, wouldn’t you think?
Merry Christmas
And our eyes at last shall see Him,
Through His own redeeming love,
For that Child so dear and gentle
Is our Lord in Heav’n above,
And He leads His children on
To the place where He is gone.
Not in that poor lowly stable,
With the oxen standing by,
We shall see Him; but in Heaven,
Set at God’s right hand on high;
Where like stars His children crowned
All in white shall wait around.
(from “Once in royal David’s city” by Cecil F. Alexander)
Tags: Christmas holidays carols hymns
Evil in Fiction and Ukraine
SR pointed out Peter Kreeft’s website, and today I noticed a lecture called, “10 Uncommon Insights Into Evil from Lord of the Rings.”
I haven’t listened to it yet, but I heard a coincidental news report today on the real evil in Ukraine. “Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.” Killing unborn children isn’t enough for some hospital staff in that country. Newborns have been stolen from their mothers by their nurses so that their bodies can be mined for stem cells.
Is this the result of viewing children as non-persons or of viewing the human body as an organic machine, separate from spirit within it?
Linking today
Linking: the last refuge of the uncreative. Got some good ones today though.
Ed Veith at Cranach passes on some information about possible evidence that Jesus may in fact have been born on December 25. Probably too good to be true, but few things would satisfy me more than poking a finger in the collective eye of the Scroogeist Church.
Aitchmark sent me the following link which he describes as a “wonderful, amazing timesink”: How Products Are Made.
And finally, continuing in the comprehensive mode, novelist Michael Z. Williamson alerted me to every guy’s dream knife.
Merry Christmas
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:6-7 KJV).
Song of a grumpy dwarf
(I don’t write poetry often. Mostly because mine stinks.)
Who needs wizards or witches? I told them all myself
Back at the start. The story front to back.
Well, not the part about the apple. That
Gave even me a shock.
But in the end
It worked out as I warned them.
Princesses! What matters it to dwarfs
How ladies live or die? No princess ever born
Would spend a sigh on any dwarf that lives. Oh,
She might laugh to see
Us trudging up the street
Or spare a moment’s pity.
But in our sagging cottage? To bring a princess in
Is to shift all. Her beauty makes our home
A donkey’s stall. The brush, the broom, the soap
And paint are not enough.
She calls it good,
But dreams of silk and marble.
You think a princess born would be content to bide
In this rude shed? With seven ugly half-men?
When in her head a thousand ballads cry
To fetch her to her own?
You cannot hold
An eaglet in an anthill.
Oh, you may dream in secret things unspoken;
Dwarfs are Ygg’s worms. Sight is not enough.
We yearn to swarm. We lust to hold and touch
The buttery weight of gold,
The silver star,
Or any other heart-sweet.
And now she’s gone. The tall one came and pinched her
Just as I reckoned. Now our house is vast,
And vastly vacant. Spiders drape in corners.
Dust drifts in cupboards.
Dishes welter.
And washing would remind us.
Have a Merry Seasonal Time
Lynn Vincent is calling for alternative names for “The Holiday That Must Not Be Named”. She suggests “Retail” or “Retail Season.” Others have offered “Santa Claus Day” and “Eatspendtide.”