Today I offer some quick notes on several things read in late October and in November, just to get the blog caught up. Now let’s get these stray dogies rounded up and on the trail to KC. Yee-haw!
Volume 9 of the Durants’ history of western civilization is entitled The Age of Voltaire. Needless to say, the pages focus on France. But should they have? Yes, the absolutism of Louis XIV and XV influenced European politics, the writers in the coffee shops influenced European philosophy, and the ladies in the salons influenced European letters and fashion. But, in the words of Peggy Lee, Is that all there is? Fortunately, the Durants were interested in music and did a good job retelling its history in this first part of the eighteenth century, and most of this story took them out of the land of Montesqieu and Madame de Pompadour. Italian opera spread almost everywhere in this period, and even in France some critics questioned whether Italian might not be the superior language for singing. In fact, this France-centered volume devotes a whole section to the great German who learned opera composition in Italy and then made it the hottest thing in London theaters, also incidentally writing Messiah, which the authors declare the greatest musical composition in history. It goes on to tell the story of J. S. Bach quite well also, calling this non-French guy the greatest composer in history. Tell me, does designating the St. Matthew Passion the masterpiece of the greatest composer in history belie at all the Durants' opinion of Messiah as the greatest composition?
At almost the same time, I read Rutherfurd’s Paris and Dumas’s Louise de la Vallière. So these weeks were for me filled with French history, fictionalized and otherwise. Rutherfurd’s book is better than his Princes of Ireland, but not so good as London, Sarum, New York, or Russka. Still, he told some good yarns and made the point well that aristocrats, priests, socialist laborers, merchants, engineers, thieves, and courtesans each provide essential flavors to the soup that is Paris. Dumas’s book, the middle third of the gargantuan final novel about D’Artagnan and his friends, is the first book by that author that I just didn’t like. Things get suddenly way better whenever the musketeers show up (a boon that happens all too infrequently in this one), not just because they’re who I want to read about but also because they’re more interesting characters than the courtiers of Louis XIV. But mostly what made this book so tedious for me was the constant presence of the theme that ties all these books about France together, in fact the quality that seems to define France if these books are any indication: adultery.
The Faerie Queene was every bit as good as I remembered it being. Its stories exemplify and teach virtues, and its poetic presentation promotes eloquence of the highest order. It doesn’t leave the reader with memorable lines like Eliot and his “cruelest month” and “handful of dust,” but its goodness and beauty permeate the soul with lasting comfort and influence.
Similarly, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were every bit as good as I had hoped they would be. We want Lincoln to be perfect, so it’s hard to read his words and see his disgust at the idea of interracial marriage and his lack of hope (or even lack of desire to hope?) for full political equality for blacks. But a man must be judged against his times, and no white person at the time except (and Lincoln would grant the exception) Harriet Beecher Stowe spoke more consistently and efficaciously about the evils of slavery, the humanity of black Americans, and the right of blacks to citizenship, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And set against Douglas with his white supremacy, his white nationalism, and his professed indifference regarding slavery (surely he was the only person in the country who didn’t have an opinion on the ethical value of the institution), Lincoln seems very progressive indeed. My favorite among Lincoln’s tactics was his argument that indifference is the same as support: either slavery is evil or it isn’t, and professing indifference says that it isn’t. Good reading for these times.
I don’t know if 2022 will continue in the manner of the last few months of 2021. If so, I may set aside the blog for a while. But I hope to finish up this year with one more regular post about reading and the annual announcement of awards.
Showing posts with label Harriet Beecher Stowe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harriet Beecher Stowe. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
November Round-Up
Monday, May 18, 2015
Top 100 – Part V
I’ve reached a milestone: today’s post is the five-hundredth on exlibrismagnis.com. Over the course of the blog, I’ve been compiling a list of the books that I think about most. And in each of the one-hundredth, two-hundredth, three-hundredth, and four-hundredth posts, I contributed seven entries to that list. Today, I offer seven more.
• Annie Dillard, American Childhood. Every page makes you glad to be alive. Somehow Dillard writes her own semiautobiographical tale and yet makes it seem like the reader’s bildungsroman. She definitely had me in mind when reminiscing about reading names on the check-out cards in library books and thinking, there in the hush of the musty stacks, about the bonds forged between neighbors and strangers alike by the experience of reading a book. I wish I could just look at a list of names of people who have read American Childhood. Oh, wait; I can. That’s what Amazon is for!
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Like a lot of people my age, I read this for history class in high school. (Social-studies classes had us reading actual literature even if English classes didn’t.) Of course this book has problems. But the little lady who made the big war brilliantly showed that if it is wrong to own a man, it is wrong even for a good man to own a bad man: not all the slaves in the book are Uncle Toms, and not all owners and overseers are Simon LeGrees. And yet Uncle Tom and Simon LeGree are in the book, and their climactic scene haunts my thoughts often. Tom pleads Simon not to whip him because of his concern for Simon’s soul. If that degree of charity seems unrealistic, the fault is not in the book but in me.
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad returns to the homestead after years in prison only to see a bulldozer about to take it down. “I’ll shoot you!” he shouts to the driver. “They’ll just send someone else tomorrow.” “Then I’ll shoot him, too!” “There’ll be another still.” “Then I’ll shoot the guy who’s sending them all.” At this point the driver offers words that have brought resignation and peace to me in many, many bureaucratic moments: “Don’t you get it? There’s no one you can shoot.”
• Alvin Toffler, Future Shock. I was amazed when I read in the 70s about planned obsolescence and other marks of what we now might call postmodern society. Now that I’ve seen so many of Toffler’s insightful observations become more and more the norm, I’m even more amazed.
• George Burns, Gracie. No entertainer could offer a humbler, more beautiful tribute to another than George Burns did in the biography of his wife. But my favorite story has nothing to do with humor and not much to do with Gracie. A year after adopting a little girl, George and Gracie receive a call during a dinner party with some other friends from show business. It’s the orphanage, asking if they would be willing to take another baby. As George explains his concern that his busy schedule doesn’t leave him enough time even for his one daughter, one of his dinner guests stands up, walks across the room, takes the phone, and says, “We’ll take the child.” They’re the only four words I know of Harpo Marx ever uttering. If I could choose only four words to say in my whole life, could I choose any more noble and beautiful than those?
• William Mouser, Walking in Wisdom. Mouser explains the form of the Hebrew poetry of the Bible better than anyone else I’ve ever read or heard. Before reading Mouser, I didn’t know how to read the Proverbs; after reading Walking in Wisdom, I do. Some of the most complex and rewarding proverbs are those that exhibit antithetical parallelism. Here’s an example:
He who loves wisdom makes his father glad,
But one who keeps company with harlots squanders his substance.
Now you can read it the way I used to: “Wisdom, good; harlots, bad.” Or you can look at the details of the parallelism. The proverb contrasts wisdom and harlots, glad fathers and squandered money. The implication of the parallelism is that Dad won’t be glad to hear you’ve spent your time on prostitutes partly because you’ve wasted money, probably his money. One more example:
He who despises the word brings destruction on himself,
But he who respects the commandment will be rewarded.
Without Mouser’s book, I would never have paid attention long enough to see the contrast in grammatical voice at the ends of the lines. The one who obeys the commandments does not bring reward upon himself; he will be rewarded (in the passive voice), and we’re left to decide who will do the rewarding, although that riddle isn’t too difficult to solve, given that the proverb is in the Bible and all. Sadly, this amazingly helpful book is out of print.
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. May I end with an obvious one? Like a lot of folks, I think about this intelligent book! this remarkable book! at least once each December twenty-fifth. But my favorite scene comes to mind many times a year for various reasons, and that’s the scene near the end in which the transformed Scrooge asks the little Cockney boy (at least he’s a Cockney when I read the book aloud) to run to the poulterer’s in the next street but one and bring round that turkey that’s quite as big as himself. Walk-ER!
I don’t know if I’ll reach a six-hundredth post. My decade-long reading plan ends next year, and I don’t plan to blog about my experiences with books past that point. Ukranian bots have discovered exlibrismagnis and account for most of the hits these days. But in case I do reach six-hundred posts by December 2016, and in case you’re a human, I have seven more books ready to praise.
• Annie Dillard, American Childhood. Every page makes you glad to be alive. Somehow Dillard writes her own semiautobiographical tale and yet makes it seem like the reader’s bildungsroman. She definitely had me in mind when reminiscing about reading names on the check-out cards in library books and thinking, there in the hush of the musty stacks, about the bonds forged between neighbors and strangers alike by the experience of reading a book. I wish I could just look at a list of names of people who have read American Childhood. Oh, wait; I can. That’s what Amazon is for!
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Like a lot of people my age, I read this for history class in high school. (Social-studies classes had us reading actual literature even if English classes didn’t.) Of course this book has problems. But the little lady who made the big war brilliantly showed that if it is wrong to own a man, it is wrong even for a good man to own a bad man: not all the slaves in the book are Uncle Toms, and not all owners and overseers are Simon LeGrees. And yet Uncle Tom and Simon LeGree are in the book, and their climactic scene haunts my thoughts often. Tom pleads Simon not to whip him because of his concern for Simon’s soul. If that degree of charity seems unrealistic, the fault is not in the book but in me.
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad returns to the homestead after years in prison only to see a bulldozer about to take it down. “I’ll shoot you!” he shouts to the driver. “They’ll just send someone else tomorrow.” “Then I’ll shoot him, too!” “There’ll be another still.” “Then I’ll shoot the guy who’s sending them all.” At this point the driver offers words that have brought resignation and peace to me in many, many bureaucratic moments: “Don’t you get it? There’s no one you can shoot.”
• Alvin Toffler, Future Shock. I was amazed when I read in the 70s about planned obsolescence and other marks of what we now might call postmodern society. Now that I’ve seen so many of Toffler’s insightful observations become more and more the norm, I’m even more amazed.
• George Burns, Gracie. No entertainer could offer a humbler, more beautiful tribute to another than George Burns did in the biography of his wife. But my favorite story has nothing to do with humor and not much to do with Gracie. A year after adopting a little girl, George and Gracie receive a call during a dinner party with some other friends from show business. It’s the orphanage, asking if they would be willing to take another baby. As George explains his concern that his busy schedule doesn’t leave him enough time even for his one daughter, one of his dinner guests stands up, walks across the room, takes the phone, and says, “We’ll take the child.” They’re the only four words I know of Harpo Marx ever uttering. If I could choose only four words to say in my whole life, could I choose any more noble and beautiful than those?
• William Mouser, Walking in Wisdom. Mouser explains the form of the Hebrew poetry of the Bible better than anyone else I’ve ever read or heard. Before reading Mouser, I didn’t know how to read the Proverbs; after reading Walking in Wisdom, I do. Some of the most complex and rewarding proverbs are those that exhibit antithetical parallelism. Here’s an example:
He who loves wisdom makes his father glad,
But one who keeps company with harlots squanders his substance.
Now you can read it the way I used to: “Wisdom, good; harlots, bad.” Or you can look at the details of the parallelism. The proverb contrasts wisdom and harlots, glad fathers and squandered money. The implication of the parallelism is that Dad won’t be glad to hear you’ve spent your time on prostitutes partly because you’ve wasted money, probably his money. One more example:
He who despises the word brings destruction on himself,
But he who respects the commandment will be rewarded.
Without Mouser’s book, I would never have paid attention long enough to see the contrast in grammatical voice at the ends of the lines. The one who obeys the commandments does not bring reward upon himself; he will be rewarded (in the passive voice), and we’re left to decide who will do the rewarding, although that riddle isn’t too difficult to solve, given that the proverb is in the Bible and all. Sadly, this amazingly helpful book is out of print.
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. May I end with an obvious one? Like a lot of folks, I think about this intelligent book! this remarkable book! at least once each December twenty-fifth. But my favorite scene comes to mind many times a year for various reasons, and that’s the scene near the end in which the transformed Scrooge asks the little Cockney boy (at least he’s a Cockney when I read the book aloud) to run to the poulterer’s in the next street but one and bring round that turkey that’s quite as big as himself. Walk-ER!
I don’t know if I’ll reach a six-hundredth post. My decade-long reading plan ends next year, and I don’t plan to blog about my experiences with books past that point. Ukranian bots have discovered exlibrismagnis and account for most of the hits these days. But in case I do reach six-hundred posts by December 2016, and in case you’re a human, I have seven more books ready to praise.
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