Books | dual personalities

September 28, 2016

“”What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”*”

by chuckofish

“It was the first golden week of spring, and Mrs. Arthur William Morgan was completely unaffected by it.”

I have been reading Let Me Tell You, which I broke down and bought last week.

Usually I don’t buy compilations of writing put together by the children of long-dead authors who seem to have been scrounging around in drawers looking for anything to publish that will make some more money for them. Clearly this book is a lot of scraps and personal musings along with some ideas for stories and a few unpublished stories–unpublished maybe for good reason. And this is not the first time. They published Just an Ordinary Day in 1995 after a trunk was discovered in an old barn that contained a trove of her unpublished stuff.

That having been said, I am enjoying it all very much–mostly because I just love Shirley, and Shirley not-quite-at-the-top-of-her game is still better than most. Shirley, like J.D. Salinger, saw the phoniness in everyone (including herself) and was so good at skewering people, ever so gently and with such subtlety and humor.

Anyway, she is a kindred spirit.

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.

I think I will re-read one (or two) of her novels now.

*We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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September 21, 2016

“That was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered.”*

by chuckofish

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien was published 79 years ago on September 21, 1937 to wide critical acclaim. As you know, it is recognized as a classic in children’s literature. And lots of people other than J.R.R. Tolkien have made a lot of money on various movie adaptions.

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”

“There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.”

It might be time to dig out a copy and re-read The Hobbit. Well, we’ll see. Hope your Wednesday isn’t too awkward.

*The Hobbit, of course. The illustrations pictured are by the author.

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September 12, 2016

“My ransomed soul he leadeth”*

by chuckofish

I had a rather long to-do list this weekend, and I checked off most everything on it. This included getting my hair cut, going to several estate sales, going to Lowe’s, cleaning up my closet, doing a little yard work, and going to church. Pretty typical.

[Daughter #1 celebrated her birthday in NYC with daughter #2. They had fun (see picture) and cake!]

I started reading The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins, which daughter #2 sent me. (Sentimental novels of the mid-19th century are a concentration of her doctoral studies.)

Published in 1854, The Lamplighter, Cummins’s first novel, was an immediate best-seller, selling 20,000 copies in twenty days. The work sold 40,000 in eight weeks, and within five months it had sold 65,000. At the time it was second in sales only to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It sold over 100,000 copies in Britain and was translated into multiple different languages.

I am enjoying it immensely. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne may have sneered at it, there is a reason so many people gobbled it up. It is well-written, diverting and instructive, and to the average person struggling along in the daily grind, uplifting.

[Gerty’s] especial favorite was a little work on astronomy, which puzzled her more than all the rest put together, but which delighted her in the same proportion; for it made some things clear, and all the rest, though a mystery still, was to her a beautiful mystery, and one which she fully meant some time to explore to the uttermost. And this ambition to learn more, and understand better, by and by, was, after all, the greatest good she derived. Awaken a child’s ambition, and implant in her a taste for literature, and more is gained than by years of school-room drudgery, where the heart works not in unison with the head.

Agreed.

At church the Gospel lesson was about Christ eating with sinners and the Pharisees grumbling about it. The Apostle Paul reminded us that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, he foremost among them. In the OT lesson, God changed his mind, at Moses’ prompting, and forgave the slackers in the wilderness. Most of us are grumbling Pharisees ourselves, and it is good to be reminded of it. It is good to be reminded of it weekly and to say this prayer of confession:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

We will forget soon enough and once again be grumbling Pharisees.

Later today the OM and I are driving to Indianapolis where the boy is having surgery tomorrow at Indiana University Hospital. All trace of his cancer is gone, but there is still a tumor and they will remove it. If all goes well, we will return on Wednesday. Please keep us all in your prayers.

*Hymn 410

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August 25, 2016

“My life is a reading list.” *

by chuckofish

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”

–C.S. Lewis

I am reading A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter, about whom I wrote last week. I found it on daughter #1’s bookshelf in her old room here at home. I am finding it quite engaging and not all that dated/old-fashioned. Girls were still girls back in 1909–concerned with what the cool ones were wearing and all that.

What are you reading?

*John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

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August 15, 2016

In a gadda da vida, baby

by chuckofish

Weekends that follow a weekend when one of my daughters has visited are always a little sad. You know, she was here and we were doing that, and now she is not here. And it was a rainy weekend to boot!

But I am not one to sit in a slough of despond, so I got busy. Since Gary is coming back this week to paint the living room and paper the dining room, I had to put away all the dishes in my china cabinet and pack up various shelves full of dishes etc. And there were also a lot of very dusty books to move. Good grief what a job!

I suppose it is a good job to do every once in awhile (and should no doubt be done more frequently) in order to dust off the books and be reminded what we have!

I also got a new pair of Tom’s on sale which made me happy.

I read the second lesson in church, a good long one from Hebrews (11:29–12:2) about how we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, something I believe in strongly. The Gospel was from Luke (12:49–56) where Jesus is at his politically-incorrect best, calling everyone a hypocrite and saying he “came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Our lady priest reminded us that there is no room for compromise in the Gospel and that the sweet Jesus people like to imagine is a fiction. (I think Zooey had something to say about that to Franny.)

Our organist/choirmaster has been on vacation for several weeks and so the organist substitute was the lady who always reminds me of Helen Feesh on the Simpsons.

I mean seriously.

I left right after the service and got back to work taking down drapes (more dust) and such.

Over the weekend I read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, which my dual personality had recommended. Now I recommend it to you. Hard to put down.

In the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep I picked up a book by Eudora Welty and was reminded how really great she is.

It is our inward journey that leads us through time–forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction. (One Writer’s Beginnings)

Sigh. Now it is Monday and it’s back to the salt mines–have a good week!

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August 10, 2016

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

My scholarly dual personality is too modest to tell you that her book has just been published!

It was six years in the making, but now it is out!

Gregory Urwin of the University of Oklahoma Press writes:

I am pleased to announce the release of Volume 55 in the Campaigns and Commanders Series that I edit for the University of Oklahoma Press — The Campaigns of Sargon II: King of Assyria, 721-705 B.C. by Sarah C. Melville.

If you think you know the Assyrians from fleeting references in the Old Testament, think again. Melville has plunged deep into the sources, which are more extensive than most of us would think. She mastered Akkaidian, the language of the Assyrians, so she could read the clay, gold, silver, copper, lead, and lapis lazuli tablets on which these people recorded their history, along with inscriptions on freestanding steles, natural rock formations, walls, doors, thresholds, and bull colossi of palaces. She also deciphered palace reliefs, consulted archaeological studies, and reviewed the documentation left by the Assyrians’ enemies.

The result is a history that depicts the Assyrians as a much more complex race of warriors. They could be cruel in war, but they devised much more sophisticated means to hold their empire together than beheading defeated warriors and sending conquered peoples into exile. I found the brand of geo-politics that Sargon II practiced to be surprisingly modern.

At a time when ISIS fanatics are attempting to obliterate the pre-Muslim history of the Middle East and south Asia, the appearance of Sarah Melville’s book could not be more timely. Impeccable research and a lively writing style makes this the definitive look at the Assyrian way of war.

It is with no little pride that I see this volume take its place in my series. Part of that pride rests on the fact that Sarah is also the first woman historian to publish with Campaigns Commanders. It was about high time that happened…

So get your copy of The Campaigns of Sargon II today! I have mine and I look forward to finding out all about Sargon II.

On the fiction side of things, I finished the Grantchester book this weekend and also re-read Olive Kitteridge, the wonderful novel by Elizabeth Strout. If you have not read this great book, I highly recommend it.

Enjoy your Wednesday!

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August 3, 2016

“Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.”*

by chuckofish

The last word is not said, — probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word — the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken, I suppose — at least, not by us who know so many truths about either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable — and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas! (Lord Jim)

Ninety-two years ago today Joseph Conrad died. Although it is fashionable to call him a racist these days, I have always liked Conrad’s books. Also, some good movies have been made based on them. One film I especially like is Swept From the Sea (1997) based on the short story “Amy Foster”.

It stars Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen, the always appealing Vincent Perez, and the windswept coast of England. The story is emblematic of the author’s lonely life as an exile, so probably a good choice to watch tonight (or at least add to the list you are keeping of movies to watch at a later date.)

*Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’

The picture at the top of the page is the anchor-shaped Conrad monument at Gdynia, on Poland’s Baltic Seacoast.

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August 1, 2016

“Not everything in life could be considered material for a sermon…”*

by chuckofish

I had sad news over the weekend. My old friend and rector, the Rev. Ken Semon, died last week as the result of a biking accident at the age of 70. (You can read about it here.)

After leaving flyover country twenty years ago, he had answered a call in Arizona and was still working as an Episcopal priest in Santa Fe at the Church of the Holy Faith, the oldest Episcopal Church in New Mexico. He was really the finest minister and one of the best people I have ever known.

He was also a fraternity brother of Harrison Ford at Ripon College, a fanatical skiier, a PhD in English Literature, and a convert to Christianity. Maybe because he came to Christianity by choice and not by birth, he took it very seriously. A little too high church for my tastes, he was nevertheless a true Christian in every way and in my mind a rather saintly person.

It is appropriate that I have been reading Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, the first book in the Grantchester mystery series, upon which the PBS series is based.

The author James Runcie is the son of the Rt. Rev. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury from 198o–1991, and the protagonist, Sidney Chambers, is based on his father. You will recall that Robert Runcie served as a tank commander in WWII and earned the Military Cross for two feats of bravery in March 1945. He was also the only tank commander to capture a submarine.

Anyway, the Rt. Rev. Runcie came to my old church as the Holy Week preacher in the 1990s when Ken Semon was the rector. Runcie was a nice man and a good preacher. (I had lunch with his wife and I thought she was a bit of a pill.) It is nice to know that his son must also be a good guy and an Anglican.

I am enjoying this book a lot and I recommend it.

…but the plain fact was that even before he had involved himself in this criminal investigation he had had too many things on his plate. His standards were slipping and the daily renewal of his faith had been put on the back burner. He thought of the General Confession: ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done…’

He started to make a list, and at the top of the list, as he had been advised at theological college, was the thing that he least wanted to do. ‘Always start with what you dread the most,’ he had been told. ‘Then the rest will seem less daunting.’ ‘Easier said than done,’ thought Sidney as he looked at the first item on the list of duties.

As you know, I do not believe in coincidence. I believe in the whispering voice saying, “You’re doing fine.”

Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Ken, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.

*Canon Sidney Chambers, “Grantchester” by James Runcie

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July 29, 2016

This and that

by chuckofish

Friday again. What are your plans? This weekend I will be finishing Mr. Churchill’s Secretary written by Elizabeth Nel in 1958. She was one of Winston Churchill’s secretaries during WWII working tirelessly behind the scenes from 1941-45.

A friend at work loaned it to me and I have been enjoying it very much. It is full of intimate details only a woman would notice.

It was a new experience to travel in a battleship. It seemed like a floating city, and we were glad to see notices for our benefit: THIS WAY FORWARD, TO THE WARDROOM, etc., which must have infuriated the proper denizens. Ham and I shared a vast cabin astern; it seemed right over the propellers, and the shaking and roaring was continuous. The office was a little farther forward, but the Prime Minister’s quarters were just under the bridge and miles on toward the bow. To walk there took at least ten minutes. Four flights of steps had to be mounted, and the continual updraft was an embarrassment to one’s skirts, particularly as Royal Marines were stationed on duty at every turn.

Times have changed so much since this hard-working, patriotic young women worked so diligently for her country and for a man who liked to work in his pajamas in bed in the morning. She didn’t begrudge him this eccentricity because she knew how hard he worked. She thought nothing of it. And, of course, there was nothing to think about it.

I also have to pick out wallpaper for my dining room–an exciting prospect!

Obviously, I am leaning toward the chinoiserie…

Also, I forgot (!) to wish the boy and daughter #3 a happy 4th anniversary! A belated happy anniversary to a lovely couple!

And, hey, another lovely couple is getting hitched–daughter #2 and Nate! Date TBA, but probably a year from now.

Yippeeee! Lots of good things to look forward to in the months to come.

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July 18, 2016

“Let the trees of the forest sing”*

by chuckofish

When I got to church on Sunday I saw that two huge oak trees had been blown down in last Wednesday’s big storm. The branches had been moved out of the driveway, but the huge trunk with its root ball still remained.

During the announcements our rector told us that the pastor of the St. Louis Family Church, a very large evangelical church in west county, had called him the next day and said he would send people out to move the downed trees asap. This is part of their emergency storm relief mission. Our rector said, “Thank you!” The motto of this church is “Honor God. Help people.” I was surprised, impressed and the news made me feel very happy. This must be a very busy week for those volunteers.

I did quite a lot of work in our own yard on Saturday–cleaning up from the storm. I filled five bags with detritus.

The boy came over with some loppers and he and the OM cut up the big branches and filled a bag too. What a storm! I was actually driving home when it hit and it was very scary indeed. I was afraid a tree would fall on my little car and I would be squished. Zut alors! was I glad to get home.

In other news, we celebrated the OM’s birthday with the boy and daughter #3 at a restaurant down in Lafayette Square in the city–We are so adventurous!

I couldn’t be in this picture, because I didn’t get the memo about wearing blue!

Also, the boy got his first penalty in a hockey game and also made his first shot on goal. Onward and upward.

We watched a terrible movie: Hail, Caesar! (2016), the Coen brothers send-up of Hollywood in the 1950’s. Even Channing Tatum couldn’t salvage this mess. Totally not funny.

I finished The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, the 17th installment of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith. Although I find these books mildly irritating, I am a loyal reader and always ultimately enjoy them. Precious Romotswe is a great character after all.

[Clovis Anderson] wrote: Do not allow the profession of which you are a member to induce you to take a bleak view of humanity. You will encounter all sorts of bad behavior but do not judge everybody by the standards of the lowest. If you did that, he pointed out, you would misjudge humanity in general and that would be fatal to discerning judgement. If everybody is a villain, then nobody is a villain, he wrote. That simple expression had intrigued her, even if it was some time before its full meaning–and the wisdom that lay behind it–became apparent.

Wise words to ponder this week. Discuss among yourselves.

*1 Chronicles 16:33

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