Meme
Sarah has
tagged me. So here we go ...
1. One book that changed your life:
First item here is one of the more difficult. I wonder whether it's the book or the act(s) of engagement with it in reading that could better be said to 'change one's life'. I look over shelves of books I have around me and associate various kinds of apparent change in myself with many of them – even with various that I've read only in small part. But, okay, I'll pick one that seemed to come along at a particularly opportune time to affect my long-term thinking: How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand
2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
The Republic, Plato – likely the only book I've read through twice, actually. And yet I'm barely conversant with its ideas. It should probably be read many times.
3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
I don't know if you're assumed to be allowed only one book, or if you're to imagine having a handful of books along, but the first pick for a long period cut off from the world would obviously be a Bible.
4. One book that made you laugh:
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand – didn't actually finish it, but find it a greater occasion for laughter, I think, the older I get. (Apologies to the exceptional girl – whose brief affection for me remains a fond memory – who gave it to me years ago.)
5. One book that made you cry:
It's not a particularly strange thing for me to be brought to some tears, quietly, in reading a narrative work. But moments of feeling moved might be as attributable to the effects of other things going on in life as to the evocative strengths of the book; and moments of feeling moved aren't generally what stay with me after the book's been put aside. I think I do recall, though, tears at points in Jane Eyre – and that's been about 15 years ago. In more recent reading, I'm almost certain I was brought to tears, or nearly so, in roughly the latter half of The Lord of the Rings, at various places where Gandalph's and Aragorn's respective features of personal goodness & capacity to bear majesty are coming more fully to light. (I don't know, truthfully, whether to think The Lord of the Rings is a great work itself, but there I think is where some of the best, and most moving, of many developments of images of great things the story carries out lie – and there also good cause, in my case, to be glad that I managed not to read it until in my 30s.)
6. One book that you wish had been written:
If I can think of it, odds are pretty good that someone's already written it, or writing it.
7. One book that you wish had never been written:
I'm inclined to think it's readings that are corrupt or corrupting, not books themselves. And even corrupt & corrupting readings in a way show the necessity of open accessibility of the whole range of ideas that may find their way to publication.
8. One book you’re currently reading:
The active pile is deep these days. One that's just been added to it – about 9 years after it was urged on me by an English prof., is Philosopy in a New Key, Susanne Langer.
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Augustine's Confessions – but there are so many, it really feels foolish to pick one.
10. Now tag five people:
Here I have to break the pattern. I think there are only about 5 people who've ever looked in on this blog, anyway – and of those, the ones who blog have more than likely already done one of these things.
This is a good place to note that I've been debating whether to continue with this blog. I maintained it more or less solidly for about three months, and I do have quite a few ideas about how to proceed from there. But despite its potential as creative & communicative endeavor in itself – potential I can only scratch the surface of, in any case – in the big picture it's probably not as useful a thing as I'd hoped it could be, in view of what I think I ought to be pursuing. I continue to think about it.
Many thanks to any of my five (or so) kind readers who happen to read this! Thanks especially to Darrell Reimer and Sarah Irani for regularly checking in and engaging my process here with thoughtful comments.
An excerpt
From
Moby Dick, chapter 26:
Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
Whew. Stiff stuff!
Give me the kick in the ass
(If I'm required to choose.)
'NPR has the reputation for being serious radio, a reputation it sometimes still deserves. But it also at times carries a pretty strong thread of the ridiculous, not to mention the pretentious.'
So this fellow believes anyway.
Later: This afternoon, found myself working in someone's living room where the TV was being watched. It was on MSNBC, the cable news channel, and I had to endure the 'news' shows called
Tucker and
Hardball for a while. I don't have cable at home, so I tend to forget that this is the character of so much popular broadcast journalism. Oh man, what deeply disturbing material! Hard to take, even for half an hour. But a good reminder that NPR's seriousness, under current cultural conditions, means more in the balance than all its ridiculousness or pretentiousness do.
Say yes – baby
Brian Janaszek
refers readers to an article by Slate columnist Emily Yoffe, and adds his affirmation to her defense of childbearing. It's not just about perpetuating civilization, he writes:
[T]he worst of times – tantrums, nightmares, soiled underwear – are no match for the tender moments – your child singing his bedtime songs with you, or zooming around the playground on his bicycle with an enormous smile on his face. Those moments melt even the worst stress and frustration. The cynic might call me selfish, but this only looks at one side of the coin. The other side is the discipline of being a parent – sacrificing all manner of things (though, in the end, so many sacrifices don't really [seem] that way) for your children, your family.
... [P]arents are changing the world, "saying yes" to the future, one child at a time.
While I'm wary of all confident statements of expectation that decisions we make may change the world recognizably for the better in the span of ages as we experience them now, I want to affirm, in turn, 'saying yes to the future' here as something much greater than glass-half-full good vibration. To say yes to the future in the fullest sense that
bearing children implies is a response of faith to God who made us mankind to come to know him – which is the good itself – in the unfolding of time, through the passage of generations. And it's not a far step from this to recognize that we have both reason & right to find
happiness in receiving this burden as calling & gift.
Yoffe's piece is a good read by the way. Among other smile-inducers, loved this:
[T]he other night, my daughter, now 10 years old and no diapers in sight, was reading a book on American history and asked my husband about a confusing episode. A week in Paris could not have made my husband happier than telling her everything he knew about Iran-Contra.
Coincident
I started
Moby Dick today. Started listening to it, that is, on tape. This is unremarkable, or should be, except that I've never been in the habit of listening to recorded books. Last week, in fact, was the first time. And how sorry I am, now, that I'd gone so long without giving one a try!
A couple of miles from the home of a customer for whom I'm doing a variety of projects off & on over a span of months is a public library. Getting lunch one day last week, I stopped in at this library with the thought that I might be able to check email. I had no thought, though, of borrowing anything. The location is fairly distant from where I live – another county. So I had no account there, of course, and in any case, I'm not a library user these days generally, mostly because I've got a lot on my own shelves (and desk, bed, floor, &c.) that I'm not managing to read already. But books in audio form I don't have. Why hadn't I seen an opportunity in this fact sooner? I can't think of a decent answer. But last week the opportunity confronted me in simple terms. To check email, I found, I needed a library account – and right next to the bank of computers were the books on tape. Here I've been driving 45 minutes each way in order to work on this customer's house, and am expecting to do so for days at a time recurringly through the year. I really couldn't walk out of the library, then, without something to listen to.
I looked over the collection and lighted on Orwell's
Down and Out in Paris and London – something short – with reading by
Patrick Tull. Put it on as soon as I was in the truck, was hooked in about two minutes.
Today I took back
Down and Out and picked up
Moby Dick – one of those important titles I'd heretofore practically given up ever getting around to reading. Mark Bertrand's
been mentioning Melville a bit lately; and it's not too long ago that Hawthorne and his circle featured in one or more Mars Hill Audio conversations, I seem to recall. There are undoubtedly reasons of this kind that
Moby came to mind. But if it's a matter of choosing among things laid out in front of me now through this conjunction of circumstances, things I haven't read that one really ought to, I hardly need another reader's recommendation as cue to a good pick. My poverty of reading experience is such that I can take a step in any number of literary directions and be sure of opening up fascinating territory.
Alright now, a moment's incidental literary amusement – a parallel I could hardly have foreseen and that I can't fail to mention before I quit this post. Orwell, drawing
Down and Out to a close, remarks at relative length on the inadequacy of 'lodging houses', places where you could get a cheap bed in London when he was writing. There's a shift from the narrative, reportorial voice of the greater part of the book to somewhat more direct advocacy. And you find his concerns outlined, in a way, around a particular point of emphasis: "The really bad fault of lodging-houses is that they are places in which one pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is impossible. ... The lodging-house keepers should be compelled to provide adequate bedclothes and better mattresses, and above all to divide their dormitories into cubicles. It does not matter how small a cubicle is,
the important thing is that a man should be alone when he sleeps." Well then, what do the opening scenes of
Moby Dick turn out, in turn, to turn upon but a narrator's anxiety at having to sleep a little too closely with a stranger on a night in a crowded, run-down rooming house? His discomforts aren't quite comparable with the ones Orwell's describing from his days among London's 'tramps', but the matter, with Melville's character, comes to a remarkable resonance of male point of view. "No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping."
I'm of a mind to agree with both of them.
There was a nice coincidence of another kind, for the occasion of getting into this book. The house I'm working on is in a neighborhood right along the Magothy River, which runs a shortish course into the Chesapeake a little to the north of Annapolis. At the end of a neighborhood street there's a small park on a bit of shoreline prominence called (according to the map) Ulmstead Point, where I've been going sometimes to eat lunch, sitting in the truck with a view across the water. Perfect spot perhaps, in my circumstances, to hear the
first-chapter prologue to
Moby Dick read today.
Super
It's been a long time since I took much of an interest in comic books & superheroes – and I'm not finding new interest in them now. But it'd be nonsense to suggest there's nothing worthy of notice in comic books & superhero-type illustration out there. It's enough to observe the diversity of working graphic artists (espec., of course, those in animation & 'character design') who find ongoing inspiration in material of the superhero genre past & present. Check out
Drawergeeks.com, where amid a great variety of shameless, ad hoc cartoon & superhero submissions you'll find such material as the terrific image below, by
Mark Behm. Look also especially for the extraordinarily fine animator-style drawings of
Sarah Mensinga there.
(I'll acknowledge without hesitation that though I get an adolescent visual thrill from the hyper-exaggerated physiques of superhero stylings of the past decade & a half or so, I imagine the picture below would be a lot
more terrific if Cap's figure weren't exaggerated nearly so much. (Ahhm .. and is that an extra, lower rib cage he's sporting? Going a bit far by anyone's standards, I think.) The well-rendered athletic human figure in primary-colored spandex really needs no exaggeration to make for stunning imagery. Still – beyond question – on its own terms, particularly as casually conceived & produced, this piece is brilliant. Notice especially the handling, for composition, of pictorial effects of light & atmosphere.)
Also, Toronto-based Michael Cho's
splendid blog covering his own illustration & comics work (featured at
Drawn! a little while ago) and his accompanying whimsical
all-Iron-Man blog are well worth a look.
Later: Ahh ... couldn't resist a quick few tries at demonstrating to myself how Cap might be redone. I guess the old bug dies hard. At right, only one I thought suggested a good direction. Lacks heroic grandeur of form, though. Sketch an inch high.
