Let there be lit

I read.  I collect books and I read.  I don’t read as often as I should nor as ravenously as I did when I was 11 but I can do, when I want to and when I tell the outside world to carry on without me.

I am an email subscriber to LitHub, the online literary magazine that promotes reading, thought, ideas, literature, all the good stuff.  I read it, if not daily, then sub-daily, weekly, and in great chunks.  I wish I read it regularly, in the mornings over coffee.  Do people do that?  Or is it a situation of my imagination?   I hope they do.  I hope that there is in the world someone wo reads LitHub over coffee every morning; to know that there is in this slightly-off-kilter world a place, even if it is just one desk in one home, where someone opens the laptop lid, takes the coffee cup in hand, and enjoys both, simultaneously, enriching soul and caffiene habit.

But today this article, entitled ‘The Truth of Ray Bradbury’s Prophetic Vision’ appeared in my FB LitHub news feed and struck me as something I ought to have read and ought to have known before now.  And so it is with so much: I feel I ought to have known it and then the shame of not knowing it and then ensues the not-very-subtle argument with myself about becoming a better person.  But what a hubristic approach to literature and learning.

This article intrigued me not because of its Science Fictional leanings (I confess I have never given William S. Burroughs his fair due) but because of what it says about reading.  As a teacher I promoted reading in every way I could, including the subversive ways, which included condoning Harry Potter at the Evangelical School and turning a blind eye when students underlined passages in school copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby.

I miss the classroom and what I miss most is the discussion and the critical learning brought on by critical mass: that series of moments in which no one knows what we’re talking about and then, suddenly, we all do.  It’s a wonderful thing and while it cannot be entirely planned, it can be sculpted, it can be drawn out when conditions are right.  It is akin to using one’s sail: it is impossible if there is no wind, but when a wind arises, do not expect the sail to do any of the work: it is the sailor’s job.  So the teacher’s when the students are alive (to the wind in their cognitive sails).

The line in the article of most rich significance, in my view, is this, the last one:

Why bother to ban books when people voluntarily ignore them? Books don’t have to be hunted to extinction. Books die as a result of our taking them for granted. As the world of books steadily shrinks publisher by publisher, shop by shop, library by library and reader by reader, the result is the same. Only here and there, powerless to resist the general momentum of society, do a few people remain who love literature enough to try somehow to preserve it. So perhaps Bradbury suggests, at the end of this dark fable, all is not lost. Not quite.

I want to believe that there are more than a few of us left, but I know enough about humanity and the difficulties of literature to believe there is a great readership out there–especially in America at this moment.

The article is pinned below, and I encourage you to peruse it, if only to buck the trends that say our reading habits are confied to social platforms and easy news.  And if you want to grab a cup of coffee, you just go right ahead.  LitHub away.

https://lithub.com/the-truth-of-ray-bradburys-prophetic-vision/

 

Sweetie Darling/Cheers, thanks a lot (part 1 (probably))

 

I don’t know, somewhere, in this blog is a post about how we discovered an Abbey called Downton.  It was about 6 1/2 or 7 years ago when the blog was new and I had nothing else to write about or put in it and also, we were living in remote Alaska where things like Internet and shops were unknown.  At that time I believe Internet was in existence in the village, actually, and we were pirating it from across the marshland or bay, probably, and pre-loading Netflix episodes of Lady Mary Crawley while we made dinner and looked at our fabulous view of Lake Iliamna.

But those days are past and we can neither recover nor fully remember them, and so we move on to greener or at least funnier (sic) pastures called Absolutely Fabulous and Gilmore girls (no ‘The’ and lower-case ‘g’ as per A Year in the Life–look it up).  This video, below, correctly expresses all the funny I have hoped to convey over the course of my life but, not being a comedienne, was unable to.  So I leave it to the professionals, like Jennifer Saunders and, in part 2 of this blog entry, Lauren Graham/Lorelai Gilmore.  I think Jennifer Saunders is simply hilarious and she is simply hilarious because she is all (or at least many) of the things I love in a person: humble, intelligent, kind-hearted, supportive of friends and realistic about family, interested in learning and interested in other people and not afraid to take what she’s been given (by God, from birth, etc.) and make what she can of it. She is also articulate and generous when it comes to compliments.

In this interview–all of which is worth stopping whatever you are supposed to be doing and watching–at around minute-marker 34, she gives an account of the time she (almost) misplaced their baby, going so far as to quetsion whether or not said baby had actually been born.  I am, as many of you know, no prude when it comes to parenting because I have never been an official parent (no matter what you say, step-parenting, albeit complex and rewarding, does not involve the same collection of sacrificial emotions as the other kind of parenting, and that is just the way it is).  So to laugh at what can only be a sleep-deprived moment in this woman’s life is to show solidarity as a human being, not a form of mockery of mothers.  But even so, Saunders doesn’t seem to leave any room for that sort of uppityness.

But if you’ve already begun watching this slightly saucy, very endorphin-inducing (through hearty side-splitting laughter) video, you may as well either just keep watching or, if you’re pressed for time, kick over to minute 40 and watch to the end.  Because unless you’re interested in all the French and Saunders skits, the Absolutely Fabulous stories and the Interesting Youth (not a comedy sketch title, just a period in the comedienne’s life), there’s really nothing here that can’t be summed in the last 6 minutes.  But who am I kidding?   Nobody needs to be reminded that life is tough, fashion prevails and we all need each other as much as each other needs us.

So, cheers, (and) thanks a lot.

Truth is stranger

I’ve just finished reading a fantastic article from the TLS about a little-known Russian author who (more than likely) forged an account of the ‘lost years’ of Jesus’ life.  While this sounds utterly sacrilegious–and in a way, is–it is also an attempt at an exoneration of the Jews’ part in Jesus’ crucifixion–by a converted Jew.

The man who wrote this account, Russian-born Nicolas Notovich, had been living in Paris for many years and had encountered great discrimination and seen great evil done, both by and to the Jews.  The author of the article, Marcel Theroux, writes with great clarity and turns a side-note of history into a very compelling read. Thus, I spent about 20 minutes this morning utterly engaged in another world and viewpoint on humanity.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-post-truth-gospel/

 

 

Part 1: Perils of Informality

The hyperbolical account of my private-school teaching job: Part 1

For a couple of years I worked for the small private Christian school here on the Island. Its name isn’t important, but its denominational association grew in significance the longer I taught there. The school was run by the Assemblies of God (AG) church and many of its denominational principles could be seen in the administrative decisions and in the overall structure of the school. One such principle was that of informality, of a kind of ‘pal’ or ‘buddy’ relationship that could be seen everywhere: in the emails, in the meetings, and even in the décor and use of space within the building itself. It was this infernal informality that ultimatey drove me to doubt every tenent of education I’d ever held and eventually got me, not exactly ‘fired’, but ‘let go’ from the institution. It is likely that my orthodox beliefs—both in theology and in education—also had something to do with it. But then, what is orthodox if not formal?

This pal-around school was also what is popularly known, with varying degrees of meaning, as a ‘Christian Classical school’ where—at least in theory, and in this instance, only in theory—principles of classical education are put to work. The principles of classicism are somewhat wide-ranging in this day and age, but essentially they operate on what is known as the Trivium, a laddered and multi-layered approach to learning that encompasses the stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

From the grammar stage, which is also called the ‘poll parrot’ stage because it involves lots of memorization and ‘parroting-back’ of information, one moves into the logic stage, in which one learns not merely fallacies and how to spot them, but also formal logic and what Aristotle meant by ‘argument’. One then rounds this out with the rhetoric stage wherein language becomes ever-more significant and the art of speaking is raised to an appreciated level. One begins to see the need for formality here, but for now we shall continue on without editorial.

These stages—grammar, logic, rhetoric—are roughly coordinated with the Elementary, Junior High and High School levels, respectively, but grammar, logic and rhetoric are, as one who has any experience with classical learning will attest, also stages within a subject, and form the framework for further growth in that subject. That is: even history has a ‘grammar’, as does art, music, and science. One will not be ready to move to the logic stage in anything without an understanding of its grammar, which includes vocabulary and terminology as well as the rudimentary forms of its outline or foundation. The rhetoric or discussion stage similarly depends upon the logic stage having been completed and more or less grasped, as no one wants to engage in dialogue with someone who cannot follow an argument or present a valid point.

So briefly—very briefly—those are the principles of classicism and they form and have formed the basis of scholarship in the West for centuries. It is the education even Tolkien and Lewis were given before they became Oxford and Cambridge Dons, so there’s something. It is only relatively recently that the ‘classical model’ was abandoned in favor of a more modernized, and one might even say progressive model that includes psychology, genre literature (sci-fi studies, for example), and film studies. Even shop and woodworking are more classical than one might at first imagine. But the classical model, as you will notice, places great emphasis on language—even in the maths and sciences—for each of these stages reflects an aspect of writing, speech, or thought. Grammar, logic, rhetoric: linguistically-based elements, to be sure, and vital if one is going to take this classical learning thing seriously.

And yet, at the classical school at which I worked, I rarely saw examples of this emphasis on language anywhere, even in language arts or English classes. There was no school library, something which to this day sends shock waves through my system, and what books there were at the school were often tucked away, or consciously stacked or carefully monitored within classrooms. As an aside, students were not allowed to read Harry Potter, despite the overwhelming number of classical references in each of its seven massive volumes. This decision was based on the Evangelical belief that Harry was about witches, and not about the battle between good and evil, ultimately won by a Christ-figure. But no matter. This deficiency baffled me, however, and I began to seek ways in which to surround my students with literature in spite of the obvious roadblocks before me.

I brought in my own volumes and collected copies of classics I’d found in the various thrift shops or cupboards around the school. I had a small bookshelf that looked, if not like a library, then at least like a solid collection. The anthology we used was massive, but I liked it, as it portrayed the weight of knowledge and contained an impressive and respectable collection of works from Gilgamesh to Sir Gawain. I would win everyone over with literature and good books. It was silly of me to think this way, I know, and even sillier to think anyone would understand, let alone condone these thoughts and actions, but I am not known for my good sense in regards to placating the illitarate, and so I continued my mission, not realizing I was being slowly beaten down by my own optimism and intelligence.

In presenting my plan for a 4-year high school Humanities curriculum the previous summer I had genuinely struggled to accurately convey the importance of reading, or the correlation of English to History to Art to Science. I had made charts and provided relevant materials. I had shown in my findings and research that the significance of mere exposure to the classics, such as The Odyssey, Beowulf, great poetry, and philosophical and theological writings was the basis of classical education and that it could be done, even at our small school. These ideas were accepted on the surface as good ideas, and ones that other classical schools embraced, but the more I talked, the smaller I felt, and when I was told that most of our students wind up going to Running Start after 10^th grade, I suspected my words were falling on deaf ears, but even I did not have eyes to see. I should have run—not walked!—to the nearest fire exit and barred the door behind me, but I have a miserable tendency to latch on and hang on to things pertaining to literature, even when those things happen to destroy that which I love.

It is now rather clear to me that language, including literature, simply possesses too much formality. It is not something that transfers well to ‘quips’ or looks good in a devotional journal. It is rather difficult to ‘sum up’ classical literature unless one has studied it quite thoroughly and has paid attention. Who understands a good Odysseus joke who does not know Odysseus?

Thoughts on Units 4-6: Why I like Iconicity

Of the first two sets of units in this Module, the second set is by far more interesting and engaging, at least to me.  With the exception of a few key points– runekafli, the multiple re-writes of Ulysses, futhark–units 1, 2, and 3 left me wondering why I enrolled in this program and invoking the name of academics-gods-gone-awry.  Even unit 4 with its 12-page transcript of the recorded conversations of young college women (why wasn’t this more interesting to me?) held my commitment to UNott at bay.  But then, like a bright, pale blue streak in a storm of slate gray came unit 5: Iconicity and all of its fantastic linguistic literary magic.  I am delighted, no, tickled to be a part of a world in which a book called Form Miming Meaning exists.  And further, to know that a downloaded copy is right now loaded onto my Macintosh machine.  Holy wonders; the world is great indeed.

The first thing that struck me about literary iconicity was, undoubtedly, the word iconicity.  For years icon has been one of my favorite words, not to mention concepts.  An icon is more than a symbol, more than an image, in fact, it is rather like a symbol-image that works overtime.  Iconicity is exactly what the title of Fischer and Nanny’s book says it is: A form that mimes a meaning.  It is the best of both worlds: image and message.  Simply writing that sends lovely titillating shivers up my spine.  Images, messages.  Images, messages.  All the world should be so neat.

But after iconicity–the word that is– comes John, who is the second, but no less valuable or important, reason for icon-love.  John, while in his MFA program, discovered the imagists, the band of poets and writers for whom the image was everything.  I don’t mean that they all sat around and made word-pictures or anything like that.  What is meant here by image is the kernel, the root idea from which the poem occurs; the meaning around which the form of the poem takes place.   In this sense, his interest, John’s interest is the same as mine, and that we found them each independently and in separate ways makes it all the more meaningful.  Form miming meaning, once again.