Nature vs History

The uniqueness of human beings, in the created order, is that we live simultaneously in nature (the realm of involuntary and repetitive acts) and history (the realm in which we make choices, and experience and reflect upon the consequences of those choices). Other living things—plants and other animals—live in nature only; angels, perhaps, only in history. To have this double inheritance is our challenge, our pain, but also our glory.

-Alan Jacobs, "The Poet's Prose," Books & Culture Jan/Feb 2009, 39.

Review: Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry

I saved this review for last because it was, by far, the best of my library books. I already wrote up a description for a friend, so I am going to cut and paste from the email I sent to her (with just a little editing)...

Jayber Crow is the fictional autobiography of Jonah (Jayber) Crow. He's born in the teens, and is looking back on his life as an old man in the eighties. He spends most of his life in a small town in Kentucky, and a good part of the book is about that small town and the people who live in it. It's a gentle book, and the characters are painted with grace and warmth, and that's what I liked best. There were several places where I laughed out loud. But there are profound passages too, some of which I've already quoted in my blog. It seems like a good book for someone making life decisions, or for someone who is just interested in vocation (like me).

Vocation, and the role of individual choice (self-determination?) is one of Berry's themes. He is also critical of many of the cultural changes that occurred over the course of the twentieth century, and this book mourns the passing of rural farming communities. I have a harder time embracing this theme—I tend to think that that the state of the world is neither improving nor disintegrating, just carrying on much the same as always. But Berry challenges that assumption, and perhaps it ought to be challenged. I disdain cultural relativism, and it strikes me now that I'm just expressing a sort of temporal relativism. Perhaps some ages are darker than others. And while nostalgia can be a bit of a sickness, it is appropriate to name and mourn what's lost.

I'll leave it at that, except to say that this book reminded me a bit of both Our Town and Theophilus North—so I guess Berry's prose has a Thornton Wilderish quality. A fine book. Check it out!

Review: Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones

I don't know what to say about this book. I borrowed it from the library because the library didn't have Howl's Moving Castle (by the same author), recommended by a friend. The title (Archer's Goon?!), cover art, and plot synopsis are all completely unappealing. But the story is riveting. Clever contemporary fantasy.

Review: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Jeanne Birdsall

Well, I liked this too. This is the second book about the Penderwicks, four little girls, their widowed dad, and Hound. These books belong to the family subgenre of children's lit—like E. Nesbit's Bastable family stories and Eleanor Estes' Moffats. Birdsall sets her books in contemporary times, but apart from a few unimportant details, they might as well be set in the 50s or 20s. There are lots of strong female characters—but the same can be said of Roller Skates (copyright 1936) so I'm not sure that makes this an especially modern book.

I suppose the reason why these books don't seem to belong to the modern world is that there isn't much grit (conflict and sadness yes, but no Sin). In The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Daddy dates, Rosalind gets mad at a boy, Jane and Skye swap homework assignments, and Batty spies on a mysterious stranger. By the end of the book, everything resolves neatly. But the resolution is satisfying—like a Shakespearean comedy where everyone ends up married to the right person. A cozy book, good for reading in bed.

Review: Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, Lynne Jonell

I liked this book. Not one of the great works of children's lit, but fun and whimsical and a pretty good story. Also, charming artwork by Jonathan Bean—when you flip the pages, a rat tumbles out of a tree and down the page. Emmy is a good little girl in the clutches of a nasty nanny. She befriends a talking rat with special powers—his bite makes people shrink. There are actually a lot of rodents with special powers in this book, but it's not The Secret of Nimh. The rodents are winsome, but Emmy is the character you care about. This is a pleasant book. Even though Emmy's nanny (Miss Barmy) is fairly despicable, she isn't really frightening—Emmy and her friends always seem to have the upper hand, and it's hard to imagine the story ending unhappily. But the ending is still pretty satisfying and not entirely predictable.

Review: Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear

Two weeks ago, I took a stack of books out of the library; now that I'm through most of the them, I thought it would be fun to write short reviews. So, from bottom to top...

Maisie Dobbs is the first in a series of historical mysteries, set in London in the earlyish part of the 20th century. I had great hopes for Maisie. But alas, she's less a woman of her time, and more a 21st century independent working woman with a very contemporary worldview, plunked down in the 30s. Maisie solves the mystery by being empathetic in a creepy new agey way and by making a bunch of phone calls that the reader isn't told about until the final chapter. Much of the book is taken up with Maisie's backstory, particularly her service during WWI as a nurse and her ill-fated romance with a surgeon. An engaging enough book, and it was interesting to think more about what it must have been like to live through WWI. But I don't really like Maisie enough to read any more in this series.

Carried Along...

I can't look back from where I am now and feel that I have been very much in charge of my life. Certainly I have lived on the edge of the Port William community, and I am farther than ever out on the edge of it now. But I feel that I have lived on the edge even of my own life. I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life, I don't feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn't stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have only been on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 322.

Sermons

In general, I weathered even the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 162

Wandering

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line—starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past apppropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 133.

Waking Up

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I'd have to try it.

-Rex Stout’s character Archie Goodwin (hat tip Terry Teachout)

The Prodigal Father

The Prodigal Son goes off with his inheritance and blows the whole pile on liquor and sex and fancy clothes until finally he doesn’t have two cents left to rub together and has to go to work or starve to death. He gets a job on a pig farm and keeps at it long enough to observe that the pigs are getting a better deal than he is and then decides to go home. There is nothing edifying about his decision. There is no indication that he realizes he’s made an ass of himself and broken his old man’s heart, no indication that he thinks of his old man as anything more than a meal ticket. There is no sign that he is sorry for what he’s done or that he’s resolved to make amends somehow and do better next time. He decides to go home for the simple reason that he knows he always got three squares a day at home, and for a man who is in danger of starving to death, that is reason enough. So he sets out on the return trip and on the way rehearses the speech he hopes will soften the old man’s heart enough so that at least he won’t slam the door in his face. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” ...And just about the time he thinks he has it down, the old man spots him coming around the corner below the tennis court and starts sprinting down the drive like a maniac. Before the boy has time to get so much as the first word out, the old man throws his arms around him and all but knocks him off his feet with the tears and whiskers and incredulous laughter of his welcome.

-Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, 66-67.

Highs

1. Six library books
2. Several hours of Burn Notice on DVD
3. A new skein of 'Fisherman's Wool' yarn for crocheting scarves
4. An impending snowstorm!

Anthologies

And so of the making of books there is no end, and of the making of anthologies there seems particularly to be no end because we are all anthologists. The collection and hoarding of bits and pieces is basic to all animals, from the squirrel with his nuts...to the anthologist with his oddments stored up in his memory...Anthology-making is therefore essentially selfish, like self-preservation...with the advantage of literature over nuts that it can be shared without personal loss to the hoarder.

-Elizabeth Goudge, preface to A Book of Comfort, quoted by Leland Ryken in his preface to The Christian Imagination