But them I call the rabble who hang on others’ words and gestures, and, chamelon-wise, take their color from them, truckling to their benefactors, relishing applause, and making themselves the mirror of the multitude. Never do you find such men faithful wardens of their heritage, like a citadel; nor do they hand down their password from generation to generation; but rather let their children grow at random, without molding them. And everywhere they breed, like fungus, on the face of the earth.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
“It is a privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p. 142
Talk about a great summer read! Pick up Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and enjoy….
The facts about John Huff, aged 12, are simple and soon stated. He could pathfind more trails than any Choctaw or Cherokee since time began, could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine, could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream from where you last saw him. The baseballs you pitched him he hit in the apple trees, knocking down harvests. He could jump six-foot orchard walls, swing up branches and come down, fat with peaches, quicker than anyone else in the gang. He ran laughing. He sat easy. He was not a bully. He was kind. His hair was dark and curly and his teeth were white as cream. He remembered the words to all the cowboy songs and would teach you if you asked. He knew the names of all the wildflowers and when the moon would rise and set and when the tides came in or out. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of.
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p. 102
Build not an empire where everything is perfect. “Good taste” is a virture of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens. You will have acted like an over-squeamish man who never goes out for fear of being soiled by contact with the earth. At the core of your perfection will be emptiness, and you shall have no joy of it. Nay, rather build an empire where all is zeal.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
… the flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.
For a long time I’ve wanted a copy of Antione de Saint-Exupery’s Citadelle (Wisdom of the Sands in English). I recently received copy for my birthday—even though it’s about as far from my birthday as you can get in the calendar. Anyway, it’s a treasure, and I’ll pass on some of the wisdom as I’m able. If I can muster up some of my own reflections without clouding his, I’ll offer those up as well.
But no promises…
I just finished my third reading of C. S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism. I read it first in 1993, then in 2003, then today. It may seem strange to return so often to a book of literary criticism—but for me it is a way to keep me grounded, to remind myself why I read. For example:
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense, but he inhabits a tiny word. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others.
A few years ago my friend Greg gave me a copy of of Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. He didn’t just give it to me—he went to the trouble of shipping it to me in Slovakia, so he must have felt strongly that I would dig it.
Dig it I did! [Has anyone ever written such a sentence as that?] It’s a work of literary crticism, demonstrating that Lewis organized his Narnia books around the seven planets of medieval cosmology [Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Saturn]. That may sound a bit esoteric, and obviously millions of people enjoy the books without knowing this hidden key. I certainly have. But I’ve read just about everything of Lewis’s that I could get my hands on—fiction, essays, apologetics, literary criticism, poetry, autobiography, letters, letters, and more letters—and I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten to know him as well as I could. And from what I know of him, Ward’s thesis is not only believable, but convincing.
Let’s put it this way: if you understand the title of this post and see how it relates to the topic, you will certainly dig Ward’s book.
Marilynne Robinson is brilliant and her project in her new book Absence of Mind is noble:
What I wish to question are not the methods of science, but the methods of a kind of argument that claims the authority of science or highly specialized knowledge, that assumes a protective coloration that allows it to pass for science yet does not practice the self-discipline or self-criticism for which science is distinguished.
I’ll add that her book made for one of the most challenging reads I’ve had in a long time. In fact, I think I pulled a muscle in my brain trying to keep up with her. I was in over my head.
I have wanted to read something by Cormac McCarthy for a long time – since my friend Geoff recommended All the Pretty Horses to me not long after it was published. I’m not sure why I delayed. But recently my friend Lynne wrote on my Facbook wall to tell me to read it. She said something about it’s being “devastating.” So I took the trouble to order the book and read it.
“Devastating” is a good word. In thise story the world is devastated – there has been some sort of disaster and almost everything has been burned up. Everything is gray, covered with ash. And many of the few people left live like animals. The main characters are a father and his young son who was born on the day the earth was devastated. They wander through the blackened world trying to survive by scrounging for old cans of food, drinkable water, scraps of anything that can be used to help them survive. (more…)
In The Cold War: A New History, Yale history professor John Lewis Gaddis writes with skill that does justice to one of the most remarkable periods of history. His narrative isn’t simply chronological, but a presentation of the history seven times, from seven perspectives or themes. (Which reminds me of the book of Revelation – but I don’t have time to explore that analogy further.) The details of the story that have been revealed since the opening of the records from behind the former Iron Curtain are sometimes chilling and often change or at least challenge our old perceptions.
The highest drama for me, though, remains the rapid unravelling of communism in Europe in and around 1989. I’ve read several accounts of those events, and am always incredulous – though it happened in front of me.
Read this book!