May 18, 2009 at 9:05 am (literature)
Tags: Alan Jacobs, biography, C. S. Lewis, intellect, literature
The Narnian, a biography of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs, is a rare and wonderful critter. Informative, intellectually rigorous, delightful, intriguing. . . I could go on; but maybe it is more succinct to propose that Jacobs’ work on Lewis is (in all these ways and more) very like Lewis’ work itself.
I have mentally marked so many passages in this book that I regret I can’t physically mark them (it’s a library book)—each new “Aha!” tends to make me lose track of the ones that went before. But just to give a taste, I’ll go back to the early pages.
A couple of years ago I read C. S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy. At the time I was taken with his explanation of “Joy,” partly because I knew exactly the feeling he meant. Jacobs reminds me of this and illuminates the concept even further. It is similar to the idea of Sehnsucht:
[T]hough it could in one sense be described as a negative experience, in that it focuses on something one cannot possess and cannot reach, it is nevertheless intensely seductive. One cannot say it is exactly pleasurable—there is a kind of ache in the sense of unattainability that always accompanies the longing—and yet, as Lewis puts it, the quality of the experience “is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” (p. 41)
Here I go being self-centered again, but isn’t it a wonderful function of literature to make us recognize the deepest parts of ourselves? Perhaps this is my greatest satisfaction in reading The Narnian. That, and the masterful way in which Jacobs makes thinking a pleasure.
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May 14, 2009 at 11:33 am (literature)
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, environment, gardening, intellect, literature
Love ’em!
Two of my current reads do just that. The first one (because I started reading it first) is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
This book has set me off in many directions. At first I steamed through, then started slowing down when I began to feel I was reading the same idea rehashed through the seasons. Yet Kingsolver has such an entertaining voice—and thought-provoking message—that I can’t just walk away. The premise of the book is that Kingsolver’s family, disgusted with the various factors involved in the typical American’s relationship with food (more on these in a moment), has decided to eat, for the period of one year, only what they can grow/raise for themselves or find locally (“locally” being strictly defined in miles). What are some of the disgusting factors? The usual suspects: fossil fuel consumption, big corporations, the demise of small farms, ruination of nature, exploitation of human laborers, high fructose corn syrup. Yes, my tone is facetious, but when I started reading the book, I was drawn in, convinced, outraged, and feeling absolutely guilty.
Why guilty? Because I want to save the world—and the people who live there—as much as the next gal. Reading Kingsolver’s book, I began to feel that at best I have been living 39 years of profound ignorance, and at worst, contributing to the ills of the world.
Now here’s where I got to thinking. First, intellectually I realize that Kingsolver is a talented propagandist. She is not attempting to hide her agenda; in fact she is trumpeting it as loudly as she can. So I start to question myself: Am I buying wholesale into someone else’s crusade, without considering all the angles? The really hard thing for me, and probably for the general public, is how difficult it can be (especially when one is busy and/or lazy) to get a complete, unbiased picture of anything. I don’t want to live blindly, I don’t want to be stupid, and I certainly don’t want to hurt others (or my own body), but boy can it be hard to know who to believe.
Where does this leave me, besides crazy? Well, praying. A lot. Trying to learn as much as I can about absolutely everything. Trying to make the small decisions as responsibly as I can. Trying to remember from day to day and year to year what that wonderful promise was that I made to myself about ________, back when I read a really eye-opening and convincing book…
And oh yeah, I planted my own tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, spinach, and zucchini; and am anxiously awaiting my blueberry bushes.
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May 8, 2009 at 11:47 am (Off-topic)
Tags: book-making, creativity, etsy, Mother's Day, nature
While the muse continues AWOL, nature and a greeting-card holiday have stepped in to inspire me.
First, nature: my beautiful window-tree, a crabapple that is the best Mother’s Day present I ever picked out for myself. We planted her five years ago, and this short bloom season is her showy best.
For the greeting-card holiday: accordion-fold Mother’s Day cards. Here is the one for my mother. The little slips of paper detail some of the things I love about her and am thankful for, like how she taught me to think for myself, and filled my childhood with books and reading. We had to work a little harder for my husband’s mom: he wrote one note, and the kids and I had to do the rest.
What do I plan for my Mother’s Day? Working in the garden, letting Superhero Husband grill shrimp kabobs. Gifts? Not necessary. I’ve already been shopping on Etsy. Here’s a beauty I snagged from favorite shop Cool Jewels, owned by friend, children’s writer, and jewelry-maker extraordinaire, Amie.
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May 4, 2009 at 7:40 am (writing)
Tags: creativity, playwriting, writing
Well, not exactly. But a few days ago I had the singular thrill of watching a group of 9- through 12-year-olds bring my words to life during Number One Daughter’s school play.
It happened like this: A couple of months ago, my daughter’s sixth-grade teacher asked if I could write a few “commercials” to add to the fairy-tale awards-show spoof. The current script was too short and didnt’t have enough parts for all the kids. I had my doubts—I had never attempted playwriting before, and my sense of humor is on the dry side—but I accepted the challenge.
No. 1 and her good friend helped brainstorm the product lines, including Big Bad Wolf Security Systems (“trust the wolf”), Little Red Hen Bakery (“the original self-serve bakery”), and The Emperor’s Clothing Emporium (“our commitment to fashion is crystal-clear”). Then I set to work and found that although in real life I couldn’t sell Girl-Scout cookies to my own mother, I could, for the sake of art, tap into a subterranean well of advertising speak.
Fast-forward through the weeks of rehearsal, during which I heard only hints of what was transpiring. Then the big night. The director, pianist, and kids did a terrific job, playing up the humor even better than I had imagined. I may have been literally glowing.
I wondered if this feeling of happy collaboration might be similar to what a picture-book author has, on viewing the art that interprets and enhances his or her words. Is that a feeling I’ll ever know? At any rate, I think I’ve caught a new bug—and it isn’t for writing advertising copy.
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April 29, 2009 at 5:23 am (literature, writing)
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, creativity, John Holt, literature, Patrick O'Brian, Sue Bender, Susan Wooldridge
Little did I know, when I wrote my last post, that I would not write another for an entire month. The truth is, I could not bring myself to the keyboard. I was trying to create the mental equivalent of an island retreat—lying in an open-front grass hut, thinking of nothing, listening to the waves roll in.
What have I been doing? Reading. Not much writing, other than faithful morning journaling, and a few poem notes/drafts. Making three new ribbon-bound journals and two perfect-bound notebooks (one for Princess Two, who needed an assignment book for sudden-onset piano lessons). Playing a lot of piano and trying to improve my French horn.
What did I read? I re-read ninety percent of Patrick O’Brian’s third Aubrey/Maturin novel (the mental equivalent of comfort food). I read Teach Your Own by John Holt. If I hadn’t already been convinced we should homeschool, this book would have convinced me. It did encourage, inspire, and energize me for this new venture. I read Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender. In its pages, I found plenty of quotations that I coulda/shoulda pinned above my desk; but primarily I found reassurance that my mental vacation was in fact long overdue, direly needed, worthwhile, and plain OK. Apparently the creative spirit needs rest and rejuvenation. Thank you, Sue Bender. I am finding the same kinds of reassurance in a slightly different form as I continue to sip my way through Susan Wooldridge’s Foolsgold.
Meanwhile, I have started reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, recommended by a discerning friend. This book is both a record of one family’s year-long quest to eat only what they could produce on their own farm or buy locally, and an exhortation for us all to think about where our food comes from and how we can treat our earth and our bodies better. Depressing and inspiring at the same time.
So, dear reader, like Persephone and the daffodils, I have returned from the dark depths to soak up some sunshine. I’ll radiate as much as possible.
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March 29, 2009 at 5:36 am (literature)
Tags: creativity, Jasper Rees, Joseph Campbell, literature, Susan G. Wooldridge
I frequently find it uncanny how books can speak right to the heart of whatever is going on in my life. Yes, I stack the deck by choosing the books myself; but even so, I am often astonished by the pointed relevancy of a line or an idea. Does this happen to others? Or am I particularly a) self-centered, so that I think everything is about me; b) able to twist any words to suit my purpose du jour; c) some warped product of all those years spent studying literature in school?
Whatever the answer, here are some words that both comforted and excited me in the midst of the painful throes of change.
From Jasper Rees’s A Devil to Play:
Did I do what I set out to do? Did I prove to myself that there’s more to life than being young and not trying very hard?. . . I did indeed. More than that, I stood up. I took a risk and lived, and breathed the sweet, rarefied air of utter, inner contentment.
From Susan G. Wooldridge’s Foolsgold:
For a time, I needed emptiness to make room for a new start.
We need to let go of everything that gets in the way of what needs to enter.
We need to leave space both for what we’ll discover and what will emerge to discover us.
From Joseph Campbell, via the fabulous Writer’s Almanac:
We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Perhaps it is a result of my own insecurities that I need written confirmation of all those messages my heart tries to send up. I have many “duh” moments. The feeling of relief is one of “Aha! I was right!” as much as “Oh good, I’m not alone in thinking/feeling/ fearing/hoping this.” For these reasons—and certainly many, many others—I thank God for the blessing of the right book at the right time (and for all those writers who have unknowingly reassured/inspired me).
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March 18, 2009 at 11:16 am (literature, writing)
Tags: American history, American literature, British literature, history, Jasper Rees, Kay Winters, Larry Day, literature, Michael Faraday, Tony Horwitz, writing
Reading update:
I’m still suffering from too many books and too little time, in the middle of three nonfiction books of varying lengths. 1. I’ve followed Tony Horwitz and Captain Cook to Alaska, and we’re on the captain’s final, fateful voyage. 2. I’m learning a little French horn history and taking armchair lessons from author Jasper Rees and horn virtuoso Dave Lee. 3. Through an elementary-level biography, I’m developing a fascination for 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday. (The fact that he was a young man during the Napoleonic wars is, I believe, not coincidental to my fascination.)
The book I managed to finish reading is the Kay Winters/Larry Day picture book Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak. This book introduces us to various denizens of Boston on the day of the Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773. We meet people of different occupations and different loyalties through simple yet poetic language. Winters does a nice job of showing that many factors played into people’s feelings about the building Revolutionary fever; and that for some people, like the Native American basket trader and African-American slave, the colony’s taxation-without-representation grumblings were largely irrelevant. The book is rounded off with historical notes and a bibliography. The title of the book is a bit misleading, for the “colonial voices” are all from only one day in one colonial city; but I think we could easily extend the trades, feelings, personalities, and issues to the pre-Revolutionary era in general, especially for the northern colonies.
Writing update:
Unfortunately there is not too much going on here. I keep casting nets, but most of my ideas are either too slippery or too small, and escape back into the wider sea. My “inventors” project is starting to solidify, if ever so slightly. Patience, patience, patience. I also started drafting a short tale that will NOT EVER turn into anything longer. It is JUST FOR FUN.
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March 11, 2009 at 6:28 am (literature, writing)
Tags: books-into-movies, Brian Williams, C. S. Lewis, Captain James Cook, Charles Paul May, David Antram, Harry Gregson-Williams, history, Jasper Rees, literature, Michael Faraday, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Tony Horwitz, William Carlos Williams
Weather update:
March is roaring in like a lion. My house is shaking.
Reading update:
1. Out of three current reads, I’m farthest along in Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes, in which the author retraces Captain James Cook’s “voyages of discovery.” So far we have been to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific island of Niue. Just arrived on the big island of Tonga. The best of this book is the way Horwitz weaves the history in with his modern experiences. The bittersweet, disorienting feeling of reading Cook’s 18th-century descriptions and then seeing the modern-day places is akin to that of being lost in a good book and having to return to Real Life.
2. I read another chapter of Jasper Rees’s The Devil to Play. Looking forward to more humor, horn history, and horn-relearning commiseration.
3. I started reading an elementary biography called Michael Faraday and the Electric Dynamo, by Charles Paul May. The depth and imaginative style hark back to an earlier age in children’s biographies (copyright 1961). I compare this interesting and leisurely read to another children’s book on Faraday, the altogether frantic Faraday: Pioneer of Electricity by Brian Williams and David Antram. The latter reaches out to the video-game generation (copyright 2003) by presenting snippets of biographical fact alongside splashy caricature art and brief explanations of how the science works. On every spread I found my eyes jumping all over the page, reading each little paragraph and sidebar, then going over it all again with a feeling that I had missed something. Is this how children think? Is this how we’re training them to think? Perhaps the series titles of the two works say it all: “Immortals of Science” versus “The Explosion Zone.”
4. Lest anyone think I am against recent picture-book biographies, I delighted in A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Fascinating art, thorough (for a picture book) biography, and best of all, I am now hungering to read more about Williams and more of his poetry. I hope it works like this on kids, too!
Literature-into-movies update:
Over the weekend I watched the 2002 film version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It was mildly entertaining, though not as funny as I remembered. Ah, the jaded palate. The very best part (besides Colin Firth’s looking so young) was Rupert Everett’s pitch-perfect aristocratic voice. Speaking of Rupert Everett. . .
I also watched (again) Disney-Walden’s take on C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Everett voices an animatronic fox). I reflected, as I watched, on how I’ve always taken musical scores for granted. This movie, as well as the sequel, would be much reduced without Harry Gregson-Williams’s wonderful—and majestically horn-laced—score. I already had the Prince Caspian soundtrack. I felt compelled to download this one, too. (Piano note: I’m making pretty good progress with “Evacuating London.”)
Writing update:
My muse is apparently suffering from a multiple-personality disorder. I wrote a short newsletter article yesterday. Otherwise, I am thinking again of women hymn-writers, and of 19th-century inventors (hence the Faraday biographies). I suggested to (one of) myself that I could work on a separate project every day, and perhaps in 20 years or so I could have not one, but seven complete books.
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March 7, 2009 at 9:52 am (literature, writing)
Tags: creativity, gardening, Jasper Rees, literature, music, writing
1. Gardening
I had the best intentions for Friday. Due to the kindness of a friend, I had the day to myself. I had a nice long list of industrious to-dos (including writing a blog post). But before I sat down to the computer, I went for a walk. I discovered it was 70+ degrees, sunny, light wind. In March. In northern Illinois.
Reader, I stayed outside.
I had a marvelous time. I trimmed shrubs, raked out garden junk, unearthed tender green shoots. I grew the compost pile by 150%. I got a sunburn on my shoulders. I had a genuine, stay-at-home, mental vacation. Now I just might have enough recharge to get through this week’s “spring break.”
2. Nonfiction
I picked up my library hold on Thursday: Jasper Rees’s A Devil to Play: One Man’s Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument. I read through the first chapter and besides a few laughs and nod of recognition (I, too, abandoned French horn after high school, only to pick it up again 20 years later), I found something even sweeter: reassurance.
Rees describes how one day, on the verge of 40, he rediscovered classical music, and suddenly couldn’t bear to listen to anything else.
I’d heard about this same taste shift happening to other people, but always assumed it was gradual. . . It felt like a conversion, in which in an instant you are suffused with an insight, or a way of feeling things, that was not there before. You go round a corner, and the view is shockingly new.
As I read this, I had my own flash of insight. The wintry struggle of the last months, seeking some book-world in which I could lose myself, as in days of yore; my frustration with writing anything but the smallest, most focused of pieces. . . Aha! I’m not going crazy or losing myself, it’s just a mid-life taste-shift!
It makes sense to me, in this light. What books did I once love but can now barely stand to read more than a chapter or two? Novels. What are the only books I’ve been able to finish in the last couple of months? Nonfiction. A taste-shift, pure and simple. I think this also accounts for the fact that my imagination refuses to delve into any of the several fictional worlds I’ve started creating. Instead, I find myself drafting poems, and reveling in the multiplying requests for such things as short essays and dramatic sketches.
Is it just a phase? This, too, shall pass? Possibly. But meanwhile I can stop beating myself up over what turns out to be perfectly natural.
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March 4, 2009 at 1:49 pm (literature, writing)
Tags: American history, British history, creativity, Evangeline Walton, Harry Gregson-Williams, history, Jack Shepherd, Jasper Rees, Kay Winters, Larry Day, Robin McKinley, Tony Horwitz, writing
1. Reading update:
I’ve been enjoying Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. I’m a big fan of 18th century history in general, and blue-water sailing adventures in particular, which is why I chose this Horwitz volume over Confederates in the Attic, recommended by my good friend and book connoisseur Wendy. (I’m sure I’ll get to that one, too, someday. The American Civil War is maybe my third-favorite historical period.)
And speaking of 18th century, I picked up two books at the library this morning. First, The Adams Chronicles, by Jack Shepherd, about the clan of John Adams the American founding father and second U.S. President. Second, a newer picture book, Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak, written by Kay Winters and illustrated by Larry Day. Both books are research material for a certain writing project (see #3).
Yes, I know I’m already in the midst of reading two other library books (Blue Latitudes and Robin McKinley’s Chalice), and there’s another I requested through interlibrary loan waiting for me (The Devil to Play: One Man’s Year-long Quest to Master the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument [i.e., French horn], by Jasper Rees), and then there’s the pristine paperback of The Mabinogion Tetralogy, by Evangeline Walton. Oh, and a book called Me to We, by Alan Nelson, that I’m supposed to be reading for a church-team thing. This may be the literary equivalent of emotional overeating. Or indication of some other psychological disorder in which having piles of books all over the house makes me feel secure and happy.
2. Hubris update:
Speaking of too many books and not enough time, I received my Chronicles of Narnia piano-vocal-guitar books. I sat down at the keyboard and realized within ten seconds that there will be no “just sitting down to play these songs for fun.” I will have to work at them before they sound like anything, just as I am having to hack my way through the French horn part for Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (to be performed with our high school/community band in May).
3. Writing update:
Out of yesterday’s dreary gray sky, I had a glimmer of insight into a story I back-burnered sometime last summer. As I sat down to make follow-up notes this morning, it occurred to me that perchance I’d had the wrong character as protagonist all along. Does this sudden insight have anything to do with a discussion on optimism and unwatched kettles boiling that I’d had with itsybitsyblogsy via her blog? Hmm. Anyhow, as critique-group sister Kim would say, I intend to “follow the whisper.”
4. Mixed metaphor update:
My apologies for the preceding paragraph. It just came out like that. I can’t fix it right now because I have books to read and instruments to practice!
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