Browsed by
Category: books

The Woodsman

The Woodsman

Comments 0 Comment

Like Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone is part legend, and many of the images we have of him are false. He did not wear a coonskin cap, did not discover Cumberland Gap and was not the first settler to arrive in Kentucky. 

But he did guide many through the Gap and he, more than anyone else, helped settle the Bluegrass State. In fact, one of the chief ironies of Boone’s life (1734-1820) is that he, more than anyone else, helped ruin the wilderness he loved. 

The Daniel Boone that emerges from Robert Morgan’s biography is a bright, humble, kind man, a woodsman more at home in the forest than anywhere else and as sympathetic to Native Americans as most any of his generation. 

Often in debt, Boone learned the hard way that his personality was better suited to the edges of civilization than to its midst. But not before he may have had this realization, Morgan writes: 

By 1788 the irony could not have been lost on Boone that he, as much as any other single human being, had helped create the world that was now repugnant to him, so raging and relentless in growth and greed. And he must have seen, perhaps for the first time, the contradiction and conflict at the heart of so much of his effort: to lead white people into the wilderness and make it safe for them was to destroy the very object of his quest.

(Boone’s first view of Kentucky by William Tylee Ranney, 1849, courtesy Wikipedia) 

Cold Comfort

Cold Comfort

Comments 0 Comment

In class we take turns leading discussion on the various works we’re reading. Next week, in our penultimate class, I will lead again. Only this time, the works I’ve been assigned — by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze — are theoretical to the point of unintelligibility. 

I spent some time yesterday poring over the 1600-page literary theory anthology, dutifully underling and checking what seemed to be the relevant passages. But I have no idea if they’re truly relevant. 

It’s embarrassing! I mean, this is not the theory of relativity. This is something that, at least on the surface, I should be able to understand. 

But one thing I’ve been reminded of often these last few months is how little I know. And, when I’m not on the hook as I am this week, I take comfort in that. 

The Bells of Healy Hall

The Bells of Healy Hall

Comments 0 Comment

If I’m lucky, I arrive on the Georgetown campus in time to hear the bells of Healy Hall toll the Angelus. It makes an already timeless experience feel even more so.

The bells were tolling last night as I walked to class past the old stone buildings through a cool and soggy evening. 

I thought about a passage from Thomas Cahill’s Mysteries of the Middle Ages, which details a 1219 visit between Saint Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. 

Some scholars think that it was then that Francis came up with the idea of tolling the Angelus bells at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. — the Christian version of the Muslim call to prayer. A likely story, and maybe just that, a story. But it was easy to believe it when the bells were ringing. 

An Obit a Day

An Obit a Day

Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes, the best way to start the morning is by reading an obituary. Not just any obituary, though. It needs to be one like that of Arthur Riggs, 82, who with a colleague, Keiichi Ikatura, developed synthetic insulin. Riggs died March 23. 

I learned that Riggs and Ikatura developed a genetic technique that led to the first human-designed and human-made gene that would function in any organism. This paved the way for the creation of synthetic insulin, a “lifesaving development for millions of people with diabetes,” the Washington Post said.

Before this discovery, people with diabetes relied on insulin from cows, which had a high rate of allergic reactions. The synthetic insulin avoids this risk.

Dr. Riggs lived in the same house for 50 years, drove “modest cars,” said the obituary … and quietly gave away much of the money he earned from royalties on patents — $310 million — to the institution he helped to found. The name of the institution: the City of Hope. 

(Ikatura and Riggs in 1978. Photo courtesy City of Hope.)

Annunciation

Annunciation

Comments 0 Comment

In class this week, the professor said a scene from the novel we’re reading was an annunciation. I pictured a medieval painting, the rich oil pigments darkened from the smoke of candles burning. I pictured the painting hanging on the wall of a great cathedral,  cold stone and buttresses, echoes of chant and plainsong.

Today is the feast of the annunciation, the day when the Virgin Mary learned she was bearing the son of God via a message from the angel Gabriel. 

I see a painting again, Gabriel in rich reds, his white wings shining. I see Mary’s head inclined toward the light, gold halo above her head. 

Annunciation: an announcement, a message, a few words that can change your life. 

(The Annunciation depicted in a 15th century tapestry. Photo courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago.)

A Diller, A Dollar

A Diller, A Dollar

Comments 0 Comment

When my children were young, I used to read them this Mother Goose rhyme:

 “A diller, a dollar, a 10 o’clock scholar. What makes you come so soon? You used to come at 10 o’clock, and now you come at noon.”

I feel like this blog is becoming the 10 o’clock scholar — if I hurry, that is. If I don’t, it will be the 11 o’clock scholar. 

The non 9-to-5 world, of which I have recently become a member, is good for leisurely mornings. Which is not to say I don’t have plenty of to-dos. It’s just that they can less hurriedly be to-done.

(These ducks don’t seem to be in much of a hurry either.)

Walking and Belonging

Walking and Belonging

Comments 0 Comment

In his book The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City, Matthew Beaumont describes walking as s socially and psychologically meaningful activity.  Authors make cities seem new and strange when they wander through them on foot. And they have their characters do the same.

So just as Charles Dickens ambled along the lanes of Victorian London, so too do some of his characters, including Mr. Humphreys of The Old Curiosity Shop.  Apparently, Dickens walked for the same reason many of us do: to calm himself down, to ease tensions. 

Beaumont examines city walking in the work of Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), H.G. Wells (The Invisible Man) and others, illuminating both the texts and the walking in the process.

 I take issues with one of Beaumont’s major points, though, which is to see walking as a symbol and a symptom of not belonging: the solitary nighttime stroller at odds with the world he lives in (and it often is a “he” since women’s nocturnal walking opportunities are more limited than men’s). 

From my suburban vantage point, walking is an activity that encourages belonging because it engenders understanding. How can we care about a place that we do not know, and how can we know a place that we never see … except as it streams by outside our car windows?

Gallimaufry

Gallimaufry

Comments 0 Comment

I picked up the book because I know the author and enjoy reading his work.  The title bewildered me until I looked inside and saw this definition: “Gallimaufry: a confused jumble or medley of things.” 

Joseph Epstein’s latest collection is all of that. There are essays on baseball (“Diamonds are Forever”), Julius Caesar (“Big Julie”) and the author’s defense of the Comic Sans font. Reading this plump and happy book is like devouring a hot fudge sundae smothered with whipped cream. It’s fun and filling and a bit of a guilty pleasure (the latter because Epstein recently angered the PC police).

I read Epstein because he’s brilliant; because he’s a dinosaur, an essayist in the model of Orwell, Hazlitt or Montaigne; and also because he was my teacher long ago. Our first assignment was to come up with our favorite word. Mine was “rhapsody,” which captured a moment in my youth when I was young and romantic and could still play the Brahms pieces known by that name. His was “deliquesce,” which means to melt away but which he admired, he said, because it contained the word “deli.”

Which brings me to the humor and low-key erudition in his work. Epstein, for all his knowledge, does not flaunt it. He’s clear,  cogent and refreshingly honest. He makes me remember what it was like to read and write before the age of Great Divisions. 

All of which is to say I’m enjoying Gallimaufry immensely. Maybe by the time I’ve finished reading it I will have learned how to spell it. 

Empty Shelves

Empty Shelves

Comments 0 Comment

The shelves that were emptied for the great floor rebuild are finally back in place and ready to be filled.  We hauled them in from the garage, where they were lashed together for stability, and installed them in their rightful position.  

Now that they are dusted and polished, I’m wondering … should I return the books that have always been there, the battered paperback classics in the upper reaches, reference books and anthologies in the middle, rows of magazines on the lower shelf?

I can certainly pull together a better-looking group of printed matter, if this is all about aesthetics — but of course it is not. It’s about order and reverence and to a certain embarrassing extent, laziness. I’m used to books being where they are: do I really want to rearrange them? 

On the other hand, the empty shelves stand open for change and rearrangement. Can I really let them down?

Framing

Framing

Comments 0 Comment

In class we talk about the “death” of the author which makes room for the “birth” of the reader, of interpretive communities that shape our understanding of literary works, and of the “indeterminacy” or gaps in meaning that allow for an aesthetic response. 

That last one seems like the loft and lightness of a shook comforter, the air pockets that provide fullness to linens and literature. 

It’s fun to think about. Just as it’s fun to think about framing, the narration of a tale that makes it what it is. Here I am, walking down a trail, pausing to snap a shot, my shadow in the photo. Life mirroring art … or something like that.