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June 18, 2006
Words of Wisdom
from Flannery O'Connor in Book by Book
Michael DirdaThe high-shcool English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted, it is being formed.
This is where a great many of us have been let down by the educational system--more in generations after my own, but my own to some degree--at least I can say that this is where the landslide started. Today, if you ask at random any three graduates of our High School system, you're likely to find that none of them have heard of, much less read anything by, Jane Austen, or Ralph Emerson, or anyone who isn't on the very restricted list of the politically correct and culturally sensitive. But lest this turn into a rant--homeschoolers, do your child a favor and teach the classics--poetry as well as prose, whether or not it is to your taste--it is never too late to begin development.
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Current Listening
In preparation for my next reading spree, I'm listening to Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. I intend to read The Bride of Lammermoor as the first of several Scott novels (Rob Roy, Waverly and Old Mortality spring to mind as additional possibilities.) This will probably be AFTER I finish Bleak House and a few books of criticism I have laying about.
What is interesting about Donizetti as a composer of opera is that he seems to be the bridge from the classical tradition of Mozart, Haydn, and even to some extent Beethoven (who borrowed many of their operatic tricks from the likes of Monteverdi and later Italian composers) and the lush romanticism that was to be the hallmark of Verdi and Puccini (amongst others). In Donizetti, there are still the traces of recitative or in German sprechstimme (forgive the spelling, I've only ever heard it pronounced, never seen it written), in which a performer sort of half-sings, half-talks over a harpsichord or other minor level accompaniment. This technique was quite pronounced in L'elisir D'amore, not quite so much in Lucia; by the time one arrives at Verdi and Puccini, it is practically nonexistent. And I must admit, that it is one of my least favorite operatic effects and did much to detract from my enjoyment of Così fan Tutte.
Anyway, what better way to weather a summer when family is staying with Grandparents far away that a tale of the wilds of Scotland and forbidden love and its concomitant disaster?
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Mini-rant on the Local Library System
Suffering deeply from the absence of Boy and his mom, I went to the library to find surcease amongst the many volumes. (Despite what follows, the local library does have somewhat more books than are lodged in my domicile; although not nearly the breadth or the quality.)
I started my perusal with a trip to the 800s where I drew out a couple of books of literary/writer's life essays and writings. One of them, by Joyce Carol Oates, provoked me to search the shelves for some other things I had been wanting to read. One of these was also something I read about at another blog--perhaps it was "This Space Intentionally..." or one such. So I sought out Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon--no luck. Well, I thought, perhaps the stories of Raymond Carver. Nope. Well, then, I'd been wanting to read the last few John Updike. In the Beauty of the Lilies--no. Terrorist--too new. Memoirs of the Ford Administration--Sorry. Any of the Bech books--no such luck. Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest--so sorry--all that's in is Rabbit Remembered in the collection Licks of Love.
Each time I would think of something I wanted to read--The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield--forget it, The Human Stain, I Married a Communist--you must be joking. The Sea, the Sea--look elsewhere. Indeed, of all of the things I sought I found only a couple--Joyce Carol Oates's Collected Short Stories and Collected Stories of Carol Shields--someone with whom I am unfamiliar, but by the perusal of Oates's book of critiques and reviews discovered.
Now, I know the library is public. I also realize that shelf space is very limited; but when one can't find some of the major writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, never mind Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford or North and South. Well. . . Let's just say that I'm thankful for the internet because I don't have to rely upon this repository of disposable subliterature for things like Vernon Lee's Hauntings, the novels of Marie Belloc Lowndes, or the works of Mrs. Oliphant (admittedly an odd, acquired taste).
Our public libraries tend to be in this condition because our reading public has ceased to read and instead spends much of its leisure time checking out DVDs and Audio discs--both worthwhile resources, but hardly the kind of thing likely to induce growth in depth and understanding of certain basic underlying principles of our culture. But then, that's part of the point isn't it. There is a subversive strain to all of this. As we erode the Canon and turn our attention from the great works of the past to the ephemeral and junk works of the present we no longer have a culture to stand on. And that's just fine with some. We can replace the edifice of western civilization with the post-modernist construct of multiculturalism, which extols diversity for the sake of diversity, rather than diversity as a means of understanding the shared human experience. Chinua Achebe is not great because he is African, he is great because the struggles he writes about are a shared human experience. They may come out of a different cultural context, and thus give us insight and perspective on the issues at hand, but the greatness stems from the ability to speak past the culture and into a very different one. Some Prefer Nettles is a magnificent book, not merely because it is Japanese but because it is deeply human, touching chords we all can hear and connect with.
The only access to multi-cultural understanding is through a solid grounding in one culture. That is, the gateway through which Chinese Literature is approached by a Westerner is a western gateway. That does render some aspects of Chinese literature nearly incomprehensible--but as with all great work, the essence comes through. One nearly need see Ran or Throne of Blood to understand how a truly great work can be assimilated and acculturated so that its themes continue to speak to the shared human condition.
But the multiculturalists talk out of both sides of their mouths--they want to share the contributions of many different facets of our own culture before most people have the basics of understanding the main-line of western culture. The effect is a dismantling one. Substandard multicultural entries are introduced as "literature" selections, and nothing is understood in its wider context, as to its roots and reactions to it.
This was to be a minirant--I go on too long. But you get the point. To be multicultural one must of necessity be grounded in some culture that gives a context for understanding. Multiculturalists fail to understand this, or, in the case of some, understand it very clearly and push their agenda to subvert it; thus, toppling the (as Roberts Hughes puts it so marvelously in The Culture of Complaint) "pale penile patriarchy."
Ah well
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After Lucia
I was reminded of this driving home from Mass.
After Lucia Di Lammermoor I intend to put on the complete works of Josh Turner and Johnny Cash. These are men whose singing voices suggest that they actually have the apparatus that is an essential of the virile state. I've heard so many singers and crooners of recent date with voices brittle as lace-cookies, with the depth of a silk hankie, and with the presence of violets among skunk-cabbage. Give me a voice with substance. A Bryn Terfel, even a Pavarotti (whose voice I don't particularly care for prefering Placido Domingo and other lesser-known artists) over what passes for male voices in most of the rock, hip-hop, and yes, I'm sorry to say, even country music that I hear.
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Just Remind Me
I have so much to write tonight and so much to say, that I haven't time for all of it. But just remind me to tell you about some of the literary figures with whom I've had classes/acquaintance. Remind me to start with Joyce Carol Oates--one of the most profoundly interesting and disturbing people/writers around.
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To Samuel: Verse? Poetry? Well, Hardly.
Some Doggerel for Samuel on Father's Day
I'm a father in absentia
because of where I sent ya
and it drives me to dementia
to be without you.Father's day is not the same
when the boy who shares your name
isn't there to play a game,
so I'm missing you.So tonight I'll thank my Father
who went to all the bother
to give my son a father
while I'm missing you.
Kisses and warm hugs from a distance for Boy and his Mom, whose absence forced me to the library where I checked out another two dozen books to stack in neat piles around my desk and probably never read. Books, even in a house of books, are ever a solace, but never a replacement--and all of them could be gone and never missed if it meant being with you. But you'll be home soon enough, and grandma and grandpa will love the time with you. And it's only fair to share what God has so graciously granted me in your little person. Just know that your daddy is thinking about you and counts the days until you and mom return.
(To L.:And yes, I miss you too, if you happen to read this. You're both in my prayers.)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 19, 2006
Vocation--Fatherhood.
Please forgive my frequent quotations from Michael Dirda's book, but it is one of those short volume of accumulated wisdom that probably means differently every time you approach it. And tonight these passages really spoke to me:
from Book by Book
Michael DirdaAn unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence. --Honoré de Balzac
We succeed in enterprise which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.--Alexis de Tocqueville
The maturity of man--that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.--Friedrich Nietzsche
The point is: You generally can't wait for inspiration, so just get on with the work. Disciplined, regular effort will elicit inspiration no matter what your field.--Michael Dirda
These are all related by being about vocation, and vocation is what each person is called to. Balzac tells us that there is no life without a vocation lived to its fullest. That means if you're a religious, live the life of a religious, but if you are a father (to take the theme of the day) be a father--be a man and show your children what it means to be a man and teach your sons how to become men. Otherwise, they are stranded--lost in Never-Never Land only to be inflicted some day on some poor unsuspecting woman whose father taught her to love what it means to be a man. In other words, no bellyaching--or at least no bellyaching about the responsibilities of being a father. Cowboy up and do what is right and what is required.
And being a father makes use of defects as well as strengths. How many of us have never made any mistakes with our children? But we can turn to them and say, "I was wrong, please forgive me." Say it now. And say it when it is needed. And say it as often as it is needed. Real respect doesn't come from your children thinking you are perfect, it comes from them seeing that you know you aren't, and yet you're trying the very best you can.
And real fatherhood, like all vocations, requires complete involvement--the involvement of a child completely rapt in the fantasy world that accompanies play--oblivious to the call for dinner or to anything outside the pirate ship they have constructed from sticks or the game they are playing at the moment.
And finally, real excellence, real inspiration comes from doing this day in and day out, with the focus not on ourselves but on the service we can render to our families. It means taking the back seat often, when we want to be driving. It means cub scout meetings, baseball practices and dance recitals when we want to watch 24 or Lost. It means putting aside pleasures that you don't want your own children to observe or to do themselves. It means a sacrifice that cannot be called that because the reward gives infinitely more than the sacrifice takes away. When lived the way it should be in God's pure light and true, it is a means of sanctifying grace, of sainthood and of example.
I don't live it yet--but I know that I can through Christ who strengthens me.
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A Footnote to the Previous
Because I'm trying desperately to avoid the Faulkner effect and to remain somewhat coherent with all of the stuff that is tumbling through my head, this is a footnote to the previous--an afterthought, or duringthought that is a digression to the original point.
I've not read much of Nietzsche. Or I have read it and not cared for it because I have not come to it with anything like an open mind. And yet I discover time and again things that he said that resonate and open up new worlds of thought. While he systematically attempted to dismantle Christianity, I wonder if that isn't my misconstruction of his true intent. Perhaps he was dismantling the mythic structure around Christianity that keeps so many people from being good Christians. Dour Soren Kierkegaard did the same starting with his dictum that those who are comfortable with Christ do not know Him.
Honestly, I can't say, but I must say that Dirda quoted at least two or three things from Nietzsche that have given me much cause to rethink.
But honestly, since I'm not inclined to read philosophy anyway, and were I to do so, Plato and Aristotle would be the point at which I would start, Nietzsche, I fear is far down the list and may visit me only in these aphorisms. Nevertheless, he does me a great service even in these short thoughts--because not having them in context, I can take them to mean whatever seems most useful for the time and use them as appropriate, so long as I don't stretch the point and try to explain them to everyone else.
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Life in the Balance
from Book by Book
Michael DirdaTo do good work a man should be industrious. . . to do great work he must certainly be idle as well. --Henry Ward Beecher
Plato insisted that a life devoted solely to pleasure would be as incomplete as one given over entirely to wisdom. Only the mixed life is a complete and fulfilled life.--Michael Dirda
Levine's words call to mind the classical imperative, "Do what you are doing." That is, whether you are preparing dinner or playing tennis or tuning a car's engine or sweeping a room, really focus your whole self on just that. Do it well, and you can invest even the most trivial activities with significance, transforming the mundane into the spiritual.--Michael Dirda
And how does focus move us from the mundane to the eternal? In the classic way of all things, by taking "self" out of the equation. In the presence of grace, when the constructed, artificial self moves out of the way, even for a moment, the life of grace resumes its steady rhythm. This wouldn't be Dirda's answer to the question as he finds reason enough in the labor itself; however, it is my answer, taking the good I find here and making it better by directing it toward the ultimate goal of praising God. Praising God may only be done when we do everything with Him, through Him, and in Him. It may only be done when all that we are is put into the task at hand because the task at hand is what God has allotted us for this time. When we do what we have been allotted without complaint and without restraint, we are performing God's will perfectly.
And this is the explanation of that mysterious phenomenon of eutrepalia or "leisure in the Lord" the joy that flows from recreation, which also must be pursued with all that we are. Whatever is the calling of the moment must be engaged in with all that we have and all that we are giving back to God what grace has given us. This is the life of constant prayer--constant immersion in the life of grace through performing with all of our ability whatever task lay before us at the time.
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What I Like About Michael Dirda
In a word--breadth. This is a man who finds much to enjoy in the literary world. Listed in his "sources" in the back of the small volume Book by Book we find reference to: Charles Addams, Mortimer Adler, Italo Calvino, John Dickson Carr, G.K. Chesterton, Collette, John Collier, Robertson Davies, Lord Dunsany, Umberto Eco, Ford Madox Ford, Michel Foucault, Northrop Frye, Henry Green, Georgette Heyer, Diana Wynne Jones, Sheridan Le Fanu, Vernon Lee, China Miéville, Thomas Love Peacock, Mervyn Peake, Rex Stout, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Mary Wollstonecraft, Gottfried von Strassburg, P.G. Wodehouse and others. This doesn't include the authors within the body of the work.
What this reach says is that it is not necessary to denigrate the lesser luminaries to enjoy the works of the great. There is as much pleasure to be derived from the real enjoyment of Georgette Heyer in her capacity as a Regency Romance novelist as there is to be garnered from braving the wilds of Rabelais. There is as much delight in the light fantasy of Dunsany as there is in the more robust measure of Stendahl. Gossamer webs do not preclude iron bars. The appreciation of literature comes from the appreciation first of what it is and second of how well it fulfills the mission of being. In Dirda's world Lovecraft can be as much a way of exposing the human as Céline or Lowry. Rex Stout has as much to offer the reader (albeit in a very different sense and way) as Dickens. I'm sure even Mr. Dirda has limits he will not transgress, but I have to revel in a list that sets side by side Michel Foucault and Georgette Heyer; Umberto Eco and Lord Dunsany;P.G Wodehouse and Mary Wollstonecraft; John Dickson Carr and Gottfried von Strassburg. There is something to admire in a person who can embrace all of these things and find within them something embraceable.
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On Habits
Essay XXII--Of Custom
Michel de MontaigneMY opinion is that hee conceived aright of the force of custome that first invented this tale; how a country woman having enured herselfe to cherish and beare a young calfe in her armes, which continuing, shee got such a custome, that when he grew to be a great oxe, shee carried him still in her armes. For truly Custome is a violent and deceiving schoole-mistris. She by little and little, and as it were by stealth, establisheth the foot of her authoritie in us; by which mild and gentle beginning, if once by the aid of time it have setled and planted the same in us, it will soone discover a furious and tyrannicall countenance unto us; against which we have no more the libertie to lift so much as our eies; wee may plainly see her upon every occasion to force the rules of Nature: Vsus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister: (PLIN. Epist. xx) Use is the most effectuall master of all things.
In more recent, albeit still antiquated but lovely, language:
HE seems to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a countrywoman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry, a young calf in her arms, and daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing and violating the rules of nature: "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister."
(More here.)
However it may be said, the endpoint is the same. What we practice we come to be. What we do, we become. We do not so much form habits as our habits form us.
It is from the forms of crucifixion that we impose upon ourselves that Jesus suffered the one crucifixion that makes all things right.
Our habits make us and Jesus frees us from them. Our habits are lovely and soft and kind until it comes time to abandon them; then they are ravening harpies that pluck and shriek and call us back to that sweet slumber that marked our wakeless lives, our lives of aimless drifting.
Through Jesus all of these things are transformed and we are awakened--as frightening and as difficult as it may sound, it is the freedom we are promised--free to be the watchkeepers in a world slumbering to its doom. But first we must allow Him to break the bonds of habit.
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Joyce Carol Oates
In the course of my (overly) long and extinguished literary career I've had the opportunity to chat with, take seminars from, take full courses from, have dinner with, and otherwise associate with any number of American Men and Women of letters. The first of these I'd like to share impressions of is Joyce Carol Oates--possibly because our interaction was only of the briefest duration and yet made the most lasting impression.
I first encountered the works of Ms Oates in a Freshman lit course reading the perhaps overly anthologized short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" This was set side by side with John Updike's "At the A&P." At that time I had no inkling of the larger opus that was the work of Ms. Oates. One day I stumbled upon the gothic overrichness of the Mysteries of Winterthurn which, if memory serves, includes abduction by balloon, among other gothicky treats. I was only later to learn that Ms. Oates usually reserves the most gothic touches for her shorter works. For example, Black Water is about the last thirty seconds (or so) in the life of a woman mysteriously similar to Mary Jo Kopeckney. Zombie, which makes me shudder even to think about, is the intensely disorienting and deeply disturbing story of a psychopath who seeks to control people. . . well, let's leave the description at that lest someone wish to discover its arcane horrors on their own. Ms. Oates has a plethora of stories that cover the gamut from the macabre and gothic to the outright ghastly and outré.
I say all of this by way of introduction because to meet the woman in person she is the most unlikely perpetrator of these literary and literate horrors. Reading her books, one begins to question Ms. Oates's grasp on sanity and reality. But to hear her speak in person is to hear the voice of sweet and angelic reason. Her obsessions are deeply disturbing, but her personality lively and charged with an energy that I couldn't account for. Just being in the same room with her was a charge that I couldn't explain. I couldn't explain it at the time because I didn't care for her works all that much, so I wasn't suffering from groupyism. In retrospect, I still can't explain it. Perhaps it is the impression she gives, with her wide, unclouded eyes set in a plain but somehow lovely face, framed with hair that might be "pixyish" if you didn't know that this woman wrote books about boxing and recreated horrifying nightmares as a matter of course. She wasn't an imposing person, but she had real presence (not that kind of Real Presence). You were inclined to look for the transparent staircase or the stray floating barge that would accompany this refugee from a pre-Raphaelite painting. And to accompany this presence there was a strong, distinctive, incisive intelligence--the kind of person with whom to share a few moments talking about nearly anything is simply pleasure. Her nonfiction works spill over with it--she has a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners approach to critique and criticism that is a wonder and a joy to read. (I've been indulging in some more during this evening.) Over all, a brilliant woman who left an indelible impression in my mind and who in the course of a simple lecture taught me more than I ever knew I could know about writing and writers, although she said so little.
The literary world of Joyce Carol Oates is as violent as that of Flannery O'Connor, but one gets the impression that no God overlooks the lives of these characters. Ms. Oates gives one the impression that she would have made a very very good Knoxian Calvinist. Mysterious and horrible fates are visited upon her characters as if rejected by God, if there were one lurking about these dark pages. Ms. Oates's themes are violence--sudden, uncanny, unreasoning, frightening, and disorienting violence.
And yet her lecture, her keynote speech is as smooth as honey as invigorating as you can imagine for a group of youngish writers all fidgeting with their pens. And after Ms. Oates spoke, fidgeting even more.
I don't recall much about my conversation with her after the lecture. It was one of those rare occasions when I was too much in awe of the person to pay much attention to what was happening. Fortunately I was there with two people with the indefatigable gift of gab and the conversation lasted for some time, as I recall. We all left ready to write our hearts out--a metaphor that I'm certain would please Ms. Oates.
Okay, so there isn't much to this--but of the other figures, more: James Dickey, Robert Bausch (or was it his brother Richard--honestly I forget, Mary Lee Settle, John Irving, John Gardner, Katherine Patterson, Czeslaw Milosz and a host of others--Amiri Baraka, William Burroughs, and others who came to the school or to nearby venues where we flocked out in droves to catch some of that ethereal vapor that comes from a published writer. Perhaps some of these stories I will share in more detail. I have lived a privleged life--too bad I don't recall it far more often.
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The Agenbite of Inwit and Ulysses
(by way of an elliptical apologia)
Most compellingly interesting to me in a work of fiction isn't so much event, although that can keep one reading right through, but the interior struggle of character--the growth of character. Who really cares whether or not Emma is married at the end of her eponymous novel, so much as whether she has been transformed in the ordeal? Yes, marriage is a very satisfying symbol for what has happened and it rounds out the novel most beautifully elliptically--a story which begins with the loss of a dear companion to the depths of marriage.
Folks who approach Joyce's Ulysses or even the much more approachable The Dead looking for story are only going to be sadly disappointed. The same is true of Flannery O'Connor. Sure, things happen to propel characters along an arc of self-destruction or self revelation; but, that is the "story" of "The River"? Is it even worth recounting? What about "Good Country People?" Heck, for that matter, where does Wise Blood ever really go? Or for that matter The Violent Bear it Away? And yet, these are solid works of fiction that reward reading and rereading. Many are daunted by the difficulties of Joyce and fail to see why anyone would think if one of the great novels. And if approached with the idea that one will leave with a nicely packaged story, it will only be disappointed. But if approached with the idea that you will learn of the "agenbite of inwit" of three different and highly interesting characters, the story takes on a different and wholly other significance.
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June 20, 2006
The Dual Abyss
When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you
--Friedrich Nietzsche
What is an abyss? Simply, it is a yawning chasm, a seemingly infinite and certainly unfathomable depth. For a variety of reasons, perhaps this aphorism among them, the abyss has taken on a negative connotation that it need not have.
The threat or the promise of the aphorism (if true) depends upon which abyss one looks into. Humanity represents a dual abyss--there is an abyss of malice--out of which comes all the depths of evil, thoughtlessness, selfishness, and all the products of fallen humanity. And then there is the abyss of generosity--filled by grace and love, it is the abyss from which all the saints and Saints who do God's will drink their fill. It is an abyss of light, grace, hope, and love. It is the abyss that was opened when the side of Christ, the infinite was opened. It is the abyss that engulfs and swallows the lesser (though still vast) abyss of malice and darkness. It is the abyss of which St. John speaks when he says in John 1: 4-5:
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
The abyss of light is the light of humanity which is Jesus Christ. The darkness cannot encompass. The promise of this light was first seen in the harrowing of Hell in which the dates of darkness were burst asunder and the light of the Lord shone for those who long lay in the darkness of death.
So, perhaps the aphorism is not so much a threat as a law. When one looks into the abyss, the abyss looks back; it would be wise to assure that the abyss one looks into is filled with the light of Jesus Christ. For few things could be better than to have that abyss look back into oneself.
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My Thanks to You All
Last night, in preparation for a project, I compiled the last six month of the blog into an editable file. I was astonished to discover that in six months I had produced a one-megabyte file. (Now this includes headers, graphics, and other useless detailia--but still.)
So I felt I owed those long-suffering readers a real hardy thank you for enduring with me through all of that prose. I know that there aren't very many of you--however, you are hale, hearty and stalwart spirits to be able to endure so long under such a burden. So my thanks for your patience, kindness, and frequent communication and support. It is only by writing that one learns how to write, and with your help, I hope that I am honing such skills as I have.
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A Provocation
. . .from Charles Williams-
In defence of his conclusion he was willing to cheat in the evidence--a habit more usual to religious writers than to historical.
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