We're coming out of retirement to share these two sonnets by Luís de Camões, translated by William Baer.
The Passion
So why has the triune God, in agony,
sacrificed himself for the insane sin
of Man? Because no man could ever begin
to withstand the just and heavy penalty.
Who could endure the necessary pains?
Who could suffer such injury, death, and disgrace?
No one, except for God, whose sovereign grace
commands, and reigns, and obeys, as He ordains.
The resources of men are way too weak and small;
they could never sustain the pain of God’s just plan
For righteous and necessary restitution.
So God’s great strength endures it all,
with a pure and merciful love for helpful Man:
who makes the error, but never the retribution.
O Glorious Cross
O glorious cross, O victorious
and holy prize that encompasses everything;
O chosen miraculous sign ordained to bring
Your remedy to each and every one of us.
O living font of sacred blood, expel
our sins and cure our sinful souls. In You,
O Lord, we know the almighty God, who
embodies the gentle name of mercy as well.
With You, the time of vengeance ends. A new
compassion flowers forever, and ever,
like after winter, when springtime blossoms again.
So vanquish all your enemies, Lord, You
who’ve made so many changes, yet never
cease to be exactly what you’ve always been.
Friday, April 10, 2009
"The Insane Sin of Man": Two Poems for Good Friday
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Politics & English Grammar
Pundits are offering all sorts of reasons to explain why Democrats won and why Republicans lost. Most of these explanations are of very little interest to writers, but the real reason certainly is.
It’s simple: The GOP loves Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Naturally, we have no grievance with an artist, or even a country music singer, expressing his religious beliefs through his craft. Our problem with this song is that its chorus relies on a mixed construction. As Diana Hacker explains, a writer “should not begin with one grammatical plan and then switch without warning to another.” But look what Greenwood does:
And I’m proud to be an American,
Where at least I know I’m free.
The first line proclaims his pride in being something; but in the second line, the pronoun “where” refers to a place. (As you can see, this grammatical situation is slightly more complicated than the standard pronoun/antecedent disagreement.) If the lines ran, “I’m proud to be an American / ‘Cuz at least I know I’m free” or “I’m proud to be in America / Where at least I know I’m free,” we wouldn’t be bothered; but they don’t, so we are.
It’s fine for writers to occasionally slip into a mixed construction. It happens to the worst of us. But Greenwood recorded his, he sings it every day, and he spreads it like a usage virus. Whenever anyone sings this song, they’re participating in and perpetuating Greenwood’s grammatical sin.
The Gods of Grammar will not stand for it. They have shown their displeasure in the last two elections. If the GOP doesn’t distance itself from Greenwood, it will soon be eclipsed by the Green Party.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Gioia to Resign in January
Why are we always the last to find out about these things?! Dana Gioia is resigning as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in January. From the New York Times:
“I’ve given up six years of my life as a writer,” Mr. Gioia, 57, said earlier in the week from his office in Washington. “I felt I had to go back to writing when I still have the kind of stamina to do it seriously.”
This is bad news for the NEA; it's good news for American poetry. To mark the occasion, here's one of his best (from the collection Interrogations at Noon):
"Summer Storm"
We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.
We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.
The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.
To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn't explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.
Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.
I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn't speak another word
Except to say goodnight.
Why does that evening's memory
Return with this night's storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?
There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.
And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Catholic (?) Short Fiction of T.C. Boyle
“And you think it’s as easy as that, do you?...Gone is the beatific smile, gone the gace of the eyes and the face is a gargoyle’s, a shrew’s, and the voice, sharpening, probing like a dental tool, suddenly bears an uncanny resemblance to his ex-wife’s. ‘Sinner!’ the gargoyle hisses. ‘Fall on your knees!’” When he drops, a vision marches out before him and all of the other pilgrims, a vision of all of his sins. All of the alcohol he’s consumed appears in barrels. All of the women he’s lusted after, every sinful sexual act, all of the excess food he’s eaten, right there for the world to see. For two days.
We’ve recently been enjoying a number of short stories by T. C. Boyle. We’d read some of his work before (“Greasy Lake” comes to mind), but what inspired us to return to his work this time was that we noticed a story of his was included in a collection called The Best American Catholic Short Stories (Sheed & Ward, 2007). His work had never struck us as particularly Catholic, so his inclusion surprised us. We resolved to take a look at some of his work--which we're happy to say is much more enjoyable than looking at his publicity pictures, in which he consistently looks like the bassist for an 80s arena-rock band now playing at county fairs.
A couple of the stories were quite good, but their subject matter puts them out of the purview of this site. “Balto” and “1300 Rats,” from a recent The New Yorker. The former is a realistic short story; the latter is strange but not fantastic. It’s also the weakest of the bunch, as the narrator’s voice and knowledge is inconsistent.
The first story worth considering here is called “Killing Babies.” We’d had this in a collection (the 1999 edition of The Best American Short Stories) for some time and hadn’t gotten around to reading it because, seeing that it had originally been published in The New Yorker, we’d assumed it would be a pro-choice story. It isn’t. We’d like to write more about it later, but for now we’ll just say that while the narrator, whose brother is a doctor who performs abortions, hates the pro-life advocates who protest his brother (and these protestors are certainly not presented with much sympathy), the story’s tone changes suddenly at the end with a very surprising simile. We finally interpreted it as a pro-life story, but one with serious reservations about the pro-life movement.
The other stories are both from his 1989 collection If the River Was [sic!] Whiskey. “The Devil and Irv Cherniske,” included in The Best American Catholic Short Stories, is not a specifically Catholic story, but is a recasting of Washington Irving's moralistic "The Devil and Tom Walker" in a modern American suburb: a greedy businessman and father, frustrated in his marriage and his professional life, is approached by the devil, who makes him an offer he should refuse. The devil “wanted the usual deal, nothing less, and he held out to Irv the twin temptations of preternatural business success and filthy lucre.” Bless his heart, Irv initially resists the temptation. But His wife Tish, no pleasant help-mate, scolds Irv for being so stupid, and sets out to seal the deal with the Dark Prince herself. This does not end happily for her.
Irv eventually accepts Satan’s offer, and in ten years becomes one of the fattest fat cats around. But he wonders about his devilish deal, so “he returned to the church—not the Roman church, to which he’d belonged as a boy, but the Church of the Open Palm, Reverend Jimmy, Pastor,” who preaches the power “of the one and only God—profit,” and whose scripture is The Wealth of Nations. This new faith gets him richer and happier, but of course it’s only doing his soul more damage, and (like Tom Walker) he can’t avoid his fate, which we’re afraid is much less pleasant than the Washington Irving story to which the title alludes. (If only Daniel Webster were there to help!)
The next story in the collection is “The Miracle at Ballinspittle,” which is as irreverent as the title suggests. Two drunk Americans visit Ireland on a whim to see “the snotgreen likeness of the Virgin” which “was seen one grim March afternoon some years back to move its limbs ever so slightly, as if seized suddenly by the need of a good sinew-cracking stretch.” Of course, the vision is doubtful--at least in part because it was experienced by a lone young girl in the midst of a fifteen-day Marmite and soda binge--but that doesn’t keep the site from becoming a popular pilgrimage destination.
Still, it turns out that there is something miraculous about the statue, which suddenly statue calls out to one of the drunk Americans, Davey McGahee. The other many pilgrims watch as she speaks to him. He begins praying the Hail Mary, but when he asks her to pray for sinners, she retorts,
When Davey awakes, he’s humiliated but surprised to learn that it’s been declared “the greatest vision vouchsafed to man since the time of Christ.” He’s also become an object of praise, veneration, and publicity. But as he’s receiving this praise, he is moved to move his bowels (hey, it’s been two days!), and when he does that on a holy site (oh, the irony!) not only do the pilgrims turn on him, but the skies open and his many sins fall down like rain on him, and he (like Irv C., though in less sinister manner) disappears…
The site becomes one of the great holy places of the world, but Davey McGahee is never heard from again. “Some say he descended into a black hole of the earth, others that he evaporated, while still others insist that he ascended to heaven in a blaze of light, Saint of the Common Sinner.” We’re not sure Davey’s like all of us—some of his sins are pretty bad. But the point of the story is to parody the sort of vision that we hear about, to turn it into something absurd and disgusting. For that reason, it’s hard to call it a Catholic story, because it demeans the notion of a miraculous vision. Then again, sin is real in this story: it is manifest before the world, made as clear to the world as it to God. It's just difficult to determine whether Boyle is also mocking this element of the vision.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Solutions for the Poetry Crisis
Charles Bernstein has some timely advice for bailing out poetry:
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets....
As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.
It's funny because it's true!...Well, sort of. Here's the rest.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Chesterton
For those of you looking for a quick Chesterton fix, InsideCatholic.com has a couple of reviews up. One is positive; the other, less so. (Note: although the headline of the second link calls The Man Who Was Thursday as a novella, our well-placed sources inform us that the author of the review knows better.)
Sunday, September 14, 2008
David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.
From the LA Times:
David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 novel "Infinite Jest," was found dead Friday night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46.
Mark Hemingway has some kind words over at NRO. Here are Michiko Kakutani's thoughts over at the New York Times.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
How 'Bout Some Poetry?
So how long has it been since we've featured some poetry at the old Review? Too long, at any rate. One of the purposes behind starting this site was to feature the new works of Mahwavians, so it would nice to do this more frequently. Towards that end, and with a hope that it will encourage some of our old (and new) friends to submit their work for posting, here's a little something I wrote over the summer. It is based on an event which occurred during Columbus' final voyage. Enjoy.
The Voyage of Diego Mendez
In naked Jamaica, Columbus’ last crew
Sat in extremest enervation
By the side of their ocean-battered ship -
Struck there in helpless dilapidation -
And cast their eyes on the volatile sea
Where they looked for death and not salvation.
Then Diego Mendez rose and he said:
"I will cross the forty leagues of the sea
To Hispaniola, and bring us help
From the men of the Spanish colony;
And I trust for the goodness of the attempt
That our gracious lord will favor me."
So he gathered Flisco, his old friend,
And a few of the sailors fortified
Against the perils of such a task,
And some Arawak, to serve as a guide;
Then they all set out in two canoes
That could barely float above the tide.
The sea swelled flat and tranquilly
Like a plate of blue suspiring glass;
The immoderate sun burned painfully,
Unveiled by a single cloud's thin mass;
And the tangible breeze that stirred at times
Smelled thick with mangrove and sassafras.
But the ocean current under their boats
Ran steady and strongly against their head,
So they pulled at the oars through the seering day
Till their palms hard creases blistered and bled -
All day and all night, and when morning came
One man from the strain of it all lay dead.
For two more days and for two more nights,
Across the forty leagues of the sea,
They pulled for Hispaniola's coast
Which their faint eyes searched out desperately,
And two more died, and the others looked
On their quiet cheeks with jealousy.
Still, on they toiled, these fugitive men,
To one another so little known,
With little more language fit to commune
Than a weary and labor-wrested groan,
Or the misery drawn on each taut cheek
That reflected to every man his own;
Cast suddenly in the midst of a sphere
Unknown to them, and unknowable;
Uncertain of how to find their bearing
On a trek momentous and wonderful
Through a natural frame of things at once
Gorgeous and adversarial;
In constant terror of ruinous storms
Arising upon them unaware;
In constant reliance on other's strength -
Both strangers and friends - to get anywhere;
Fatigued to a soul-deep lassitude,
Surrounded by death, beset by despair.
Yet whatever they lacked in that arduous course
They were not deprived a mind assured
Of its righteous aims, nor a tested arm,
To every trial at sea inured,
Nor a spirit in every season inclined
At all pains to do the will of their lord;
And certain it is, whatever the cause,
Whatever the source of that tendency,
And whatever it meant in the final word,
Those little boats and their company
Were the only thing in that mystical realm
That moved against the prevailing sea.
At last the distorted shape of the moon
Gave evidence of the solid shore;
So revivified, they plied at the wave
With a vigor drawn from hope's last store.
At dawn they made land, and the natives came
To greet and succor the exhausted corps.
They brought many fruits, and spirits to drink,
And garments woven white for this band
That had struggled so long and with such good cause,
Then they lay them down on the night-cooled sand,
Where there was no fear of the sudden gale,
Neither labor, nor heat of the sun to withstand.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Tom Wolfe on Fiction, Himself
Here's an interview with the always-quotable Tom Wolfe. Predictably, he criticizes the state of contemporary fiction:
There's so little of it now that it's pathetic, and it's pathetic all over. Writers come from master-of-fine-arts programs now. If you add up the college education of Steinbeck, Hemingway and Faulkner, you get to spring break of freshman year.
MFA programs are an easy target. Their advantages: the best programs give young writers an opportunity to learn from writers they admire; they provide a community with which to share one's work; and they help establish connections with agents, publishers, etc. But it is a shame that they're becoming almost obligatory, and based on what I've seen from them, MFA seminars often foster conformity and sameness among the stories and poems they generate.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Where's Writer's Block When You Need It?
If our review of Exiles is un-enthusiastic, we’re still pretty certain, based on this review, that Hansen’s novel is better than the latest by Robert Olen Butler, a collection of stories that consists entirely of the thoughts that characters (primarily historical figures) have during sex. Butler likes writing gimmicky stories, and sometimes they work—“Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,” like the other stories of Tabloid Dreams, was inspired by a goofy headline, and is both a very funny and moving story. But this gimmick is just sad and shameless, and reinforces the importance of works like Hansen’s, which while falling short of expectations, still attempts to clear a path for thoughtful, faithful literary fiction.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Exiles: The MLR Review!
We had been eager to read Ron Hansen’s Exiles. He is easily the most acclaimed novelist—whose work is always well-received by critics and film producers—who is proud of his Catholic faith, and here was a novel that was about Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of his favorite poets. It’s a perfect storm of Catholicism! (Excuse the tumultuous maritime pun.)
The exiles to which the title refers are six characters: five German nuns leaving Bismark’s kulturkampf, hoping to start a school in Missouri (which, for our many international readers, is a state in the Midwestern United States). They never reach their destination, dying in a shipwreck off the coast of England. The sixth exile is Gerard Manley Hopkins, who at the start of the novel—that is, at the time of the Deutschland’s wreck—is a young priest in Wales. Reading about the death of the nuns, he is inspired to write a poem for them, and the novel traces his struggles writing what would become “The Wreck of the Deutschland”—as well as his personal, religious, and health problems—until his own early death.
Hansen’s affection for Hopkins, and his sympathy for the priest’s struggles as an artist, are clear; we also enjoyed the details of the everyday lives of these holy people. Hansen makes them human and imperfect, but never diminishes their sacrifices or their holiness. Indeed, it is their apparent normalcy that makes their decisions to enter Holy Orders compelling.
Still, we couldn’t help but feeling a bit let down by the novel. The main reason for this disappointment is the telling-instead-of-showing that Matthew Lickona observes, which makes the novel seem impersonal. The novel is short (just over 200 pages), so there’s not enough room to engage with six characters in very much detail. Hansen devotes about half of the novel to the nuns and half to Hopkins, which makes formal sense. The trouble is, he’s totally democratic with the nuns—they each get the same amount of back-story, the same attention in the present, etc. We suppose it would seem a bit crude to determine that one of these nuns is better than the others, or more worthy of our attention. For the sake of the novel, though, the author needs to make that decision, and I would have liked to have seen Hansen write that particular half of the novel from the perspective of one of the nuns. By trying to show us all of them, we end up not knowing any of them very well. They are all admirable and likeable (and, because they’re human, unlikeable) in different ways, and of course their deaths are very moving, but their narrative is unfocused, and not as powerful as it could be. (This same impersonal feeling is even true of the Hopkins half of the novel, as Hansen rushes through much of the priest’s life.)
Another formal problem arises because of the time differences between the narratives. At the start, there are only a few days difference between the departure of the nuns for America and Hopkins’s attempt to write the poem. Toward the end of the novel, as Hopkins nears the end of his own life, there are years between him and the wreck, but the novel alternates between the two plot strands as it had in the start. By now, though, the time difference makes this alternating seem forced, a formal relic from the start of the novel that seems irrelevant by the end because Hopkins was no longer preoccupied with thoughts of the shipwreck.
I’ll end with a minor gripe. At one point, Hansen refers to “a handwritten poem in Shakespearean blank verse of five accented syllables per line.” There’s no such thing as Shakespearean verse as opposed to plain old blank verse; blank verse is more complicated than just five accented syllables; and the lines that he actually provides aren’t blank verse, either. That just annoyed us; we assume that Hansen knows what blank verse is, and was simplifying the definition for his readers, but there’s a difference between simplifying and getting it wrong.
This is not a bad novel, only a disappointing one. That disappointment could be as much our fault as Hansen’s, since we built unrealistic expectations for The Great Catholic Hope. For now, though, we still prefer his short stories (in many regards, especially the understated presentation of the tragic deaths, this novel reminds us of “Wickedness”) or his essays in A Stay Against Confusion.
Monday, August 04, 2008
A Few Harsh Words
It is normally our policy at the Review to refrain from any unpleasant comments directed at members of the literary community. Normally. But I am afraid it is about time to direct some harsh words towards a certain type of critic, and a certain type of criticism, which is emerging of late, and which deserves quite a number of harsh words directed towards it. I am referring to that species of literary criticism which makes pretense to being a scientific inquiry, and applying a scientific methodology to the comprehension of literature. The latest performance of this meaningless though increasingly popular farce was put on by one Philip Davis in the pages of the Literary Review; it is quite representative of the phenomenon, and on this account (and no other) merits our attention.
The upshot of Mr. Davis’ article is that he and a number of apparently unoccupied “brain scientists” have discovered that listening to certain lines in Shakespeare makes certain lights on certain machines flash in a certain way. Employing their EEG’s, their MEG’s, and their fMRI’s – you know, the usual tools of the literary critic – they found that listening to sentences containing various types of what Davis calls “functional shifts” causes things called N400 and P600 effects, which are surges in the amplitude of waves moving through different locations of the brain. These surges are indications of the brain’s aroused attention, its preparedness to “work at a higher level.” Since the “functional shifts” which were used in the experiment are similar to the ones that Shakespeare frequently employed, Davis concludes that Shakespeare can be said to goad our brains “into working at a higher adaptive level of conscious evolution,” and leaves from his experiment with “a greater sense of how and why Shakespeare really does something to our inner reality.”
Where to start. First, quite obviously, no discovery is being made here; Davis is not presenting any substantial information here which hasn’t been known for centuries. That Shakespeare makes our brains “work at a higher level” or, in less pretentious terms, that he makes us think, is, I would suggest, a less than earth-shattering assertion. One doesn’t need an MEG machine in one’s study to adequately grasp the way “Shakespeare does something to our inner reality.” Similarly, the pleasing and arresting qualities of “functional shifts” of language have been known to rhetoricians from antiquity to the Renaissance, as is indicated by Davis’ citation of Puttenham, and are readily apparent to any sensible reader. After all, why did Davis choose to experiment upon precisely these features of Shakespeare’s language if he hadn’t felt their power prior to stepping foot into the lab?
I know the response; Davis and his ilk will say, now we have proof, by which they mean scientific verification, the only thing they will admit as proof. Its not true, but suppose even that it were. There are a million experiences in the course of our lives which we admit as legitimate and settled without scientific verification; we could hardly get on were it not the case. We do not ask the little men in white coats to “prove” to us that chocolate has a wonderful taste, or that an unexpected clap of thunder shocks us; indeed, to ask for such proof in such cases would be tantamount to a sort of paranoia. If a man should say to us, “I believe I am rather fond of Beethoven’s chamber music, but I am heading downtown today to have my brain scanned in order to be certain that is the case,” I think we would all suspect his sanity. But when a man writes “I believe that I find Shakespeare’s style striking and lovely, but I had the brain’s of several unwitting strangers scanned in order to prove it,” he is published in the Literary Review and, quite likely, takes one step closer to that cherished tenure-track position. The dogma that scientific modes of verification are the only legitimate modes of verification is nothing more than an epistemological disease of the modern world; it is a dogma because no one can possibly demonstrate why scientific modes of verification are the only valid ones available on all matters, particularly on those matters of which we possess phenomenological knowledge. A man who says to himself, and to the readers of the Literary Review, that we only possess certain or clear knowledge of a feature of Shakespeare when it has been subjected to scientific procedures is a man whose mind is in serious epistemological disorder.
Such would be the case even if Davis’ experiment proves what he thinks it proves. But, as I said, it doesn’t. It proves nothing because it explains nothing. Here is what Davis knows: when his subjects read certain kinds of “functional shifts,” a change in wave amplitude – called a P600 – is observable, and correlates to an increase in attention. Now here are all the things that Davis doesn’t know: why is a P600 triggered by a “functional shift” instead of one of the other literary devices, such as metaphor or synecdoche? Why does a “functional shift” cause a P600 effect, instead of a P700, or a N300, or a XYZ56 and a third? How can there exist a causal relationship (as opposed to the observable correlation) between language heard and changes in wave amplitude in the brain? How can there exist a causal relationship (as opposed to the observable correlation) between changes in wave amplitude in the brain and increases of awareness? How can there exist a causal relationship between brain processes and increases of awareness? Or between brain processes and awareness itself? How can matter in any form or arrangement fully account for the phenomenology of subjective experience?
If Mr. Davis had done more than dip his little toe into the baby pool of philosophy, and gone diving into the deep end instead, he would understand that these are fundamental and intractable problems which have no answers now, and very likely never will. Yet his whole article presupposes that all of these questions have been tidily answered by now, and of course, in this, he is no different than that army of academic frauds in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology, etc, etc, who, by producing mountains of new empirical data every year, think they can pretend to have answered the philosophical dilemmas presented by subjective experience. But it is the most ridiculous thing in the world for Mr. Davis to suppose that he has presented an explanation of the beauty of Shakespeare’s style clearer or more compelling than one offered in purely phenomenological terms, when his own explanation carries with it dozens of insoluble difficulties.
All of this is bad enough, but perhaps the worst part of the article is that reference to Shakespeare causing our brains to operate at “a higher level of conscious evolution.” Of course, this is a phrase with no meaning. There are no such things as higher levels of evolution, nor is there any such thing as an evolution of consciousness. What Mr. Davis is attempting to do here is smuggle into literary studies the language of sociobiology, or totalizing Darwinism. And in this, he has quite a number of accomplices. Darwinian literary criticism (a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education covers the phenomenon) is the latest challenger for the title of most ludicrous ideology to corrupt literary studies, vying with feminism, multi-culturalism, and deconstructionism for the distinction. Any decent person who – in an act of penance or of masochism – has read a sociobiological account of ethics or politics knows how incoherent, equivocal, and downright revolting such accounts can be, and any such person with a love of literature would want to make sure that sociobiology, with all of its phony methodology and all of its dishonorable prejudices, be kept as far away from the literary arts as possible. The literary Darwinists are like credulous merchants, plunging recklessly into the ports of some long-rumored kingdom, only to carry back in their voluminous holds all the vile, corrosive, vermin-born plagues of abused science, wherewith to infect the happy realm of letters.
The fact remains that Mr. Davis’ experiments offer no grounds for distinction between the “functional shifts” as they occur in Shakespeare and in his own examples; they both apparently produce the same changes in the amplitude of brain waves. A method of criticism which provides us with no grounds for distinguishing between the style of Shakespeare and the style of a scribbler for the Literary Review is a perfectly worthless and irrelevant method of literary criticism; that, and nothing more, is what Mr. Davis has presented in his article. That, and nothing more, is what all “scientific” literary critics have to offer. I trust that all intelligent readers recognize this fashionable travesty for what it is, and regard it with the sort of disdain that it deserves.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
"With Hope in Our Hearts and Wings on Our Heels": Chariots of Fire
We were recently watching Chariots of Fire, and it occurred to us that the movie is a great example of an extraordinary work of art that engages with religion in a serious and thoughtful way. In this regard, it’s a model for young artists seeking to use their art to present their faith without being polemical.
A brief plot summary in case you haven’t seen it: the movie follows two British sprinters as they prepare for and compete in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) is the son of a Lithuanian Jew, and who constantly feels as if he is treated unfairly by his countrymen because of his religion. (We see this unfair treatment for ourselves in the behavior of two Cambridge dons, who I think are played by Statler & Waldorf.) He races in part to prove his worth to his countrymen. As he says, to prove himself he’ll “take them on, one by one, and run them off their feet."
Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), meanwhile, is a Scot and devout Christian. Like Abrahams, his religion defines him, but in his case there’s more of a conflict between faith and sport: he is torn between his talents as a runner and his family’s missionary work in China. He eventually decides that because his talent is a blessing from God, he should continue to run to glorify Him. As he explains to his sister (in a beautiful scene shot on Arthur’s Seat overlooking Edinburgh), “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Liddell’s greatest challenge comes when he learns that his qualifying heat is on a Sunday. (I won’t give away the outcome.)
Some qualifications. First, the movie comes awfully close to reinforcing some stereotypes: the wild and talented but unrefined Scotsman who trains by running through the hills, the Robert Burns of running; the ambitious Jew who comes dangerously close to becoming a professional athlete by hiring a coach. And of course, the film takes liberties with history, among them that Liddell knew that his heat was on a Sunday long before the Olympics. This site has plenty of left-wing complaints, too (basically, “the movie says that liking your country is a good thing, which movies really shouldn’t do when Margaret Thatcher is prime minister!”) Though the article is silly, it does clarify that Abrahams converted to Catholicism, which would indeed clarify why his funeral is in a church!
Still, the movie has cracked our all-time favorite list. It helps that we’re an Anglophile (and a Scotophile, too)—there’s lots of British culture here, and many beautiful scenes in English manor houses, ancient universities, the Scottish Highlands, plus the famous opening and closing running scene along the beach (filmed in St. Andrews, but which is presented as Kent in the film).
But what makes the movie extraordinary and moving is its presentation of these two very driven men whose religions are central to their lives and their senses of themselves. The movie is not preachy, yet still makes clear that these men are admirable for both their ambition and their devotion. Still, the movie doesn’t present these men as exactly the same. It suggests that Harold will never be satisfied, that he will never think he’s done enough to feel like he’s accepted by his countrymen. (That’s why the complaint that the movie is excessively nationalist is so misdirected—this sense of dissatisfaction is the country’s fault more than it’s Harold’s.) Liddell’s desire, though still rooted in his faith and the faith of his family, is fueled less by a sense of dissatisfaction or resentment, so he’s much more satisfied and content after the Games, having done what he set out to do for God.
And although the movie gives voice to the critics of these men—Liddell’s decision is said to smack of “fanaticism,” and they’re both criticized for putting their religions over their countries—the movie presents their beliefs sympathetically and realistically (the two are not contradictory!).
It’s an inspiring movie for many reasons, including Liddell’s belief that his running matters because it’s an opportunity to glorify God. As his father tells him, “You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud, if you peel it to perfection.” (That sounds like Josemaria Escriva!) It’s also inspiring to recognize that the movie was widely acclaimed in 1981 (it won the Oscar for Best Picture), which suggests that even in a “post-Christian” popular culture, there is a place for great art that presents religion as an important force in the lives of great men.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
In Defense of the Graphic Novel
Last month, we posted some unpleasant thoughts about EW's Top 100 Reads of the last 25 years, and complained that there were too many comic books on the list. Our friend Joe posted a reply in which he defended the genre, which we're pasting as a posting below. But first, in related news, here's the trailer for the film adaptation of Watchmen. (Warning: it features Billy Corgan's very annoying voice):
Take it away, Joe!
I'll personally vouch for half of the comic book entries (Side note: "Graphic Novel" is a legitimate term, but it's often misapplied by people who are embarrassed to admit that they read comic books. A graphic novel is any comic book that acts as a stand-alone work of previously unpublished material. Following this definition, "Maus" and "Persepolis" would be graphic novels, but "Watchmen" and "Sandman" would not.) I've said on more than one occasion that "Sandman" and "Watchmen" belong among the greatest literary works of the past quarter century.
"Watchmen" works, not just as a fantastic, genre-bending adventure story, but also as a loving deconstruction of the super hero mythos in American culture. Moore juggles a lot of philosophical perspectives, namely the plight of man navigating the space between determinism (represented by Doctor Manhattan) and nihilism (represented by Rorschach), and touching on a lot of really fascinating stuff along the way.
"Sandman" is absolutely unparalleled in terms of breadth and scope. It's an Aristotelian tragedy told in more than seventy-five parts over nearly ten years. Gaiman incorporates his incredible knowledge of mythology, history, and literature into a breath-taking epic that is alternately thrilling, frightening, and touching. Start with "Preludes and Nocturns" and keep reading; each book gets better and better.
I would also argue that "The Dark Knight Returns" and possibly "Batman: The Killing Joke" belong on the list as well.
Comic books and graphic novels are a medium just like any other; they have certain advantages and limitations and they have their own way of conveying a story and information. I think to write off the entire genre would be the equivalent to saying "Film is a waste of time," or "Books are for nerds."
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Ron Hanen, "Exiles"
There's an interesting conversation at InsideCatholic.com about Ron Hansen's new novel, Exiles. We're not done with the novel yet, so we're not in position to evaluate the comments, but we're very impressed that Hansen himself joins in a conversation that often isn't very nice to him. One of the discussion's central themes is what constitutes Catholic fiction, so it should be of interest to any Mahwahvian.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Bogus Brideshead
The New York Times has more on the new film version of Brideshead Revisited. As Ross Douthat observes, the directors claim to have made an effort to be true to the novel, but have given Hopper "a positive spin." (We're also sorry to hear that Anthony Blanche has only a passing role -- Nickolas Grace's portrayal is a highlight of the mini-series.) Click here for our earlier post on the topic.
UPDATE: Deal Hudson chimes in over at IC.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Kay Ryan: Poet Laureate
The Library of Congress has announced that Kay Ryan will become the new Poet Laureate this October. Here's a New York Times profile of her; here's one of her poems; here's some footage of her at a public reading (warning: the audience suffers from OLS (Over-Laughing Syndrome)). The NYTimes piece includes this notable testimonial:
Dana Gioia, a poet and the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was an early supporter of Ms. Ryan’s work, describing her as the “thoughtful, bemused, affectionate, deeply skeptical outsider.”
“She would certainly be part of the world if she could manage it,” he said. “She has certain reservations. That is what makes her like Dickinson in some ways.”
Ryan writes interesting, accessible poetry with a humor that reminds us of Billy Collins, but with a more careful attention to phrasing and sound. Still, although she's a fine choice for the position, we can't help but think that she'll have as much success broadening the nation's interest in poetry as David Beckham has had in making soccer our national sport.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Thomas Disch, R.I.P.
J. Bottum has a moving tribute to Thomas Disch, who committed suicide earlier this month. Here's perhaps his best-known poem, which Dana Gioia has been known to recite:
Ballade of the New God
I have decided I'm divine.
Caligula and Nero knew
A godliness akin to mine,
But they are strictly hitherto.
They're dead, and what can dead gods do?
I'm here and now. I'm dynamite.
I'd worship me if I were you.
A new religion starts tonight!
No booze, no pot, no sex, no swine:
I have decreed them all taboo.
My words will be your only wine,
The thought of me your honeydew.
All other thoughts you will eschew.
You'll call yourself a Thomasite
And hymn my praise with loud yahoo.
A new religion starts tonight.
But (you might think) that's asinine!
I'm just as much a god as you.
You may have built yourself a shrine,
But I won't bend my knee. Who
Asked you to be my god? I do,
Who am, as god, divinely right.
Now you must join my retinue:
A new religion starts tonight.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Billy Collins: Porky Pig Poet
This weekend’s Wall Street Journal features an article by Billy Collins, the most popular poet in America and former Poet Laureate. Collins makes a few interesting observations about artistic influence: “the question of literary influence is a tricky one. For one thing, it offers the author the opportunity to duck it by substituting for his actual influence certain names the dropping of which is designed to impress.” He notes that writers tend to only name artists from their own genre, when “the truth is that influence enters us from all sides. . . . A short-story writer may have been influenced by 18th-century Dutch painting as much as anything else—or by his mother’s cooking.” Unfortunately, Collins spends the rest of the article describing how Warner Brothers cartoons influenced his own work:
Characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. Anticipating the tricks of metafiction, these creatures could hop right out of the world of the cartoon and into our world, often Hollywood itself to consort with caricatures of Eddie Cantor and Marilyn Monroe. Or Bugs would do the impossible by jumping out of the frame and landing on the drawing board of the cartoonist who was at work creating him. This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry. Robert Bly developed a poetics based on the notion of psychic “leaping,” where the genius of a poem is measured by its ability to leap without warning from the conscious to the unconscious and back again.
We can agree with the broader statement about imaginative leaping (Keats’s “To a Nightingale” is another great example, as is Ashbery’s “The Instruction Manual”), but the connection between cartoons and great art is more than a little labored. Porky We do not count ourselves among those who think that pop culture can inspire only bad poetry, but this has all the heft of a kindergarten haiku, and is neither interesting nor (worst of all!) even funny. We prefer this one by William Trowbridge, which a) surprises the reader and b) makes connections between the subject matter and the speaker’s life.
There’s nothing pretentious about Collins, which we admire. But his article will not comfort anyone who believes that there isn’t enough substance to his poetry. Case in point:
the poetry (first published in 1977) that accompanies the article. For example:
Happy only
when he is gardening alone
far from conversation
and the terrible stammering
far from Petunia, nag and tease
just resting on a hoe
unembarrassed
as he contemplates
the blue background of his flat world --
a Zen pig.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Baer is Blogged
InsideCatholic has a profile about Dr. Baer. The piece covers Baer's nurturing of a Catholic literary scene, as well as his important work with formal poetry. (Best of all, it appears that its author is cut from our Mahwahvian cloth.) A blurb:
Like many other Catholic writers, Baer believes that faithful Catholics do not need to convey a specifically Catholic teaching through their art: "Their work can be simply entertaining; or it can be moral; or it can offer a specifically Catholic perspective. Catholic writers can do all sorts of things, as long as they consider whether it's pleasing to God."
That passage also wins the Southwell Award for "The Most Uses of the Word 'Catholic' in a Paragraph."
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