Living Wittily

Does the Tragic Lives Industry Trivialise Tragedy?

I like to think I'm reasonably open minded, even to the point where I'm prepared to listen to people who say I'm not! As one feature of my alleged open-mindedness I have a fairly omnivorous approach to reading, so much so that I swing between discipline and dilettantism, between focusing on deep study or acting like a tourist with a camera more interested in capturing than enjoying.

Still. I do find it hard to have much patience with that genre of literature now established in the book markets, "Tragic Lives". It isn't  only that I am impatient with those who tell their story for self-therapy, or skeptical with writers who tell all to encourage others, or cyncial about those whose drastic revelations aim to inspire those who think they've had it rough but just wait till you read this. I've thought all these thoughts, and by and large avoid the genre. But there's a more fundamental point I want to suggest as the reason for my ambivalence to the tragic lives industry.

I think there is an enormous difference between stories told as an exhibition of human suffering, abuse, tragic loss, many of which are expoitative, of the writer or of the reader, and another kind of writing which explores the tragic through the lens of human sorrow. This second kind of literature can be illustrated by looking at several monumental achievements in writing, which set a standard of integrity and human authenticity so high that conveyor belts of imitiations are simply multiplied mediocrity. And I avoid entirely that other genre of the celebrity tells all about their briefly flickering moments of fame.

 
The Diary of Ann Frank, Etty; A Diary, and the two vilumes of Elie Wiesel's Memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea, and But the Sea is Never Full; these are another genre entirely, often referred to as Holocaust Literature. Such writing would never be described by the authors as 'tragic lives'. The shimmering characteristics of books like these include human hopefulness, moral courage, literary integrity and a declaration of self-worth and human value that has transmuted self-pity into a passionate commitment to the other.

Etty Hillesum's account of 1941-43 is as tragic as they come, though not as she sees it. Here is her take on that inner ache we call sorrow - these are words of humane wisdom and emotional precision:

"Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve mostof the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - for which new sorrows will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in God."

  

Who can write the biggest book on Paul? OR Avoid back injury by bending at the knees when lifting this book :))

Well the long awaited double volume on Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N T Wright has finally thumped on to my desk. I've read the Preface which itself is a good few pages. And I've handled and browsed, and not even tried to read any of the main text yet, and I'm not happy. 

I am a bibliophile. That means I love books - yes I love and have spent years of real time reading; yes, like most readers I realise that what we read and how and why and when shapes the people we are becoming; yes, I never feel more comfortably set up than sitting in a study, or at a favourite reading place, with a good book, and whatever else helps to make time fruitfully pleasant and pleasantly fruitful.

But by a good book I also mean a well conceived, durably produced and aesthetically satisfying book. And this latest monstrous set fails on these counts.

Two volumes, one of 600 pages and the other around 1050 pages - in paperback. Yes they can be bought hardback (at £125) but in these days of paperback monographs the size of monoliths, is any publisher going to concede that there is an optimum, not to say maximum size a book can reasonably be and still have a hope of surviving a first reading and frequent revisiting without splitting into multi-volumes from use.

I've tried with Wright's gargantuan second volume to sit it on the desk open at the place. You have to be 300 pages into it before it lies on the desk. About 400 pages before the end the book flaps closed unless you press on it. Now SPCK are not the only publisher with a problem when a mega book is published. I guess the first paperback one volume edition of Lord of the Rings was just as unwieldy, which didn't stop people lugging it around and reading it on buses, in the Uni refectory in the 1970's, and lying dog-eared and split in many a bookcase. And anyone who bought Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God, another mammoth restatement of Paul's Theology of Justification will be having the same dulling experience of wrestling with a paperback which is two and one half reams of paper thick - yes this one is over 1300 pages in one volume.

Then, this set comes in what is euphemistically described as a slip case. It's a flimsy card slipover which once you take the two volumes out, is too tight to easily slip them back in. Now Raymond Brown's two volume The Death of the Messiah, produced by Yale 20 years ago, is different; it comes in a real slip case and is in two finely produced hardbacks. It comes in paperback with the same slip case. I would happily have paid a few pounds more for this set in a decent slip case, and as three volumes of manageable size. 

All of which said, this work on Paul has been years in gestating, growing and finally being published. It isn't an author's call as to the dress and cost of the finished book. And I will enjoy reading Wright (whether every page from start to finish may depend on my longevity). But I still have a wistful, niggly, no indeed a worrying question; how come 20 years ago F F Bruce, a scholar of immense erudition and accomplishment, wrote his magnum opus on Paul. Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and in it summed up a lifetime of scholarship, and did so in under 500 pages. I know times have changed. And yes Wright is engaged in a once in a generation scale opus aimed at rewriting of early Christian origins.

But I remain niggled. The advent of the computer, the plethora of search programmes, research assistants, and online availability of major texts and data-bases, is in danger of encouraging what begins to feel like bloated, over-indulged, over-written and under-edited tomes. They are increasingly counter productive volumes, not unreadable because of the prose but because of the information overload, which discourages thorough reading. I get the feeling such volumes happen because authors no longer have editors who say a book should be of such and such a length, albeit with discretion and tolerance of the importance of the subject, but also with some understanding of the needs of the reader.

I rest my case. And yes, I'm still delighted to have Wright on Paul. Glad too my desk is oak and seriously weight bearing.  I will try to perform the right Wright rite ( or should it be the Wright rite right?) as I place the volume beneath my desk lamp and start reading what Wright writes, right? And despite all the above, this is at least for me, one of the great biblical studies events in my lifetime. I will learn much.

 

The Gospel According to John and the Fathomless Depths of Grace upon Grace......

The portrait of St John the Evangelist, is by Adam Elsheimer, and provides the front cover for F D Bruner's commentary on John. I hadn't heard of Elsheimer till I read the small attribution at the back of Bruner's book. I like this painting - which is hardly the last word in art criticism! But it's just the truth. I suppose it can be analysed and compared with other contemporary artists, influences traced and duly noted, ethos and provenance established. Then it can be examined for symbolism and the whole painting subjected to hermenecutical scrutiny. Maybe some other time. I just like it - simplicity with enough of mystery, a serpent lifted up and a chalice held for blessing, and the background of a world both vague and detailed.

As to Bruner's commentary, near 1300 pages of commentary on a gospel would once have been considered definitive. But Bruner has aimed at something more realistic, and satisfying. This commentary is a receptacle for the gathered fruit of decades of study and teaching, and at least a third of its length is given over to sections on the history of interpretation of the text. These read like catenas of wisdom from Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Henry, Bengel, Godet, Meyer, Westcott, and then we come to the 20th century with Bultmann, Dodd, Brown, Schnacknburg and beyond. It is a vade mecum on John, and for me at least, is a feast of fun to read.

No it won't displace Raymond Brown as my most loved and used commentary on John; and I still persist with Barrett as the commentary that taught me how to actually enjoy NT Greek and its fruits; and yes there is an embarrassment of riches on John's Gospel from Ashton, Dodd, Carson, Moloney, Michaels, O'Day, Keener, Morris, Beasley Murray, Lincoln, Witherington, Ridderbos to the too easily overlooked John Marsh in the Pelican Commentary Series which manages to combine common sense with spiritual acumen in exploring a complex text. And then there's Richard Bauckham's long promised commentary on the Greek Text, still to appear and looked forward to But John's Gospel is an embarrassingly rich text, and coming back to Bruner, his is a commentary that any preacher worth her salt will value and enjoy!

Here are the words of Rabbi Johannan ben Zakkai about Torah, with pardonable exaggeration enthusing about the value of our greatest teachers:

"If all heaven were a parchment, and all the trees produced pens, and all the oceans were ink, they would not suffice to inscribe the wisdom I have received from my teachers of Torah; and yet from the wisdom of the wise I have enjoyed only so much as the water that a fly who plunges into the sea can remove".

In much less hyperbolic terms, James Denney could refer to Johannine and Pauline theology as waters in which we " hear the plunge of lead into fathomless depths..."

Kindle Utility and the Beauty of the Book.

Slowly, at first reluctantly and resistantly, but gradually and persuasively, I've begun to admit the usefulness, convenience and with the right book the fun and attractieveness of reading from my Kindle. In that one small device (bigger than the more recent versions already) I have Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, Jane Austen's novels a growing library of leisure reading and maybe one day I'll try a more serious acadcemic book. We'll see.

But for me there will always be books that cannot be Kindled. Books that are now lifelong companions, with a personal history decipherable in the underlinings, margin notes and memories of moments of illumination. Books I love to handle because they are beautiful objects in their own right, binding and font, paper and ink, stitching and smell, giving a book its presence, recognisable, familiar, visible and ready to be reached for. Books which are best enjoyed as page turning back and forward, ease of finding and inviting glance or gaze, making connections from there earlier in the text to here and the next place as the dotted line of thought is joined up.

And then there are the few books that deserve to be as expensive as they are. Beautifully produced, a joy to handle, works of art and craft, so that the importance of the contents is validated by the care given to the making of the book. Amongst my books are the volumes I own of the Hermeneia commentary series, and since they were first introduced the standard and distinctive quality of the production remains astonishing. And now at last the three volume commentary on Luke will be available in English in the Hermeneia series. This is the year of Luke in the Revised Common Lectionary, and over the year these volumes will find their way to my shelves - I've a birthday in February for a start.

Eventually choices will have to be made about shelf room and that's where the Kindle wins every time. But for now, handling, reading and enjoying the art of the book remains a difficult to supercede pleasure.

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Snowy, Smudge and a Treasured Book.

Did I tell you that my favourite animal is the snow leopard?

And that I am now a joint sponsor of a Himalayan snow leopard, a gift from my daughter.

As part of the Worl Wildlife Fund deal, you get a small cuddly snow leopard.

I've called him Snowy, and the picture is of Snowy and Smudge.

Thirty odd years ago I read Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, and ever since have been Snow Leopard daft!

It is a wise, self-revealing and brilliantly descriptive account of his journey to Nepal to try to see the Snow Leopard in its native habitat. It is travel book, autobiography, journal, and in the most serious sense, a self-help book - his journey was in the aftermath of the death of his wife. On a five week epic trek, he is genuinely on a journey, unlike the overused sentimental metaphor of journeying glibly claimed by Easyjet pilgrims.

The Book Pyramid is an Architectural Triumph.

As a bibliophile, one who prefers a library to a shopping mall, and who believes libraries should attract the most creative and sympathetic architects, this is a beautiful place. As a statement of the continuing importance of books, it is a resounding rejoinder to the digitalisation of everything. And this is a public library, a place of beauty, quiet, learning, light and culture, housed in glass, like an educational greenhouse where people can grow.

Follow the link here for a guided tour of The Book Pyramid, a building of hope where the love of possibility and learning are made into a statement of intent. . e

 

Amazon Book Searches - A Quick Way to Become a Polymath :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I went looking on Amazon for a recent monograph on Paul’s great charter of freedom and equality before God in Galatians 3.28. I found it, and it costs £66 – looks like inter-library loan time.

No Longer Male and Female: Interpreting Galatians 3:28 in Early Christianity (Library of New Testament Studies) Pauline Hogan (2008)

However the first page of hits for the simple search phrase “male and female in Paul” brought up some titles grippingly irrelevant for my purposes. Here’s three of them.....

A growth study of young lambs: comparing male and female Southdown, Suffolk and Cotswold cross lambs intensively reared on a barley diet fed at two different levels by Paul William Knapman (1976)

Pay Differences Among the Highly Paid: the Male-Female Earnings Gap in Lawyers' Salaries (Discussion paper / Institute of Public Policy Studies, University of Michigan) by Robert G. Wood, Mary E. Corcoran and Paul N. Courant (Paperback - 1991)

"Other People's Money": An Empirical Examination of the Motivational Differences Between Male and Female White Collar Offenders. by Paul Michael Klenowski (2 Sep 2011)

I took the photo in Glen Dye - it's a Scottish blackface sheep reared on a grass and bracken diet fed quite high up the hill!

Charity Book Shops, Machiavellian Tactics, and the Mess We Are IN!

The other day I was in a charity shop having a good natured exchange with one of the staff who was trying to get me to buy books. You'd think that would be easy. Getting me to buy books is like encouraging me to eat chocolate. But it was gardening books she wanted me to buy, and I'd asked about art books, then it was celeb biographies when I asked about poetry. Eventually I found something, having decided she had tried so hard it would be discouraging for her if I walked out without buying anything!

A pocket sized mordern edition, mint condition, of Machiavelli's, The Prince! Now this isn't a book about spirituality I know - though that week I was preparing a sermon on Jacob the self-interested cynical manipulator, and there seemed something appropriate, if not meant! No this is a book about bare-faced cynicism in the application of tactics of power, political survival, and developing skills of manipulation and getting your own way. It combines wisdom and ruthlessness, calculated risk with playing the percentage shots, distilled study of power, how it is gained and lost, while at the same time forming the inner habits, even an instinct, for personal advantage. Actually if you wanted a description of Jacob before Jabbok that just about does it!

The book is an education in self-interest, cynical exploitation of those least able to resist, acting ruthlessly against those who might resist in order to preserve a personal power base, anticipating an opponent's next moves and subverting them, using power to make the powerful stronger, and generally excluding or eliminating anything that might hinder the exercise and retention of power, including considerations of compassion, justice, and overriding moral imperatives. I'm thinking that much of that mentality is abroad in the political and economic attitudes of recession haunted Governments.

The word Machiavellian, which sums up all this ruthless, cyncial power hunting, is a bit unfair on Machiavelli. He was a Renaissance humanist. His book was written as a Power for Dummies,intended to win the favour of Renaissance Princes seeking to cling to power in the dangerous courts and corridors of 15th Century Italian Courts. But, as I say, it does raise for me the question of how far the word Machiavellian applies to the approaches and policies of the current Governement. 

That's another post perhaps - but Granny Tax I, the mooted Granny Tax 2, the pastry tax, the capping of charitable donations, the rhetoric but non-action against Tax avoidance by the wealthy, the comprehenesive and unsympathetic re-configuring of criteria for Benefits but little progress on reining in bonuses and extravagant salaries, the change to VAT criteria for churches.These are the mere headlines of an approach that seeks economic prosperity by risking being morally bankrupt. Alongside The Prince, I suggest a reading of the Prophet Amos, who had a few things to say about Machiavellian politics - I know, the anachronism is blatant. But the history of power as morally ambiguous and dependent on the moral character of those who exercise it, is a history that cannot be dismissed so easily. Whether it's the privileged rich selling the poor for the price of a pair of sandals in ancient Israel, or the privileged powerful of a Renaissance Court doing whatever is necessary to cling to power, or the social impact of the policies of a modern democratic Government hard-wired to an economics of global growth, the result is the same and the same two non Machiavellian questions remain. Compassion? Justice?

 So anyway, I asked how much? Which side of the shelf was it on, she asked. I showed her the gap and said 'There'. That OK she said. That's 50p - if it had been further along it would have been £1. Then in true Machiavellian fashion she said, But you could just pay the £1 - which I did!! Oh, and inside the front cover is a label that says Happy Birthday - now was the gift intended to cement a friendship, bribe a colleague, a veiled apology, an act of crawling......oh stop it! And get a life...

Stating the obvious - reading is good for the soul.

I wonder how many readers of this blog know the names and some of the books of Nels F S Ferre, A W Tozer, Elton Trueblood, Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, Evelyn Underhill, Alexander Whyte, Samuel Chadwick, Lesslie Newbigin, and more familiarly, C S Lewis?

What they have in common is entirely arbitrary, and I discovered it only because I happen to have read certain works of theirs over the years. They each recommend choosing one or two authors of substantial fare who should become lifelong conversation partners.

Ferre urged students to become an expert on one particular theologian or philosopher and use that knowledge as a benchmark, a critical measurement of everything else they read and thought.

Tozer, passionate evangelical that he was, enthusiastically read several Catholic books of devotion regularly and commended that practice to those serious about 'the knowledge of the Holy'.

Trueblood, a philosopher Quaker far too much forgotten today, recommended identifying several books as lifelong companions, including A' Kempis' Imitation of Christ, William Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Augustine's Confessions, Fenelon's Letters.

Von Hugel read Thomas a Kempis for 15 minutes every day, and one of the most complex and teutonic style philosopher theologians became intellectually docile and receptive to deeper truth.

Evelyn Underhill positively revelled in the writings of the Christian mystical tradition, her favourites being Van Ruysbreck, The Cloud of Unknowing and Augustine Baker's Holy Wisdom.

Alexander Whyte, Free Church of Scotland minister with a noble ecumenical sympathy was happy with the entire Christian tradition, from puritans to Carmelites, and from Boehme to Newman.

Samuel Chadwick, Methodist evangelist and College Principal and Bible Conference preacher and teacher of Christian holiness and perfection, had a classic Catholic devotional book always on his desk during Lent and Passion Week, and so soaked in the classics of Christian devotion.

Lesslie Newbigin in a little known book on ministry, The Good Shepherd, urges a similar regular discipline of exposure to biblical text, 'always having biblical work going with a scholarly commentary'.

C S Lewis in his introduction to Athanasius' The Incarnation, rebukes that chronological snobbery that thinks new books are preferable to old, and insists the reading of old books is essential for Christians to catch the scent of another and heavenly country.

With the advent of Kindle, there are a lot of these devotional, spiritual and theological classics available free or for very little. I'm currently working through The Imitation of Christ. Wonder if that saintly and stern Thomas would approve his meticulously written treatise being read on an electronic screen while travelling on the train, waiting at the dentists, or having a coffee in the favourite coffee place....

Hmmm...

Reading Dickens at Christmas

Instead of reading one of Dickens' novels this Christmas, I read Claire Tomalin's biography. There are pluses and minuses in that - those who enjoy reading Dickens know well enough the humour, the acute and astute observation of human behaviour, the use and abuse of caricature and pathos, the contrived plots which would embarrass most moderate versions of the doctrine of providence, and the narrative drive frequently interrupted by long descriptive passages, some of which are the most closely documented and vivid descritpions of early and mid Victorian London.

The real gain of reading Tomalin's biography is that it is precisely these prominent features of Dickens' genius and perennial appeal that are traced to their living context in Dickens' life experience. That experience was assimilated, reconstructed and written into the characters, plots and landscapes of his novels. Most of what I learned from reading Tomalin is the significance of such contextualising both as explanation of his immediate appeal to his readers, and as exploration of how a writer's own life experience can be transmuted into fiction without losing its connectedness to the author. Dickens' experience of poverty, of thwarted ambition, his struggle to find his way, and the appearance in his novels of characters and human characteristics traceable to those he knew and observed, are all shown to be woven into Dickens' Victorian tapestries. 

The biography reads well, Tomalin's research is meticulous and seldom pedantically paraded, at times she speculates about motive and argues from silence, not always convincingly, but she is in control of the content of Dickens' novels and well versed in the secondary literature. Her earlier work on Nelly Ternan, The Silent Woman, is well exploited in reconstructing the astonishing feat of secrecy and deception required to keep hidden the real relationship between Dickens and Nelly Ternan. This is told with care, understanding, but without excusing Dickens' behaviour and treatment of others in pursuing an alternative, even parallel existence, away from the public eye.

Each of the major novels is discussed and commented on from this same contextual perspective, and much light shed on the birthing process of each novel. That he wrote so much while living a life of self-consuming intensity is testimony to levels of energy and industry that at times defy belief - and adequate explanation. Today we might use the term driven, but even that diminishes Dickens' achievement, for there was undoubtedly an iron will, an obsessive determination to exact from each day of life the maximum quantity of productive experience.

Buit I finished this biography better understanding this complex and contradictory man, at times pitiless to those who thwarted him, yet capable of immense compassion and extraordinary generosity; capable of loving with utter devotion and yet equally capable of cauterising feelings and moving on without a backward glance. It's a sign of Tomalin's achievement that you read her book and have a much less romanticised view of Dickens - he is both increased and diminished in stature, because this is no hagiography, nor is it a piece of literary hatchet swinging. It is a life told mainly according to the evidence, and where there is speculation it is never unfounded. And we are left to wonder at this storytelling genius, who plays on human emotion like a virtuoso musician, bringing a country to a tearful crescendo at the death of little Nell, but who did not attend his own brother's funeral nor send an acknowledgement of his death.