One of my (many) fascinations is books which were once upon a time extremely popular but are rarely mentioned, let alone read, in the modern age.The puzzle is in the pair of questions:1. Why was the book so popular?2. Why has nobody heard of it today? Consider, for example, a novel from 1766 which (according to the ever helpful Wikipedia) is mentioned in all of the following works:Alcott, Little WomenAusten, EmmaBronte, The ProfessorBronte, VilletteDickens, A Tale of Two CitiesDickens, … [Read more...] about Live Like Charles Primrose
Life Advice
Should We Still Require Shakespeare?
“‘A department of English,’ he said, ‘cannot exist without requiring, for its majors, at least one semester-long course in the study of Shakespeare. To require any less would be irresponsible; it is a dumbing down.’”That quotation is from The Shakespeare Requirement, Julia Schumacher’s novel about the lives of college professors. This is Schumacher’s second novel in a trilogy; one of my former students gave me a copy of it. In one of life’s odd coincidences, another student once gave me the … [Read more...] about Should We Still Require Shakespeare?
Be Like Francis
“St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not.”That is G.K. Chesterton doing that thing Chesterton loves to do. He takes something we all know (Francis of Assisi loved nature) and argues that what we all know isn’t true. He spends a whole book, cleverly titled St. Francis of Assisi, convincing us that we really need to think more deeply about Francis. The stories about Francis are extraordinary. He is endlessly fascinating … [Read more...] about Be Like Francis
Hope in a Kingdom Far and Clear
“As these images sorted themselves into events (i.e. became a story) they seemed to demand no love interest and no close psychology. But the Form which excludes these things is the fairy tale. And the moment I thought of that I fell in love with the Form itself: its brevity, its severe restraints on description, its flexible traditionalism, its inflexible hostility to all analysis, reflections, and ‘gas.’ I was now enamoured of it. Its very limitations of vocabulary became an attraction; as the … [Read more...] about Hope in a Kingdom Far and Clear
Dreams: Chesterton, Gaiman, and Lewis
“We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep”Shakespeare’s Prospero declares that in The Tempest. Figuring out exactly what it means is the task of a lifetime. So, we won’t do that, today.But, what are dreams? G.K. Chesterton’s The Coloured Lands is a collection of some of his early work. Stories, poems, musings, and doodles, all with that Chestertonian air of paradox embedded within. The book defies summary. Think of it as the flotsam and jetsam of a … [Read more...] about Dreams: Chesterton, Gaiman, and Lewis
Swag and Temptation
“I used ta do a little but a little wouldn't doSo the little got more and more” So Saith Axl Rose in the Guns N’ Roses Anthem “Mr. Brownstone” (For those of you Dear Readers who know neither Guns N’ Roses nor drug slang, it is a song about heroin addiction.) If it were not for the intolerance of chronology to have the Order of Time broken, those lines from a 1987 song would have been an excellent epigraph in Elmore Leonard’s 1976 novel, Swag. The set-up: Frank Ryan, a car salesman, … [Read more...] about Swag and Temptation