James E Hartley

Cultivating Awe

Which book meets this description: “could be read in an hour and its effect was like a punch in the solar plexus,” whose discoveries were thrown “like a bomb into the arena of the learned world”?

Would you like to read that book?

Is it even possible that such a book could be written today? Do wonder and amazement still exist in the 21^st century?

When was the last time you were awestruck, literally struck with an overwhelming sense of awe, about something newly discovered?

The book described above is Galileo’s The Starry Messenger What made this book so amazing?

Imagine growing up at any time before 1610. Obviously you looked up at the sky. You saw the moon—a big white circle. You saw stars. You saw a few bright lights you heard were other planets.

It doesn’t matter when you grew up—before the discovery of agriculture and writing, at the time of Socrates or Jesus or Genghis Khan—no matter when you looked up, you saw the same thing as everyone else did or ever had.

Then Galileo publishes a book, a simple book. He built a telescope, a better telescope than anyone had built before. He looked up at the sky with his telescope and he discovered:

1. That white circle in the sky everyone saw had mountains and craters.

2. There are stars up there that nobody had ever seen before. And, not just a few new stars: “these are so numerous as to almost surpass belief.”

3. Jupiter had moons that nobody had ever seen before or even suspected might exist.

Try to imagine the shock of that book. Everyone knew what was in the sky. Everyone—peasants, kings, and philosophers—all saw exactly the same things in the sky and always had seen exactly the same things in the sky.

Suddenly, it is announced: there are more things in the sky than anyone ever knew. Suddenly a man with a telescope saw things never before seen by any human, things that were always there, but nobody knew even existed.

Galileo writes about the newly discovered moons around Jupiter:

There remains the matter which in my opinion deserves to be considered the most important of all—the disclosure of four PLANETS never seen from the creation of the world up to our own time, together with the occasion of my having discovered and studied them, their arrangements , and the observations made of their movements and alterations during the past two months.

Note Galileo’s all-caps PLANETS. Can you feel the excitement?

Galileo also wants you to notice the “occasion of my having discovered and studied them.” Galileo was a bit of an egomaniac, which got him into that trouble later in life about which you might have heard. But, we can give him a pass here; he really did discover something exciting.

(The quotations in the first paragraph are from Arthur Koestler’s marvelous tome, The Sleepwalkers.

I highly recommend this book if you have any interest at all in the history of science…and you should have a huge interest in the history of science.)

It is hard to recreate that feeling of excitement at the discovery of something new. Part of the problem is that we live in an age of technological wonder.

There is also the fact that scientific discoveries are no longer announced in pamphlets which can be read in a hour by any educated person. Scientific journal articles are…dense.

The recent book that comes closest to enabling an educated person in the modern world to approximate the wonder people must have felt reading Galileo in 1610 is a very short little book (also easily read in an hour or so) by Carlo Rovelli: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.

Short chapters explaining the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, the universe, elementary particles, quantum gravity, and time. You need absolutely zero scientific background to read and appreciate this book; if you are afraid of science and think it is above your head, fear not—this book is still perfect for you.

We need to cultivate our sense of wonder. Look out at this world and be amazed.

The Killer Inside All of Us

Stanley Kubrick described it as “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.”

That is the same Kubrick who directed a film based on A Clockwork Orange. So, what book is more “chilling and believable” than that Burgess’ novel?

Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. First published in 1952 and now included in the Library of America’s Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s.

Lou Ford is the sort of person you really don’t want to know. You don’t want to know him because he is a guy who primarily talks in tired clichés; he is a boring guy, a very, very boring guy. Not too bright, affable, but really, really boring and dull. We learn this in chapter 1—two pages long, and by the end of it, the reader is gripped with a terror of spending 160 pages reading cliché after cliché after cliché.

Then 5 pages later, after he has savagely beaten and had relations with the new prostitute in town, we no longer want to spend time with Lou Ford because he is, well, a rather nasty bit of work.

The whole book is like that. Lou Ford interacting with society in public is really boring. Lou Ford behind closed doors is a vicious mean guy, and as the title notes, a killer.

So who is Lou Ford? Which one is he—the affable dullard or the cold-blooded killer? The closing line of the novel reveals his true identity: “All of us.”

OK, you are not as boring as Lou Ford on the surface. You are also (I certainly hope) not a murderer behind closed doors.

But, be honest: how much is the person everyone sees like the person inside your head? How many things have you done or thought in your life which you would not want exposed to the light of day?

Which one is the real person? Is Lou Ford a boring dullard who sometimes acts like a calculating beast or is he a vile murderer who sometimes acts like a nice guy?

Interestingly, that isn’t really a hard question. You don’t even have to read the novel to know the answer. The real Lou Ford is the killer. We all know this. The external Lou Ford is an act. Why do we know this? Remember Lou Ford is you and you know this of yourself.

Eliot describes this phenomenon:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The invaluable Annotated text of The Poems of T. S. Eliot has two interesting notes:

1. Eliot’s brother’s description: “he spoke of always having to be keyed up, alert to the importance of appearances, always wearing a mask among people…like a man playing a part.”

2. Eliot underlined the following passage from Kant: “For the truth is, that, however far we may carry our investigations into the world of sense, we never can come into contact with aught but appearances.”

Not only are you Lou Ford, everyone you meet is also Lou Ford. You only meet the mask, the face the other prepared to meet the face you prepared to meet it. You will never see the mind of another; you always see something else.

Some people are better at preparing the face to meet the other faces; some people’s exterior appearances may be closer to their inner sense; but in every case, every single case, you will only see he face presented to the world.

The Killer Inside Me is one of those books you just want to enjoy reading and then dismiss as a noir novel about a disturbed individual. But, it won’t let you do that. All of us.

Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Us people.
All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All us folks. Me and Joyce Lakeland, and Johnny Pappas and Bob Maples and big ol’ Elmer Conway and little ol’ Amy Stanton. All of us.
All of us.

You meant so good and did so bad. It’s easy to acknowledge that your inner life is not what you present to the world. It is easy to acknowledge that the same must be true of other people. It is easy to conclude that you only know the mask the other people put on to meet you.

But, here is that part that is not so easy to acknowledge. If all of this is true: do you also put on a face to meet yourself? Do you know your own self? Do you know the killer inside you? Are you sure?

Becoming Immortal

Is the desire to be immortal a universal constant? I’ve never really thought about it like this before, but a combination of a short story by Hawthorne and a volume of short stories by Doyle, has me wondering about the desire for immortality.

Hawthorne’s “The Devil in Manuscript” is a quick tale of an author who cannot find a publisher (he lived in the pre-blog era) and in despair hurls his life’s work into a fireplace. A fire roars up in the fireplace, sending flame onto the roof, setting the building on fire. Commotion ensues throughout the town. And the story ends with the author exclaiming, “Here I stand—a triumphant author! Huzza! Huzza! My brain has set the town on fire! Huzza!” (Does anyone ever say “Huzza” anymore?)

It’s a nice little story that certainly captures the latent frustration of many an author. Indeed, there is no doubt that the number of frustrated authors, those who believe that their own work deserves a much wider attention from the world than it has earned, is vastly greater than the number of satisfied authors, a set which is likely to be very small indeed.

Now that I think of it—I suspect the most widely known authors may be among the most frustrated—after all, there is always more acclaim and readership possible.

At roughly the same time I read the Hawthorne story, I was finishing up Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The first thing I noticed in rereading it—despite all the claims of Holmes’ amazing deductive powers, the deductions necessary to solve his cases are amazingly small.

Holmes demonstrates vastly more deductive powers in the parlor trick of telling the person he is meeting something about said person’s activities or profession which Holmes deduced from some oddity in the person’s appearance or dress. Said person is always dutifully shocked. Watson expresses his amazement, at which point Holmes explains, allowing Watson to note with Chagrin that he (Watson) was just too daft to notice the obvious, unlike Holmes, who never misses a thing.

At any rate, as detective stories, there is surprisingly little detection in them. As parlor tricks, there is no reality there—there is no way Holmes could pull off his trick in real life.

But, then, presumably because I had just read Hawthorne, I noticed something else which is rather odd in the stories of Holmes’ exploits. Why is Watson there at all? Now I know why we need him to write the stories, but imagine it is real. Why does Holmes want Watson around? Holmes keeps claiming that Watson is useful to him, but Watson is rarely even remotely useful.

Then it dawned on me. Holmes wants Watson around not to help solve the crime, but to write about the solution afterwards. Holmes, who labors in obscurity pretending to care only about logic and deduction, wants the immortality of having his exploits sent down in print.

So, what is it about immortality that so appeals to people? What is this longing in the soul to want to live on after death?

Undoubtedly, it is a good thing—there is something hard-wired in living organisms to perpetuate the species by having offspring, and in humans that is obviously rationalized as a desire to have one’s DNA continue into the future. But, children are not really exactly like the parents and great-great-grandchildren are even less like them; children are a poor vehicle for immortality.

Then again, so are books. Consider Charles Dickens. I know about Charles Dickens. I know nothing about the kid who grew up one-quarter mile away from where Dickens lived when he was 7. Dickens has lived on in a sense that this other kid has not.

Yet, what difference does that make to Dickens now? He and that other kid are exactly the same level of dead. I suppose if both are ghosts wandering around the world, Dickens gets to go to cocktail parties of the dead and laugh at the other little kids who are totally unknown. But unless that is the picture of the afterlife, it is hard to see what benefit Dickens derives from having his books on my bookshelf.

Then back up. Why would it make an author happy to know that his books will be read over a century after his death? That it would make an author happy is undeniable. But why? Why should that matter? Why should it seem perfectly sensible that the author in Hawthorne’s story is thrilled that his work is having an effect even if the effect is undesirable?

Somewhere deep in the human heart, there is an obvious desire to live on and on and on. That desire finds its way out in curious ways. Homer’s heroes want to do acts of valor so people will still talk about them after they have traveled to Hades. Homer lives on and on by writing about those people.

So, now we know about both Achilles and Homer, but their paths to immortality were rather unalike. Would their persistence after death bring equal amounts of pleasure? Do people care why they continue to be known after death?

Is Benedict Arnold happy for being famous? Is Pilate?

Child of God

When I am asked to pick one contemporary author whose books are most likely to be called Great Books in a hundred years, the answer is easy. Cormac McCarthy.

The best thing about making predictions for 100 years from now, is that there is no chance of having to explain how I could have been so wrong.

Child of God is not McCarthy’s best novel, but it is brilliant in its laser–like precision in asking a question.

The novel is about a social outcast, a homeless guy who is loved by nobody, has no friends, no means of support, and no social capital. The novel opens when Lester (our protagonist) has his homestead sold after being taken by the county, presumably because friendless, jobless misfits have little ability to pay property taxes. Lester then wanders into the hills to live, with no means of support and few possessions of any type. Throughout the novel, he interacts with others, but never once does anyone treat him as anything much above subhuman. Yet, as McCarthy introduces Lester, we read:

To watch these things issuing from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps.

Much like yourself, indeed.

When you think about people like Lester, what do you feel? Do you have an obligation to love Lester? Is it your obligation to notice Lester? Do you have an obligation to help Lester? Because, you see, nobody else loves or cares for Lester; nobody else is going to help Lester. He is a child of God, much like yourself. So, what are your obligations toward Lester?

And, by the way, Lester is a necrophiliac. Does that change anything?

Oh, and he isn’t just a passive necrophiliac. Sure, his first girl was dead when he found her, but after that, he created the corpses himself. Does that change anything?

At what point does our friendless, loveless, social outcast deserve to be a friendless, loveless, social outcast? But, before you go dismissing Lester as something beneath notice, just remember he is a child of God…much like yourself perhaps. That sentence, which occurs on the second page of the novel, haunts the entire story.

One part of the Reader wants to dismiss Lester as something Other, but another part of the Reader knows the Truth. Deep down, are you really any better than Lester? Are any of us really any better than Lester? And before you hastily answer that yes indeed you are different, ponder what entitles you to be considered a Child of God while Lester is not.

Stephen Crane could have provided the epigraph to this novel.

I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
And carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, “Comrade! Brother!”

The End of Work

I once mentioned to a friend of mine that I was determined to read more Hermann Hesse.

He enthusiastically told me that I simply must read Beneath the Wheel, that it was by far his favorite book by what turns out to be one of his favorite authors.

I had no idea that Hesse was among anyone’s favorite authors, let alone someone I knew, let alone someone I knew who didn’t dress in all black with black earrings and black fingernail polish. (Truth be told, I have no idea why I associated Hesse with that particular type of person. Really no idea at all.)

You don’t have to hunt hard for the thesis of this book.

Nor did it occur to any of them that a fragile creature had been reduced to this state by virtue of school and the barbaric ambition of his father and his grammar-school teacher. Why was he forced to work until late at night during the most sensitive and precarious period of his life? Why purposely alienated from his friends in grammar school? Why deprived of needed rest and forbidden to go fishing? Why instilled with a shabby ambition? What had they not even granted him his well-deserved vacation after the examination?

Now the overworked little horse lay by the wayside, no longer of any use.

Yep, overworking young school children, turning the academic enterprise into drudgery and endless hours will destroy them. By about a third of the way into this book, you know it won’t end well.

My first thought: I wish some of my students would read this book. I have far too few students who know anything at all about the joy of learning. Too many college students treat school work as nothing other than tedious, arduous tasks. Why shouldn’t school be fun?

My second thought: my first thought is wrong. I wish some of my students would not read this book and actually learn that not all of life is having fun, but sometimes you have to, you know, work. Sometimes, you have to spend some long hours (yes, hours, not minutes) studying.

My third thought: one thought does not fit all.

My fourth thought: one thought does not fit any. As I ponder the book, I realize that I have a hard time connecting the details of our protagonist’s life with the modern age.

I have students who are too obsessed with grades, far too obsessed with grades, students who take no joy in school, who in one sense feel just like our protagonist in the way they see school work as something which chains you to a desk to learn ever more, but who seem to miss out on the rest of life because they are so obsessed with learning exactly what needs to be learned for a class and nothing else. But, it is rare that those are also the students who work the hardest in a class. (This may be a product of the place where I work; it may be different at other schools. Indeed, there is reason to think that it may be different elsewhere.)

I have other students who are a bit too obsessed with recreational activities, who take their school work lightly, and who could benefit from, you know, working. But those are rarely the students who are actually most enjoying their leisure; 14 hours of Netflix and social media per day is not as enjoyable as it might sound.

The longer I ponder this, the more I realize: the idea of work is dead in educational institutions. What is the proper end of work? I suspect very few students could offer an answer, even a bad answer, to that question.

And what about those of us who are no longer students? We work to earn a wage. For some of my friends, it is obvious what constitutes the end of their work. For college professors? Ah, therein lies the rub: what is the end to which the work of a college professor should strive?

Faith of the Unchurched

Is it possible to have faith in the existence of God and not know you have faith? At first glance, that question seems a bit odd. Surely you know if you have faith. Right?

Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case is a fascinating exploration of this question.

The protagonist is a world-famous Catholic architect, Querry, who shows up one day at a leper colony in the middle of the jungle in the Congo. Querry unrelentingly insists throughout the novel that he no longer has faith. Nobody believes him. The Catholic priests who run the leper colony, the atheist doctor who treats the lepers, the devout Catholic businessmen who is in awe of Querry, the journalist who tracks him down…none of them believe that Querry is anything other than the most devout Christian imaginable. Querry’s every action lends support to their faith that Querry has faith. Yet, Query says he doesn’t. Does he?

The title refers to the progress of leprosy. A patient has the disease and it runs its course, wreaking havoc with the body. After the disease has done all the damage it can do, the patient is released from the hospital as a burnt-out case; the disease has burnt itself out.

Querry is a burnt out case. Of that there is no doubt. But: what was the disease?

Is faith in God the disease and Querry has now suffered all he can from that belief and has now reached the end result which is unbelief? That is what Querry insists is true.

Or is unbelief the disease and Querry has now reached the end result which is belief, but he has not yet realized it?

It seems like it should be obvious which of those two things is the case, but the brilliance of the novel is that it is not clear at all.

The central question of this novel is of immense importance in the modern world. We see the constant lament that children who have grown up in the church have left the church. We see the rise of an entire generation which professes to have no religion. The common reaction to this state of affairs is the defensive cry asking how to bring this generation back to the church.

But, imagine for a second that many of the people in this generation who say they have no faith are wrong about their own beliefs. Imagine for a second they do have faith, they just don’t know it.

Why would this be? Imagine you grew up in a church which had entombed the message of the gospel, that the message of the church never felt alive to you. Imagine you confused your lack of attachment to the church of your youth with a lack of attachment to God. And then imagine that in your confusion, the church insisted that if you lacked attachment to the church, then you lacked attachment to God. What if you believed the church when you were told that?

If that is the case, and having talked with a large number of college students who grew up in the church, I suspect it is, then it calls for a radically new message.

The message needs to become: the church is flawed, it is full of sinners in need of the grace of Christ. If you think the church is flawed, then you are right. But, the failures of the church are not evidence of the nonexistence of God. You think you don’t believe in God, you think you don’t have faith that there is a God because the church seems so flawed, but consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, deep down inside, you do know there is a God.

As Querry thinks, and maybe even concludes: “The King is dead, long live the King.”