Big Books

Books should not be too big. A big book is too often like one of those "pan for gold" attractions in the Rocky Mountains: a few bright chips amid much sand and water.
-- Seaweed Shark

Words

I like words. They are, after our bodies, pretty much our first playthings.
-- Seaweed Shark

The Function of Poetry

"'What is the use or function of poetry nowadays?' is a question not the less poignant for being defiandy asked by so many stupid people or apologetically answered by so many silly people. The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites. But 'nowadays'? Function and use remain the same; only the application has changed. This was once a warning to man that he must keep in harmony with the family of living creatures among which he was born, by obedience to the wishes of the lady of the house; it is now a reminder that he has disregarded the warning, turned the house upside down by capricious experiments in philosophy, science and industry, and brought ruin on himself and his family."

Robert Graves

The Fall of Rome and the Rise of Islam

A friend shared a link to Tom Holland's recent article in the Guardian, about the Fall of Rome and the rise of Islam.

I thought it very good: Holland is a fine writer. In true Blogger fashion I have some half-digested thoughts to share.

I always understood that among Sci-Fi fans, "the Mule" in the Foundation Trilogy has long been understood as an unflattering portrait of L. Ron Hubbard, whose inauguration of a science fiction religion had roughly the same effect on North American SF fans that Muhammad's revelation had on the post-classical world.

It seems astounding that Holland manages to all but ignore the fact that the Roman Empire was mostly replaced by Christian societies, not Islamic. Those Greek Egyptians who received that invoice for sheep that he mentions, were not exactly members of some pagan cult: Egypt had been Christian for 300 years by that time.

Then he also neglects to mention what may be the most interesting thing about Asimov and Herbert, which is that their books have scant or no Christian content. People had been writing novels about the Fall of Rome for hundreds of years -- you could fill a whole library with such books, though they are all unread today. I used to own one that I picked out of a dollar bin in Texas: a big fat elegant blue-backed thing from the 1890s with gold-edged pages and a pompous kind of title like "Sunlight and Shadow" or some such, execrably written by a dull and no-doubt fat 19th century Evangelical minister, and all about the spiritual awakening of some Roman aristocrat's beautiful daughter with milk-white skin and sexy lips, as she becomes attracted to the persecuted sect in the catacombs, falls under the sway of its compelling bearded bishop, and learns to recognize her True Lord in Christ. "Quo Vadis" is another such book, far more famous. Now why would Tom Holland make no mention of this?

He doesn't say much about Star Wars either, perhaps because its narrative of political rebellion, which could certainly be classical or proto-Christian, doesn't fit the pattern. How true, that what people don't say can reveal as much as what they do. "In other regions ... there are even more haunting silences." Indeed.

Holland's connection of late Roman catastrophe to Tolkien's Middle Earth history, by way of Arthurian romance, is ingenious, perhaps not ironclad but insightful. Tolkien's book does achieve much of its effect by its background reference to sprawling, ancient ruined places, to regions once beautiful and cultivated but now waste, grown up with tangled forest and now the haunt of murderous creatures. Schooled on such works, we want our ruins vast and gloomy. The real ruins scattered about the Holy Land almost always disappoint, in part because they are so small and beaten down, and washed in sun.

What myths will we tell ourselves, who live in a world where nothing can be conceded as true unless it is subject to measurement?

Facts Absorbed Without Context

"Facts absorbed without context merely magnify the intellectual deficiencies of the autodidact."
Joe Queenan, New York Times, 3 October 2004

The People Without Stories

The fact that we tell stories is a symptom of our predicament. Gossip stories, adventure stories. We need them, yet they have a pernicious effect on us. Blessed would be the people without stories, if any such existed.

Dangerous Stories

"Some stories are extremely dangerous, but not in the way most people believe: not because they refer to socially uncomfortable issues and facts. They are dangerous because they teach us to think in the wrong way about our problems."
N.N. Scott, in conversation, (2004)

Books Should Not Be Too Big

"Books should not be too big. A big book resembles one of those panning-for-gold tourist attractions in the Rocky Mountains: a few flakes of gold amid much sand and water."
N.N. Scott, 2006

A Good Ending

"The story should end where the next story most logically begins. A good ending is a good beginning."
(from one of my notebooks, 2006)

Too Complex to Study

"Physics [...] restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists ... and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties."
Noam Chomsky, New Scientist, 19 March 2012

Stories of Ourselves

Art loses its way when what is right and wrong cease to matter, when our views become no more than stories of ourselves.
N.N. Scott

Made for War

The creature made for war who nevertheless yearns for peace is an emblem of the body, which was created for war with the world.
N.N. Scott (see Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, introductory aphorism XXIV)

The People of Victoria (Parody of Gibran)

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on ...

So spoke Fitzgerald's Persian bard,
And the people of Victoria heard him and sighed,
And thought unto themselves “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,”
And turned again to contemplate, now sad, their ­railway timetables.

Alan Jacobs, First Things, November 2007

We are Always Resolving to Live

"'We are always resolving to live, and yet never set about life in good earnest.' Archimedes was not singular in his fate; but a great part of mankind die unexpectedly, while they are poring upon the figures they have described in the sand."
Robert Leighton (1611-1684), quot in S.T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1825)

The Port to Which He is Bound

"But to him that knoweth not the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favourable; neither can he who has not yet determined at what mark he is to shoot, direct his arrow aright."
Robert Leighton (1611-1684), quot in S.T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1825)