20 June, 2006
19 June, 2006
I am still alive, and I am still reading.
I finished Amusing Ourselves to Death last month, just in time to read it with my friends for book club.
I finished Moll Flanders last month, too; it had a surprisingly redemptive ending.
I bought Technopoly by Neil Postman; I couldn't help it. It's quite good so far.
I have 13 books checked out from the library. And 5 borrowed from the Badgermum's library. Will I never learn?
On a slightly different topic, I have decided that my favourite place to be is at R & C's house, sitting on the front porch with E in my lap. On the porch swing, of course. Porch swings and rocking chairs are my favourite items of furniture.
To end, here's something I found in my e-mail archives:
When R & C were here we had a long argument about whether or not Jane Austen was a Christian. R was very passionate, and I was angry, until I asked him if he had ever even read any of her books. When he said no, I had to laugh. After that, he had nothing to say that would sway me. And when he began to rail against Rev. Leithart (re: his book on Austen), I asked if he had bothered to read that one either--no again. I was triumphant. That's what he gets for arguing from ignorance.
_________________________
In Defense of Jane
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 21, 2005 at 08:22 PM
Reformed writer Andrew Sandlin is taking on Jane Austen:
"I first saw with Jim West the 1995 theatrical permutation of Sense and Sensibility (starring Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson) at its initial release. I disliked it then and deplore it now. In seeing this movie again on TV yesterday I was reminded how I've come increasingly to abominate much of the Victorian era — its conventions, sleights, artificialities, prejudices, scientism, formalism, class structure, hypocritical morality, and sublimated ferocity."
I suppose it's a sign of my own enthrallment to Victorian sensibilities that I rise to the lady's defense. But I am constrained. For starters, Austen was safely in her grave before Victoria came to her throne, so her books do not qualify as Victorian. She lived through the era of romanticism (which Sandlin endorses in his short discussion) and she was not untouched by its sensibility. She writes like Samuel Johnson, but there's a romantic spark running throughout her work.
Besides, one should hardly form an opinion about Jane from those who put her novels on film. Her best qualities as a writer are her wit, style, and social commentary - not things that translate easily to an hour-long visual medium. More importantly perhaps, no one can read far in Austen without recognizing that she abominates conventions, sleights, artificialities, prejudices, etc, etc. She is one of the best social satirists in English - far more devastating and subtle than Dickens (who actually was Victorian).
One of the oddest bits in Sandlin's discussion was this: "I have come to believe that there is no substitute for simple, immediate, unadorned, direct, blunt, bottom-line living." Surely, Sandlin has read deeply enough in postmodernism to know that someone who chooses to live in a simple and unadorned and direct manner has not foregone conventions; the simple and unadorned man simply chooses another set of conventions, a different ordering that is no less artificial than Edwardsean or Victorian refinements. Nakedness is a sartorial choice.
To all of Jane's detractors, I say: Unhand the lady.
__________________
I finished Moll Flanders last month, too; it had a surprisingly redemptive ending.
I bought Technopoly by Neil Postman; I couldn't help it. It's quite good so far.
I have 13 books checked out from the library. And 5 borrowed from the Badgermum's library. Will I never learn?
On a slightly different topic, I have decided that my favourite place to be is at R & C's house, sitting on the front porch with E in my lap. On the porch swing, of course. Porch swings and rocking chairs are my favourite items of furniture.
To end, here's something I found in my e-mail archives:
When R & C were here we had a long argument about whether or not Jane Austen was a Christian. R was very passionate, and I was angry, until I asked him if he had ever even read any of her books. When he said no, I had to laugh. After that, he had nothing to say that would sway me. And when he began to rail against Rev. Leithart (re: his book on Austen), I asked if he had bothered to read that one either--no again. I was triumphant. That's what he gets for arguing from ignorance.
_________________________
In Defense of Jane
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 21, 2005 at 08:22 PM
Reformed writer Andrew Sandlin is taking on Jane Austen:
"I first saw with Jim West the 1995 theatrical permutation of Sense and Sensibility (starring Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson) at its initial release. I disliked it then and deplore it now. In seeing this movie again on TV yesterday I was reminded how I've come increasingly to abominate much of the Victorian era — its conventions, sleights, artificialities, prejudices, scientism, formalism, class structure, hypocritical morality, and sublimated ferocity."
I suppose it's a sign of my own enthrallment to Victorian sensibilities that I rise to the lady's defense. But I am constrained. For starters, Austen was safely in her grave before Victoria came to her throne, so her books do not qualify as Victorian. She lived through the era of romanticism (which Sandlin endorses in his short discussion) and she was not untouched by its sensibility. She writes like Samuel Johnson, but there's a romantic spark running throughout her work.
Besides, one should hardly form an opinion about Jane from those who put her novels on film. Her best qualities as a writer are her wit, style, and social commentary - not things that translate easily to an hour-long visual medium. More importantly perhaps, no one can read far in Austen without recognizing that she abominates conventions, sleights, artificialities, prejudices, etc, etc. She is one of the best social satirists in English - far more devastating and subtle than Dickens (who actually was Victorian).
One of the oddest bits in Sandlin's discussion was this: "I have come to believe that there is no substitute for simple, immediate, unadorned, direct, blunt, bottom-line living." Surely, Sandlin has read deeply enough in postmodernism to know that someone who chooses to live in a simple and unadorned and direct manner has not foregone conventions; the simple and unadorned man simply chooses another set of conventions, a different ordering that is no less artificial than Edwardsean or Victorian refinements. Nakedness is a sartorial choice.
To all of Jane's detractors, I say: Unhand the lady.
__________________
10 June, 2006
Books, of course.
I'm not doing much better on the book-reading front...I finished five books in May, and I still haven't finished Lorna Doone. But it's a new month, and I'll try to read more so I can catch up to last year.
Last month I read St. Ives, by R.L. Stevenson, which was a very good story about a French prisoner of war held in Edinburgh; Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry; Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, which our ladies' book club will be reading; Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, about a harlot who repents, kinda; and The Hermit of Eyton Forest (a Cadfael mystery), by Edith Pargeter.
This month I would like to finish reading Lorna Doone and The Marble Faun (Hawthorne), and work pretty hard on the books on my lists in the sidebar. We'll see how that works out.
I leave you with a quote from The Way of Ignorance, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry:
'The rugged individualism of the left believes that an individual's body is a property belonging to that individual absolutely: the owners of bodies may, by right, use them as they please, as if there were no God, no legitimate government, no community, no neighbors, and no posterity. This supposed right is manifested in the democratizing of "sexual liberation"; in the popular assumption that marriage has been "privatized" and so made subordinate to the wishes of individuals; in the proposition that the individual is "autonomous"; in the legitimation of abortion as birth control--in the denial, that is to say, that the community, the family, one's spouse, or even one's own soul might exercise a legitimate proprietary interest in the use one makes of one's body.'
Last month I read St. Ives, by R.L. Stevenson, which was a very good story about a French prisoner of war held in Edinburgh; Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry; Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, which our ladies' book club will be reading; Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, about a harlot who repents, kinda; and The Hermit of Eyton Forest (a Cadfael mystery), by Edith Pargeter.
This month I would like to finish reading Lorna Doone and The Marble Faun (Hawthorne), and work pretty hard on the books on my lists in the sidebar. We'll see how that works out.
I leave you with a quote from The Way of Ignorance, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry:
'The rugged individualism of the left believes that an individual's body is a property belonging to that individual absolutely: the owners of bodies may, by right, use them as they please, as if there were no God, no legitimate government, no community, no neighbors, and no posterity. This supposed right is manifested in the democratizing of "sexual liberation"; in the popular assumption that marriage has been "privatized" and so made subordinate to the wishes of individuals; in the proposition that the individual is "autonomous"; in the legitimation of abortion as birth control--in the denial, that is to say, that the community, the family, one's spouse, or even one's own soul might exercise a legitimate proprietary interest in the use one makes of one's body.'
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