24 January 2010
A backlash against Emerson? Say it isn’t so. I reserve a great fondness for Ralph Waldo, great bard of Self-Trust. I’ve always found his philosophy of how to read — widely, freely, somewhat predatorily, taking what you can, discarding the rest, not getting bogged down by reverence for a static canon but approaching the canon with an “active soul” — particularly helpful and relevant in this Age of Information.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul…
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
-from “The American Scholar”
20 January 2010
And then, apropos of my last post, I read this article about a hip young liberal Manhattanite coming out of the Christian closet. Actually, I first heard it on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” which is even more interesting, i.e. that this topic got national radio play in addition to the piece at Salon.
Hmm….
I’m not sure how I feel about the author’s inclination toward the notion that it’s better just not to talk about religion:
Not long ago, I told a priest at my church that my friends equated religion with horrible things. I expected her to tell me I had some obligation to stop hiding my faith, but she said, pulling a scarf around her neck to hide her priest’s collar, “Those preachers on the subways make me cringe.” She said she prefers Saint Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”[…]
But faith and religion are hard to talk about; maybe they’re not necessary to talk about.
Well, thank God for fiction as a way to “talk.”
18 January 2010
Is it just me, or is Christianity making a comeback as an au courant cultural topic?
At Bookforum’s “Omnivore,” a sampling of reviews and articles about Christianity. All of them nonfiction-related. I’ve been beginning to think about my next project, and a collection of linked stories, in and around Christianity, is what seems to be rising to the surface. Hmm…
Which is a backhand way of also saying that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on Sebastian & Frederick (current word count ~84,000, projected word count ~100,000).
14 January 2010
A new(ish) documentary on legendary soul singer Bill Withers, called “Still Bill,” is terrific. I saw it at the Harlem Stage Theater — a gorgeous venue on the campus of City College — with a great crowd.
Special guests for Q&A were percussionist and Harlem native Ralph MacDonald (who also co-wrote “Just the Two of Us”) and filmmaker/producer Warrington Hudlin (HOUSE PARTY).
Mr. Withers is an engaging, complicated, and touching character, as documentary subjects go, and the filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack capture this well. Performance and interview footage of Withers from the ’70’s and ’80’s is well-chosen. Here’s a lil o’ Bill, performing his hit, “Ain’t No Sunshine.”
13 January 2010
Check out my essay at The Millions, “Sex, Seriously: James Salter Trumps the Great Male Novelists.”
I suspect it’s not the most comfortable topic for most people; maybe even less so for “the younger generation” that Katie Roiphe refers to in “The Naked and the Conflicted”, the article to which the essay responds.
According to the blog stats, the essay (posted yesterday) was widely read (or at least clicked); and yet little commented on. Hmm… I suppose this makes sense, i.e. in the essay I write that talking or writing “about” sex is like “dancing about architecture” (Elvis Costello said this, maybe). Still, I’m curious how readers feel/think about this topic. I did receive a few comments via personal email.
Thanks to Maud Newton for linking to the piece.
Update 1/18/10: comments rolled in, with some great reading suggestions.