why dave bergman is neat

Of a book, that is. Since I've finished ye olde exams, I've had some time to do some non-school reading, and much of it has been very enjoyable. Since I'm into lists at the moment, here's a little list of some of the items, and comments and suggestions are welcome--always looking for interesting stuff.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood. This is the first book I've read by O'Connor. Stylistically, it was of a high-order. I'm not sure I understand what she is trying to say--my only assistance in that regard comes from a prefatory note (written in 1962) from O'Connor herself, which reads:

Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

In spite of my failure to fully grasp the work, it was engaging and thought-provoking reading nonetheless.

Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Murder in Mesopotamia. The wiffle and I read these two aloud on the drive from PA to MI and in various other phases of transit. They're like episodes of Law and Order with a bigger vocabulary, gratuitous use of French phrases, and sometime awkward diction. They are page turners par excellence (to gratuitously throw in a little French myself). I found that I like the 'mystery' genre immensely.

P.G. Wodehouse, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves. This was also my first encounter with Wodehouse, and I must say that this is the most entertaining book I have read in a long, long time. I suppose that by O'Connor's definition mentioned above, Stiff Upper Lip cannot count as a 'comic novel', because it is not serious, and it certainly is not about matters of life and death. Still, even if this stringent standard is applied and the novel is not comic, at the very least it is decidedly comical, and Wodehouse's mastery of the English language is stunning. Again, there are a lot of French phrases in it, so the French gives a nice consistency to the first three entries on this list! For those interested, I think I first became interested in reading Wodehouse from this essay by Roger Kimball.

An interesting post from John Kekes here regarding the question in the subject line. One tantalizing excerpt:

Autonomy is thought to be necessary but not sufficient for a good life because reasonable understanding and evaluation may turn out to be mistaken and because adverse external conditions, such as injustice, accident, or illness, may stand in the way. Autonomy is also claimed to be necessary for being a responsible moral agent because only such agents are capable of evaluating their actions and understanding the significance of the choices they make. So understood, autonomy is held to be the ideal that reasonable and morally committed people ought to aim at.

There is no doubt that this is an attractive ideal and that countless people in contemporary Western societies passionately believe in it. Many philosophers aim to give a precise account of what autonomy involves and with specifying the social conditions that must be met to enable individuals to exercise their autonomy. They regard autonomy as the pivot on which morality and politics turn. The ideal of autonomy is nevertheless a shibboleth because the central moral and political importance attributed to it is based on a passionate but obviously false belief.

The wiffle and I had a rather distressing experience this morning. Via our friend Bill, we had learned of some Protestant churches in the area with English-language services. So we picked one and decided to try it today: St. Andrew's Church (Church of Scotland). Since its denomination is Church of Scotland, it is Presbyterian, and I for one was looking forward to a Presbyterian service in English in the solidly Biblical tradition to which I've become accustomed.

We entered the small building and got bulletins. On the back of the bulletin was this statement:

From the Church of Scotland have developed the English-speaking Presbyterian and Reformed Churches throughout the world. The supreme rule of faith and life of the Church, which is both Catholic and Reformed, is the Word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

So far, so good, I thought. A church that keeps the Word of God in its rightful place.

One can perhaps imagine my surprise, then, during the 'Readings' segment of the service. In between a reading from Isaiah and a reading from Matthew, both done by a member of the congregation, the minister stood to do a reading. He prefaced it by saying that we didn't have a Psalm this week, but that he would instead read something by Sherpa Tenzing, who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary in climbing Mt. Everest. I thought this was rather odd; my Bible still includes 150 Psalms, and there was plenty to choose from. But instead, sandwiched between two passages from the Bible was an extra-Biblical--and not only extra-Biblical, but non-Christian--reading, de facto elevated to the status of God's Holy Revelation by its placement in the service. If you think I'm overstating the strategic importance of the positioning of this travesty, perhaps it will also be useful to know that he followed the reading from Sherpa Tenzing with an 'Amen', and that it was the only reading that the minister himself did.

One of the main points of the Sherpa reading seemed to me to be the 'validity of all faiths' shtick, which, for one thing, flies in the face of orthodox Christian doctrine in general and, for another, flies in the face of God's exclucivist pronouncement in the Isaiah passage that had just been read (45:1-7):

1 "This is what the LORD says to his anointed,
to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of
to subdue nations before him
and to strip kings of their armor,
to open doors before him
so that gates will not be shut:

2 I will go before you
and will level the mountains [a] ;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.

3 I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the LORD,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

4 For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen,
I summon you by name
and bestow on you a title of honor,
though you do not acknowledge me.

5 I am the LORD, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,

6 so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
men may know there is none besides me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other.

7 I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

At any rate, the cognitive dissonance caused by this Sherpa reading vis-a-vis Scripture, and its incongruity with the church's own statement in the bulletin, was more than a little distracting.

Harumph.

'Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.'

(Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, p. 35)

'Orbison, though, transcended all the genres--folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his early songs, "Ooby Dooby," had been popular previously, but this new song of his was nothing like that. "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you mutter to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs withing songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious--no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him. I'd listen and wait for another song, but next to Roy the playlist was strictly dullsville...gutless and flabby. It all came at you like you didn't have a brain.'

(Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, p. 33)

'I was born in the spring of 1941. The Second World War was already raging in Europe, and America would soon be in it. The world was being blown apart and chaos was already driving its fist into the face of all new visitors. If you were born around this time or were living and alive, you could feel the old world go and the new one beginning. It was like putting the clock back to when B.C. became A.D. Everybody born around my time was a part of both. Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt--towering figures that the world would never see the likes of again, men who relied on their own resolve, for better or worse, every one of them prepared to act alone, indifferent to approval--indifferent to wealth or love, all presiding over the destiny of mankind and reducing the world to rubble. Coming from a long line of Alexanders and Julius Caesars, Genghis Khans, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, they carved up the world like a really dainty dinner. Whether they parted their hair in the middle or wore a Viking helmet, they would not be denied and were impossible to reckon with--rude barbarians stampeding across the earth and hammering out their own ideas of geography.'

(Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, pp. 28-9)

the pistons had their first pre-season game on tuesday night in grand rapids, and were victorious over the chicago bulls with an 87-76 victory. 'sheed led the team with 15 points and 8 rebounds, and ben wallace contributed 11 points and 7 rebounds. i'm pretty sure one of our loyal readers was at the game, so perhaps she can tell us more about it!

before coming over here, i picked up the new scorsese dylan documentary. when it aired on PBS, i only caught a few minutes of it and wanted to see the whole thing. i started watching it with my brother and the wiffle the other day, and i think i was most of the way through part 1, and that's as far as i've gotten so far. it's really good so far, and if there's one thing i've learned, it is that allen ginsberg really was WEIRD. there's some interesting stuff on how driven dylan was to get heard and become famous (to the point of fabricating his past at times), and there is some awesome live footage of 60s performances, including the 1966 breakout show in newcastle, which got him dubbed a judas and a traitor by those not quite ready to trade in their folk for rock 'n roll. there is also some really cool footage of odetta, whose voice will knock your socks off; in my bro's opinion, she had the best voice of all the performers in the part of the documentary we watched.

and speaking of dylan, the wiffle and i just had 'blonde on blonde' on while playing cribbage. it doesn't matter how many times i listen to that album--i still think it is great, except that i still don't understand how 'rainy day women #12 and 35' fits in with the rest of the album. but it is my opinion that that album and 'highway 61 revisited' are the two peaks of his genius, lyrically and musically.

and speaking of listening to an album lots and lots of times and 'highway 61', on the plane ride over here one of the airplane radio stations was playing 'highway 61' and the beatles' 'rubber soul' in turn throughout the plane ride. i listened for a long time.

sorry i haven't posted anything here in a while--but the wiffle and i have been posting some things here.

thanks to matthew for keeping things going.