Thoughts on Literature

“Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.”
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

My new favorite book: The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis. I've never read any of his literature outside of Chronicles of Narnia, so this was an entirely new experience for me. He is such a deep, profound thinker! And while I don't agree with absolutely everything he says, I have learned much about God, life, and myself through his insights. I also enjoyed a few laughs. :)

Lewis addresses what he designates as the four loves--Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity--within the context of the two main types of love--Need-love and Gift-love. He explains both the natural and supernatural aspects found in each (though Charity is only a result of the supernatural--Christ working in us). While much could be said about this book, I will just include my favorite quotation from it:

". . . as a better writer has said, our imitation of God in this life--that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states--must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but also of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions" (6).

If you're looking for a good intellectual, inspiring read, this may be the book for you! :D

War Horse

War Horse is a children's book by Michael Morpurgo. I just saw a non-children's movie based on it, and it was a well-done story. (Seriously, though, I don't think it should be for children.)

The reason I bring it to your attention is something the author said about its making:

One of the kids who came to the farm from Birmingham, a boy called Billy, years and years and years ago now, the teachers warned me that he had a stammer ... and told me not to ask him direct questions because it would terrify him if he had to be made to speak because he doesn’t speak. They said ‘He’s been two years in school and he hasn’t said a word, so please don’t confront him or he’ll run back to Birmingham’, which is a long way from Devon and they didn’t want that. So I did as I was told and I stood back and I watched him, and I could see that he related wonderfully to the animals, totally silently, never spoke to the other kids at all, and then I came in the last evening, which I always used to do, to read them a story. It was a dark November evening and I came into the yard behind this big Victorian house where they all live, and there he was, Billy, standing in his slippers by the stable door and the lantern above his head, talking. Talking, talking, talking, to the horse. And the horse, Hebe, had her head out of, just over the top of the stable, and she was listening, that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and she knew - I knew she knew - that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen, and I knew this was a two way thing, and I wasn’t being sentimental, and I stood there and I listened, then I went and got the teachers, and brought them up through the vegetable garden, and we stood there in the shadows, and we listened to Billy talking, and they were completely amazed how this child who couldn’t get a word out, the words were simply flowing. All the fear had gone, and there was something about the intimacy of this relationship, the trust was building up between boy and horse, that I found enormously moving, and I thought, Well yes, you could write a story about the First World War through the eyes of a horse, let the horse tell the story, and let the story of the war come through the soldiers: British soldiers first of all, then German soldiers, then a French family with whom the horse spends winters, and that maybe you’ll then get a universal idea of the suffering of the First World War. So in a way I just took a gamble and went for it, and then wrote like a horse for about six months.

More? Here.

The Wood Beyond the World

Read this. It's pretty good.

It's an adventure.

A Tippy Canoe and Canada Too

As soon as I finished "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo -- and Still-Mo" I reached for the next book in the series "A Tippy Canoe and Canada Too," which Jonathan had recently completed. Again Campbell's tales of his neighbouring animal friends entertained me, along with the new young human friend he makes. But the parts I most enjoyed, all the pages I earmarked to write about, came during a canoe trip Campbell, his wife, Giny, and their solider friend, Sandy, took up to the Canadian lake region in the last half of the book. I could say more, but I think I'll just leave the book to do the talking.

Some of these quotes spoke to me, some made me ponder, and still others made me think in new ways. And a few of them I just plain loved.

"Sometimes we forget in our habits of living that insulation works both ways. The fine structure of homes that keeps out weather and temperature, keeps us in as well. Seldom can we think beyond our walls. The seething, natural world of winds and wild ways is pictured as a kind of enemy against which we must fortify ourselves. The thicker the walls the greater our protection -- but the deeper our confinement. One is nearer to nature in a house than in a great hotel. The separation is thinner still in a tent, where only a layer of cloth lies between us and the universe. Thought can filter through the warp and woof of the canvas and mingle with trees and stars. Sounds can come in. We get within speaking distance of nature in a tent. However, the feeling that we are 'a part of all our eyes behold' really comes when all invented dwellings are thrust aside, and we sleep under the star-studded canopy of heaven." (pp. 179-180)

"...but problems are purposeful because they offer the opportunity for triumph."
"Our minds were ready to receive great thoughts in such surroundings. One's wealth in this world is measured by his thinking."
"Whatever work a person does in life, his success really is rated by the character he has developed." (pp. 212 & 214)

"What a vast vault memory must be to take in such a volume of experiences and still offer room for as much more."
"In every way it surpassed our expectations, as reality always does." (p. 233)

"My inclination, after years of observation, is never to charge anything to chance in nature. It is all cause and effect. Intelligence, often of a higher order than what we call reasoning, guides the people of the forest. As a rule, I believe the best thing happens that could happen under each circumstance." (p. 237)

"When beauty reaches such heights there isn't really anything to say -- you just have to look and love." (p. 242)

Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo -- and Still-Mo

Since the summer of 2009, I've keep a record of the books I've read, creatively calling my spreadsheet "Books Read List." The other day, after finishing Sam Campbell's "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo -- and Still-Mo" I opened my spreadsheet to document my completed book. The sight that greeted my eyes was dismal, to say the least. And here's why: since getting back from Tanzania at the end of April, I have only read four complete books. FOUR! In more than four months! That is disturbing, despairaging (a good word for this situation), and despicable! And you want to hear the really, really ugly news? (You probably don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway.) I read only one full book between returning from Africa and my wedding on August 1. The only other book I attempted to read before the wedding was started on May 3, but not completed until August 16. I feel like a failure of a reader...and this from a self-proclaimed readaholic!

On the brighter side of this appalling realization, since returning from my honeymoon, I've read three books and started two others (which I have yet to finish and probably won't for awhile since they belonged to someone else and I just picked them up to look at while camping -- hopefully I can get to a library sometime soon to check them out and finish them). Those statistics are starting to sound a little better, right? Phew! Can't wait to get fully back into my readaholic ways. :)

And now, after all that preamble, here's what I really meant to say about the first book I've started and completed since my wedding:
When Jonathan and I were packing to go down to New Jersey and visit his grandparents, I looked around his bookshelves for a few books to supplement my own reading materials. My eyes caught sight of the Sam Campbell series and I grabbed the first couple books in the lineup. The first time I'd heard of Sam Campbell was when my sister was in grade 5 and had a teacher who loved Sam Campbell's books and read them to the class during reading time. She would come home to repeat the stories at our dinner table. After her lavish storytelling, I noticed the series in our library, but figured I didn't need to read the books myself since I already knew most of the details from Bryn's suppertime anecdotes. Boy was I wrong! Once I opened the first book (which I only found out later was really the third book in the series - they weren't in the right order on Jonathan's shelf...), I was enthralled. Yes, Sam Campbell's writing style might be a bit old-fashioned, but the books were published in the 1940s. I actually think his writing is completely appropriate for the subject matter. His animal descriptions are so spot-on that any reader will be able to imagine the exact motions and mannerisms of each animal. Campbell's descriptions of the setting -- usually his little island Sanctuary or the lakes, rivers or forest trails surrounding it -- are vivid and beautiful, pulling the reader back into the wilderness where fascination and wonder were born. I loved reading about the "Squints," the five orphaned baby squirrels that Campbell, his wife and their young visitor raise to adolescence and release back into the wild. Probably my favourite part of the whole story about the Squints is how well the human caregivers knew their wild pets. After an initial phase of spray-paint identification, they spent so much time with the baby squirrels that once the spray paint wore off they could consistently tell the five siblings apart by their specific features, attitudes and mannerisms. I have to say, I'm quite hooked on Sam Campbell now and have already started reading the next book in the series, "A Tippy Canoe and Canada, Too."

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book:

"Then came one of those periods of silence which are as much a part of true companionship as conversation. Sometimes I think of this as one of the tests of true friendship. With acquaintances we must always be saying something, and silence seems to be evidence of indifference or disinterest. But with a friend who is proved real and true, we are not afraid of the wordless moments. Sometimes it is then that the heart speaks plainest." (p. 142)

Campbell asks his young friend, Duke, if he has ever looked up the word alone or knows its derivative. When Duke answers no, Campbell explains:

"It is made up of two little words glued together: all and one. Our natural desire to be alone is that we instinctively want to be all one, that is, complete in ourselves, no part of our true selfhood lacking. Among people, we have so many little nips taken out of us, and we are always reacting some way or other to the opinions people hold of us. This leads us to feel incomplete, sometimes to be something other than what we are -- at least, not the complete one we have been created. Your thought is calling for you to be all one, your complete selfhood, which you can see clearest when you are alone and quiet. You are going back in the woods not to sweep up little pieces of yourself and paste them together, but to get rid of things in your mind, little illusions that say you have lost some part of your individuality. You need to be, and you are alone -- all one." (p. 147)

While Campbell and Duke watch a dragonfly in its larva stage become a full-grown insect:

"'Wouldn't it be grand if we could climb out of some of our mental shells that way?' Duke was saying. 'Boy, if we could leave our sorrows, our regrets, our envies and hatreds like that -- what a world we would see!'
'Right, Duke!' It was fine to see this boy thinking his way through. 'And experience shows that people can climb out of those old skeletons when they try. We don't have to drag along these worn-out garments of our old ways of thinking if we do not want to.'" (pp. 173-174)
"'Do you know, Duke, I wonder if it isn't that way with us,' I said. 'The insect pulled out of an old skeleton, left it behind and went flying away to a greater way of living. If nature so takes care of his future, it seems certain that it will look after us in some such manner, too.'" (pp. 175-176)

"All you birds and beasts, get busy at your woodland lives! You trees and flowers, you sunsets and dawns, you stars and rainbows that make life lovely, live on in increasing splendor! You mountains, hills, valleys, lakes and streams, get out your grandeur! Enrich all solitude, deepen all silence. It is within your sacred power to point the thoughts of tired people to God." (p. 237)

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie

This teen flick is set in Australia, which I think is pretty cool. It's written as a collection of journal entries/musings/assignments, sort of like Love That Dog, which I also think is pretty cool. It was written by Jaclyn Moriarty, which is very, very cool indeed.

(Why are you still reading this? MORIARTY IS A WOMAN, AND SHE WROTE THIS BOOK! GO GET A COPY NOW! )

Still reading? Okay, then. It's about a girl who is extreme. She is the best at everything, lives in the 99th percentile (there IS no 100th percentile), and is just generally superlative. The other characters are pretty much typical teenagers.

The story tells what happens when Bindy finds herself part of a FAD ("Friendship and Development") class-- something new the administration has added this year (led by a tiny teacher named "Try"). This is difficult for her because she doesn't exactly have what people would call "friends." So she gets to know a bunch of people, intensely dislikes them, and hijinks ensue.

I'm not really giving this story enough credit. I liked it. The ending was not typical (did I mention that MORIARTY wrote it?). I'd tell you more, but I think you should go read it for yourself.