I’m full of updates, or maybe I’m just more susceptible to spotting denouements as another psychic year draws to a hot end.

Nash never got that grant from The Old Farmer’s Almanac to study a connection between cow arrangements and long-term weather forecasting.  Instead, he has been taking advantage of his sales territory along I-81 to volunteer for Virginia Tech's biology department.  He amounts to Google’s eyes up and down the Valley on cloudy days when cow photos from space are difficult to snap.  Nash’s field reports may one day help determine the feasibility of replacing compasses with cows.

He hopes Tech will spring for an overseas trip he’d take early next year to discover why Scottish cattle seem to ignore the north-south alignment favored by cattle of other nations.

Ultimately, though, Nash would like to stop volunteering for scientists and to start working alone again as he did when he first met his farmer friend years ago.

“The scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle, but could tell that the animals tended to face either north or south,” according to BBC News.

“North and south are like poles apart on a compass,” Nash told me.  “Those scientists don’t know a cow’s ass from its antlers.”

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Posted August 26, 2008.  Link to just this post.

another voice

[I sent the following email today to Nancy Schnog, a high school English teacher in the D.C. area.]

I teach ninth grade English at X High School in X County. I've run into the same reactions from students -- often my brightest students -- that you describe your students having to literary essay assignments in your article in today's Washington Post. It was gratifying to read about your experiences and conclusions.

I published an article earlier this year in the Virginia Writing Project's Journal criticizing the literary analysis essay assignment in ninth grade English classes. (You can find the online version of the article here.) My journey to this essay's roots began when a bright student (not quite as articulate as the student with whom you maintained an email correspondence, though!) told me how analyzing literature was ruining it for her.

Your article, of course, addresses our schools' assigned reading selections more than it does their assigned essays about literature. Thanks for raising your voice about both of these important issues.

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Posted August 24, 2008.  Link to just this post.

i, a protestant, at the coptic church

I am a mustang seated
in the stands
of a horse show

Or an old stray
at a dog show
smelling the slack leashes

My dna stirs to
my creed’s core
I feel here what
I couldn’t grasp

I am a wild plant
stunted and fazed
by a lattice covered
with angels of roses

Or I am Absalom’s ghost –
an unsensed, ebbing
essence – jealous only
for my father’s tears

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Posted August 19, 2008.  Link to just this post.

the McLaughlin Bible

Lectio divina is reading for the heart, so my mind needs something to occupy it while I’m trying to meditate.  Otherwise, my mind stands outside barking like a dog at every passing worry, project, to-do item, obsession, or imagination.  All that barking distracts my heart.  So this summer I’ve thrown my mind a bone: here, boy, write the McLaughlin Bible.

My mind loves a good fight, so when I meditate on a psalm, I let my favorite English versions compete for each phrase of the psalm.  In the process of going over five versions of each phrase, my mind slows down enough and focuses just enough to read a psalm the way Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade advised the nuns under his pastoral care to read:

Read quietly, slowly, word for word to enter into the subject more with the heart than with the mind. . . . From time to time make short pauses to allow these truths time to flow through all the recesses of the soul and to give occasion for the Holy Spirit who, during these peaceful pauses and times of silent attention, engraves and imprints these heavenly truths in the heart. . . . Should this peace and rest last for a longer time it will be all the better.  When you find that your mind wanders, resume your reading and continue thus, frequently renewing these same pauses.  [From de Caussade’s book The Sacrament of the Present Moment]

It’s hard for me to get that quiet by just reading a familiar passage slowly.  But by reading a passage in five translations and picking out a favorite translation of each phrase, I trick myself into reading slowly enough for one version of the phrase to sink in a little.  And if the phrase hits me, I stop and either pray it or at least think about it some more. If it doesn’t hit me, I just go on to the five translations of the next phrase.

The idea is to meditate; meanwhile, my mind is cutting and pasting the winning phrases into my own version of the psalm.  If I do this for eighty-five more years, this monkey-mind residue may add up to an entire copyright-infringing Bible.  I’d call it the McLaughlin Bible, named after the McLaughlin Group, the talking-heads panel that discusses politics on TV.

Each panelist on McLaughlin has his strengths, blind sides, and axes to grind.  Once you get to know the panelists, then you may get something approaching a well-rounded view of the news they’re discussing.  (I cling to the idea that it’s possible to get at the truth through an adversarial proceeding. Maybe it’s the old trial lawyer in me.)

I have all five Bible versions on the computer screen in columns using Accordance software.  Here are my versions, in order of seniority:

The Geneva Bible, based mainly on Tyndale’s Bible and associated with dissenters such as Calvinists and Puritans, was the most popular Bible in England from just after its first publication in 1560 until several decades after the King James Bible was published.  The laity (including Shakespeare) loved its punchy language, and scholars liked its accuracy.

The Bishops’ Bible, which was first published in 1568, was the Establishment’s first answer to the Geneva Bible.  It never caught on.  The committees of translators responsible for various books didn’t look hard at the individual ways each committee was translating the original words into English, so the Bible felt choppy.  It seems to add words frequently in order to make sense of the text, and it does so without the italics that the King James and the New American Standard use for the same purpose.  I love many of the Bishops’ Bible’s turns of phrase, though.  It seems like an original compared with the Geneva Bible and the King James, which often gang up against it.

The odd phrasing of the King James Bible compared with that of the more approachable Geneva Bible kept the Geneva the more popular translation in England until at least the late seventeenth century, but the King James’s more modern spelling and usage helped it eventually to displace the Geneva Bible.  Most of the King James’s beautiful language is borrowed from its predecessor English versions.  I’m more familiar with this version than any other, so it begins most panel debates during my meditations.  The KJV likes to use different English words for the same Hebrew or Greek word in the interest of improving the text’s sound and beauty.  Draft translations were read orally in plenary meetings of translators, which helped to keep the focus on how the version sounded in public readings.

Jumping ahead to the twentieth century, the New American Standard Bible, which emphasizes word-for-word translation at the expense of any sense of mellifluence, usually reads like an updated King James Bible except where to do so would be misleading in current English or just plain wrong, based on modern research.  Having the NAS on my panel is like having the accountant or the engineer or the lawyer at a board of directors meeting: before the board signs off on something, the chairman asks, “Can we do that?”  If the NAS nods its approval, I’m ready to copy and paste.

The Revised English Bible is often more beautiful than even the Bishops' Bible to me.  It goes for the sense of a verse more than for a word-for-word translation.  It’s often quirky and at odds with everyone else on my panel, kind of like Justice Stevens with his separate, dissenting opinions.  But, comparing its take against the other versions, I can often see its point, and the verse opens itself up for me a little more.  The Psalms contain examples of the best and worst of the REB.  Verse one of Psalm 81 contains the Hebrew root “ruwa,” which Strongs says literally means to shout or to mar.  Strongs says also that “ruwa” has the figurative meaning of splitting the ears with sound.  My other panelists had some fun with the word – the Bishops’ Bible, for instance, puts up “a chearefull noyse” – but the REB prefers “acclaim,” presumably so as not to offend any Anglican sensibilities.  In the immediately preceding psalm, though, all of the other versions have God “angry” against the prayer of his people, but the REB has God “fume” at the prayers.  There are at least three reasons why I think “fume” is the better choice: (1) it’s consistent with Psalm 74, where God’s anger either smokes or fumes, depending on the panelist, (2) prayer is compared to incense in two or three other Bible verses, and the noun “fume” picks up that resonance and suggests some irony, and (3) you would expect a god to fume.

The following, for example, is Psalm 76 in each of my five favorite translations, followed by the McLaughlin version.  Note that the colors in the McLaughlin version correspond to the colors of the original versions from which it took the language.

King James Version

Psa. 76:0   To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm or Song of Asaph.
Psa. 76:1   In Judah is God known: his name is great in Israel.  2 In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion.  3 There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle. Selah.  4 Thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey.  5 The stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep: and none of the men of might have found their hands.  6 At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep.
Psa. 76:7   Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?  8 Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth feared, and was still,  9 When God arose to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth. Selah.  10 Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.  11 Vow, and pay unto the LORD your God: let all that be round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared.  12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.

Revised English Bible

Psa. 76:0 [For the leader: on stringed instruments: a psalm: for Asaph: a song]  1 In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel;  2 his tent is in Salem, his dwelling in Zion.  3 There he has broken the flashing arrows, shield and sword and weapons of war. [Selah]  4 You are awesome, Lord, more majestic than the everlasting mountains.  5 The bravest are despoiled, they sleep their last sleep, and the strongest cannot lift a hand.  6 At your rebuke, God of Jacob, rider and horse lie prostrate.  7 You are awesome, Lord; when you are angry, who can stand in your presence?  8 You gave sentence out of heaven; the earth was afraid and kept silence 9 when you rose in judgement, God, to deliver all the afflicted in the land. [Selah]  10 Edom, for all his fury, will praise you and the remnant left in Hamath will dance in worship.  11 Make vows to the Lord your God, and keep them; let the peoples all around him bring their tribute;  12 for he curbs the spirit of princes, he fills the kings of the earth with awe.

New American Standard

Psa. 76:0    For the choir director; on stringed instruments. A Psalm of Asaph, a Song.
Psa. 76:1                God is known in Judah;
            His name is great in Israel.
2             His tabernacle is in Salem;
            His dwelling place also is in Zion.
3             There He broke the flaming arrows,
            The shield and the sword and the weapons of war.             Selah.
Psa. 76:4               You are resplendent,
            More majestic than the mountains of prey.
5             The stouthearted were plundered,
            They sank into sleep;
            And none of the warriors could use his hands.
6             At Your rebuke, O God of Jacob,
            Both rider and horse were cast into a dead sleep.
7             You, even You, are to be feared;
            And who may stand in Your presence when once You are angry?
Psa. 76:8               You caused judgment to be heard from heaven;
            The earth feared and was still
9             When God arose to judgment,
            To save all the humble of the earth.             Selah.
10             For the wrath of man shall praise You;
            With a remnant of wrath You will gird Yourself.
Psa. 76:11               Make vows to the LORD your God and fulfill them;
            Let all who are around Him bring gifts to Him who is to be feared.
12             He will cut off the spirit of princes;
            He is feared by the kings of the earth.

Geneva Bible

1 To him that excelleth on Neginoth. A Psalme or song committed to Asaph. God is knowen in Iudah: his Name is great in Israel.  2 For in Shalem is his Tabernacle, and his dwelling in Zion.  3 There brake he the arrowes of the bowe, the shielde and the sword and the battell. Selah.  4 Thou art more bright and puissant, then the mountaines of pray.  5 The stout hearted are spoyled: they haue slept their sleepe, and all the men of strength haue not found their hands.  6 At thy rebuke, O God of Iaakob, both the chariot and horse are cast a sleepe.  7 Thou, euen thou art to be feared: and who shall stand in thy sight, when thou art angrie!  8 Thou didest cause thy iudgement to bee heard from heauen: therefore the earth feared and was still,  9 When thou, O God, arose to iudgement, to helpe all the meeke of the earth. Selah.  10 Surely the rage of man shall turne to thy praise: the remnant of the rage shalt thou restrayne.  11 Vowe and performe vnto the Lorde your God, all ye that be rounde about him: let them bring presents vnto him that ought to be feared.  12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the Kings of the earth.

Bishops’ Bible

Psa. 76:1 In Iurie is God knowen: his name is great in Israel.  2 At Shalem is his tabernacle: and his dwellyng in Sion.  3 There he brake the arrowes of the bowe: the shielde, the sworde, and the battayle. Selah.  4 Thou art honourable: and of more puissaunce then the mountaynes of robbers.  5 The hygh couragious stomackes are spoyled, they haue slept their slepe: and the valiaunt souldiours coulde not finde their owne handes.  6 At thy rebuke O God of Iacob: both the charet and horse be brought to naught.  7 Thou, euen thou art dreadfull: and who may stande in thy syght when thou [begynnest] to be angry?  8 Thou causest thy iudgement to be hearde from heauen: then the earth trembleth, and is styll.  9 When God ariseth to iudgement: and to helpe all the afflicted vpon the earth. Selah.  10 The fearcenesse of man shall turne to thy prayse: [and] the remnaunt of the fearcenesse thou wylt restrayne.  11 Make vowes vnto God your Lorde, and perfourme them all ye that be rounde about hym: bryng presentes vnto hym that is dreadfull.  12 He abateth the spirite of princes: he is dreadfull to the kynges of the earth.

McLaughlin Bible

Psa. 76:0 [For the leader: on stringed instruments: a psalm: for Asaph: a song] 1 In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel; 2 his tent is in Salem, his dwelling in Zion. 3 There he has broken the flashing arrows, shield and sword and battle. Selah. 4 Thou art more bright and puissant, than the mountains of prey. 5 The hygh couragious stomackes are spoyled, they sleep their last sleep, and the valiaunt souldiours coulde not finde their owne handes. 6 At thy rebuke, O God of Iaakob, both the chariot and horse are cast a sleepe. 7 Thou, euen thou art dreadfull: and who may stande in thy syght when thou [begynnest] to be angry? 8 You give sentence out of heaven; then the earth trembleth, and is styll. to helpe all the meeke of the land. [Selah] 10 The fearcenesse of man shall turne to thy prayse: [and] the remnaunt of the fearcenesse thou wylt restrayne. 11 Make vowes vnto God your Lorde, and perfourme them all ye that be rounde about hym: bryng presentes vnto hym that is dreadfull. 12 for he curbs the spirit of princes, he fills the kings of the earth with awe.

So the McLaughlin Bible collects the bones I’ve used to occupy my doggie mind this summer while I’m digging for a different kind of bone each day or two for my heart to chew.

[A lot of the information about my five “panelist” English Bible translations is from the Wikipedia pages on these translations linked here as well as from In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath.]

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Posted August 16, 2008.  Link to just this post.

book group literary theory

I love Faulkner and I love Merton. I learned recently that Merton loved Faulkner and said this about him:

His novels and stories are far more prophetic in the Biblical sense than the writings of any theologian writing today (at least, any that I know!).

Merton was contemplating writing a book on Faulkner’s work, but he died instead.  Merton loved to write about literature, and thirteen years after his death New Directions put a lot of this writing into a five-hundred-plus-page book entitled The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton.  In an appendix, this book also contains transcripts of informal talks Merton gave to his brothers at the Abbey of Gethsemani concerning The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses, and The Wild Palms.

Go Down, Moses is my favorite Faulkner novel, and The Sound and the Fury ranks up there, too.  I wanted to read The Wild Palms this summer because Merton had read it and loved it and wrote about it, and I wanted to read what Merton wrote about it but not before I had read the novel myself.

I read The Wild Palms this week like I used to read books during those years when my Great Books book group was hot.  I couldn’t wait to share with Merton my impressions and read about his.  If I ever become Orthodox, I thought, I can talk to Merton because he’s not dead because God is not the God of the dead but of the living, thank you.  If I don’t become Orthodox, I could just scrawl margin notes in the appendix as usual, and that’s pretty satisfying.  Because I know Merton and I know Faulkner, and I’m so happy that they were friends, or at least that Faulkner was Merton’s friend the way Faulkner and Merton are my friends.

Merton says that The Wild Palms is a meditation.  “Yes, a meditation!”  (Merton is animated.  The Literary Essays editor does little editing so as not to detract from the talk’s informality.)  Merton thinks The Wild Palms is a meditation because of the depths of the truths it gets across through a kind of counterpoint (I’ll explain at the end); I think it’s a meditation, too, but I say it’s because of Faulkner’s high-wire prose that unites thought and action through epic similes and movie-director detail and repetition, through non-sequential time and fraying syntax, a union that seems to thin out under a reader’s feet at a vertiginous height above a truth where she fears that she or the character one will fall and die in contact with that truth.  The prose is like a meditation, a spell, a dull spell (no matter how much you like Faulkner); it affects you like a dream, not a vivid dream but like your last, evaporating dream as you wake up: precisely the imprecise mood and the seemingly random images or words that stick with you not because they are the dream’s best moods or images or words but because they are the slowest moods or images or words to head out, the last bats, the ones that fly home in the orange sunrise; truth’s dull, pervasive, dawning impression.

Like this, Tom, this interaction between Wilbourne (lover) and McCord (husband) as McCord sees the couple off:

            Wilbourne and McCord shook hands.  “Maybe I’ll write you,” Wilbourne said.  “Charlotte probably will, anyway.  She’s a better gentlemen than I am, too.”  He stepped into the vestibule and turned, the porter behind him, his hand on the door knob, waiting; he and McCord looked at one another, the two speeches unspoken between them, each knowing they would not be spoken: I won’t see you and No.  You won’t see us again.  “Because crows and sparrows get shot out of trees or drowned by floods or killed by hurricanes and fires, but not hawks.  And maybe I can be the consort of a falcon, even if I am a sparrow.”  The train gathered itself, the first, the beginning of motion, departure came back car by car and passed under his feet.  “And something I told myself up there at the lake,” he said.  “That there is something in me she is not mistress to but mother.  Well, I have gone a step further.”  The train moved, he leaned out, McCord moving too to keep pace with him.  “That there is something in me you and she parented between you, that you are father of.  Give me your blessing.”

            “Take my curse,” McCord said.

On we go, our little book club, tonight, and when Tom left I thought again about The Wild Palms and about Bill, Tom, and me.

What would Louise Rosenblatt say about us tonight?  Her transactional theory of reading accounts for only two of us.  She puts everyone and everything but me on her stage in the preface to The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work: the writer (that’s Bill), the text, and the reader (Tom).  I’m a reader, too, but I’m also the reader’s reader, the reader of Merton’s secondary writing.  Where would I fit in?

Rosenblatt’s transactional theory, which I like very much, emphasizes the reader’s role in the transaction among writer, text, and reader.  She says that classicism and neoclassicism seek to mirror accepted reality, that Romanticism emphasizes the author, that New Criticism emphasizes the text, and that her transactional theory strikes the best balance by emphasizing the reader and the text (1-3).  I’m never on stage, never part of the big theory, but I do get a shout-out later in the book as the reader of criticism.

So what am I doing reading Tom reading Bill?  As a reader of criticism, am I being shortchanged or enriched?  Is this metacognition or metaestrus?

Valid literary criticism must come from a reader as a reader, Rosenblatt would say, and it must be about “the web of feelings, sensations, images, ideas, that [the reviewer or critic as reader] weaves between himself and the text.”  The text is important, too, but only as “the external pole in the process” (137).  “Objective” literary criticism (i.e., criticism focused only on this external pole) – no matter how good (and she likes the New Criticism’s brand of objective theory) – cuts readers off “from their own aesthetic roots” and so (ironically) drives them from the subject of the criticism: the text (140).

Merton does a good job avoiding that. “Yes, a meditation!” means that he has processed the novel, and his meditation exclamation gives way in his talk to some experiences he had as a reader along with some insightful takes on the text.

But even more than Merton’s personal approach, my perceived friendship with Merton, dead or alive, makes his criticism fruitful.  I know where he’s coming from, and, more importantly, I don’t know where he’s going.  This is also why I like to read book posts on blogs I’m familiar with – well, that and the comment fields, which sometimes amount to interactive marginalia.

I can even enjoy what Rosenblatt calls “objective” criticism if I have some dirt on the critic.  I started to enjoy Cleanth Brooks’s essays more once he got roughed up a bit, once Rosenblatt and Harold Bloom pointed out New Criticism’s shortcomings to me.  A biography on Brooks helped me, too.

For me, the best literary criticism is like a good book discussion group or like a marriage of true minds, impediments and all, in which the author is the celebrant and his text is the covenant we choose to honor or contravene.

(Here’s a little about The Wild Palms, which Faulkner originally named If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem before his publisher had its way.  Faulkner wrote it mid-career in 1938.  In it, he examines love, sexual and otherwise, by interweaving two stories, each about a man and a woman.  I never knew that Faulkner had it in him to examine sexual love so well, and Charlotte may be his most interesting and most human female character.  The stories, one about a modern couple who live only for their mutual love and the other about a convict stuck on a skiff with a pregnant woman he rescues during a flood, balance each other out thematically and emotionally (the “counterpoint”). The modern couple story is a psychodrama, probably kind of shrill as a stand-alone, and the flood story is action and comedy, so the stories in The Wild Palms mix a bit like the stories comprising Go Down, Moses.  Noel Polk, the editor of the current Vintage edition of The Wild Palms, says that the original manuscripts demonstrate that Faulkner wrote the novel in the order it appears – in “alternating stints” and not one story at a time.  I knew that if Merton liked novel then I would like it, too, and I did.)

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Posted August 10, 2008.  Link to just this post.

friends and bloggers

I’m enjoying three new blogs, two by people I’ve known for years before they became bloggers. Each of these blogs speaks from an overtly Christian worldview in some way.

Bill explores the web and the bookstalls better than I do, and he has been recommending links and books to me for years.  He has also given me several books that have become invaluable to me.  What a special friend, to know when a book might hit me.  Shadows and Symbols, which he opened last month, focuses on places where biblical truth may be tucked away, unobserved by most Christians.  The blog is broader than that already.  I find I can air out my thinking a lot in Bill’s comment fields, and I’ve spent more time there than here lately.  (Am I the only one who finds his own blog stultifying at times?)

Beryl, the one of the three I’ve never met, writes Finding Time for God, an honest and unassuming blog that starts with her devotional life.  It’s quiet over there, like shade.

I wish you could meet Maggie, a potter and a writer and someone fully alive, but since you probably can’t, you can at least read her stuff.  In Alternative Church, she examines what community is for and what Christian community might look like.

Knowing people first as friends and then as bloggers is new to me.  I find that their blogs enhance our friendships.

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Posted August 9, 2008.  Link to just this post.

one-liners win elections

I remember watching this interaction during the 1984 presidential debates and thinking, “Well, that’s the election.”  And it was.  In an interview I read twenty years later, Walter Mondale said that he knew, right then and there too, that the election was over.

As you know, McCain caught up with Obama in several national polls last week simply by airing a commercial comparing Obama to Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton.  No, that’s not quite right.  McCain caught up because the ad seemed to catch Obama in a pair of headlights.

Instead, Obama could have won the election last week.  Here’s how.

McCain airs the ad.  Obama waits a day before responding, enough time for the news cycle to let the ad sink in, to really let the underlying issue – Obama’s alleged lack of substance and experience – to coalesce around the ad.

A reporter inevitably asks him about the ad the next day.  Obama responds,  “You don’t see me running ads comparing him to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, do you?”

A Reaganesque sip of water would not be out of place.

After Reagan’s refusal to point out Mondale’s “youth and inexperience,” most pre-election discussions of Reagan’s age turned into acknowledgements that the buzzard still had the old kick. After Obama’s refusal to run ads pointing out McCain’s grumpiness, the race would no longer be all about whether Obama is ready.  Any such major-media chatter would almost inevitably lead to a recapitulation of McCain’s Faulknerian, impotent rage.  No Messiah ad, no nothing.

In Chicago, those earnest fans are cheerful again: the Cubs are leading their division.  Hope springs eternal.

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Posted August 7, 2008.  Link to just this post.

Last month's posts.