The Publishers

While I was gathering stuff to donate to the thrift shop, an odd little book turned up. It’s a vest-pocked-sized dictionary, at most thirty years old. It seems like it came with something else, like maybe a toilet kit or overnight bag, but I don’t really remember. “Webster Dictionary, self pronouncing,” it calls itself. The title page says it’s not published by the original publishers of Webster’s Dictionary or their successors. Who is it published by? The Publishers, apparently. That’s who signed the preface anyway. It doesn’t say when or where they published it, though it does say “Made in U.S.A.”

It would be satisfying to think of a secretive organization called “The Publishers,” but what probably happened (this is supported by the preface) is someone found in the public domain a Webster’s Dictionary, and reprinted it along with some filler: a table of weights and measures; U.S. legal holidays; a list of antidotes for poisoning. In case of poisoning by toad-stools, give a mustard emetic followed by Epsom salt.

This could become a positive trend if manufacturers would adopt it. Instead of eight pages of safety warnings in Tagalog, the clock-radio could come with a copy of Kepler’s Somnium. Frozen pizza might include Donne’s Holy Sonnets, with The Tempest printed inside a case of Pabst.

Anyone can print up copies of The Aeneid and sell them to whoever will buy for whatever he’ll pay, except in California. This ties in with a scheme the Obama administration would love: Require all pharmacists to honor any coupon for birth control pills; then Congressmen could use their franking privileges to mail coupons to all their constituents. The pharmacist could distribute the pills with a copy of The Origin of Species. That’s in the public domain, right?

Children

“Children are not a class or kind, they are a heterogeneous collection of immature persons, varying, as persons do, in their reach, and in their ability to extend it when stimulated.” — Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #234

Happy New Year!

If persistence is failing ten times, trying again, and succeeding, then failing ten times, trying again, and failing must be pigheadedness. This year I hope to be persistent but not pigheaded.

I look forward to reading through the Divine Comedy again; I’ve barely scratched the surface there. Other books on the list are Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair, The Book of Psalms by Robert Alter, and Christianity And Culture by T.S. Eliot. As ever, much of my reading time will be taken up with random novels.

The Big Movie Project will continue. Maybe at some point I’ll assemble the posts into a single file, and get a distinguished writer to do a preface, and then make a pile of money selling the e-book. Or maybe not.

This year I want to make wine, have it cost less than wine at the store, and have it not be undrinkable. Home distilling sounds interesting, but it’s illegal here, and probably beyond my skill to do safely. I was never able to titrate reliably, so worries about wood alcohol in the product would temper my enjoyment. Fortunately, there’s white whiskey, which I find entirely drinkable on its own or with a chaser, and very good in an Old Fashioned.

The next step on the cheese project is to set up a cheese press and at least make some simple farmer’s cheese.

Since they say goals should be incremental and achievable, I also hope to eat more soup in 2012. I have good book of recipes, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, and a one-pint thermos with a built-in spoon. Here’s a recipe for tortilla soup that sounds good.

Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn

I recently read Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn — a good read, though a bit long. The narrative goes back and forth from the near future to the fourteenth century, but what happens in the medieval German village of Eifelheim comes to dominate the plot. The near-future story is too brief, and seems incomplete. There is a satisfying amount of detail on common life in the middle ages. The science comes in naturally.

It’s an engaging idea to consider how a medieval village might welcome and integrate bug-eyed monsters from a distant star: not easily, but maybe more easily than 2011 New York. The medieval villagers knew they were only a small part of a largely unknown cosmos. New Yorkers think they’re at the center of the universe. Isolated villagers in 1350 AD had to get along with whoever was there, like it or not. Modern man has much greater freedom of association, because the survival of the whole community isn’t so dependent on everyone getting along. One of the main themes in Eifelheim, and handled very well, is how creatures from space might understand and integrate Christianity into their own world view.

Eifelheim‘s a good book. I look forward to reading more by Michael Flynn, maybe The Wreck of the River of Stars.

Thankful for libraries

Libraries in America are hardly a problem-free paradise, but my local library is way better than Roger Pearse’s library. In the US we have free and fast inter-library loan; the play area is in the children’s library; a borrowing card is cheap, whether you pay for it in your city property taxes or you have to pay $120 per year for a card because you don’t pay the city property taxes, you stingy dog. If the local public library isn’t enough for you, you can probably get a card from the nearest community college or public university.

Reading curriculum

From Reading Is Elemental, by Helen Vendler, (seen here) here’s the way to do it:

1. “engage in choral singing of traditional melodic song (folk songs, country songs, rounds);
2. “be read to from poems and stories beyond their own current ability to read;
3. “mount short plays—learning roles, rehearsing, and eventually performing;
4. “march or dance to counting rhymes, poems, or music, “reading” rhythms and sentences with their bodies;
5. “read aloud, chorally, to the teacher;
6. “read aloud singly to the teacher, and recite memorized poems either chorally or singly;
7. “notice, and describe aloud, the reproduced images of powerful works of art, with the accompanying story told by the teacher (Orpheus, the three kings at Bethlehem, etc.);
8. “read silently, and retell in their own words, for discussion, the story they have read;
9. “expand their vocabulary to specialized registers through walks where they would learn the names of trees, plants, flowers, and fruits;
10. “visit museums of art and natural history to learn to name exotic or extinct things, or visit an orchestra to discover the names and sounds of orchestral instruments;
11. “learn conjoined prefixes, suffixes, and roots as they learn new words;
12. “tell stories of their own devising;
13. “compose words to be sung to tunes they already know; and
14. “if they are studying a foreign language, carry out these practices for it as well.”

I agree wholeheartedly. This curriculum describes my school from Kindergarten through third grade, plus SRA but minus the foreign language. We did learn a few children’s songs in French: Frère Jacques, Alouette, Sur le pont d’Avignon. Professor Vendler continues:

“Later in my ideal schooling, a familiarity with authors would arise as three successive cycles of literary acquaintance would take place. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, the students would read short excerpts in chronological order from major authors A, B, C…Z. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades the very same authors would appear, but in longer or more complex excerpts. And finally, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades the same authors would again recur, but now in larger wholes.”

The next years followed her plan as well, and it was great, except for a massively annoying pedagogical failure that caused us to read The Red Pony three years in a row. Around this time foreign languages became available. I took French because they told me that was the language of international commerce and diplomacy, and then took Latin, because that was the language to study if you had professional ambitions. I’ve never used either, except to order coffee and a sandwich once, but Latin has been the more rewarding.

It all fell apart in the next-to-last year of high school when we “read” Julius Caesar, stopping every line to explain the hard words:

Student, reading: “Oh pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth, tha…”
Teacher, interrupting: “Now class, who is speaking?”
Student: “Marc Antony.”
Teacher: “And what is he saying? Anyone? Marcel?
Marcel, visibly grinding his teeth: “Can’t tell yet.”

So that was my last year of formal instruction in literature. This gave me an extra period in study hall in senior year, where I was left alone to read, or to wander the school at will, because of another pedagogical failure.

The Watsons, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s manuscript of her unpublished and unfinished The Watsons will be auctioned off at Sotheby’s in New York this Thursday. If you don’t have half a million dollars to spare, Jane Austen’s manuscripts are online, including this one:

“The first winter assembly in the Town of D. in Surry was to be held on Tuesday October the 13th, and it was was generally expected to be a very good one; a long list of County Families was confidently run over as sure of attending, and sanguine hopes were entertained that the Osbornes themselves would be there. The Edwardes’ invitation to the Watsons followed of course. The Edward’s were people of fortune who lived in the Town and kept their Coach; the Watsons inhabited a village about 3 miles distant, were poor and had no close carriage; and ever since there had been Balls in the place, the former were accustomed to invite the Latter to dine and sleep at their House, on every monthly return throughout the winter.” — The Watsons (1): Diplomatic Display, manuscript of Jane Austen, with the abbreviations expanded and her later corrections applied.

Facts

“‘Facts,’ murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, ‘how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly–in fact, I’m off my head–but I never could believe in that man–what’s his name, in those capital stories?–Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It’s only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up–only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars.’” — G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades, 1905

Civilization in theory and practice

Jews and Greeks, 100 BC

Christians disagree about what exactly belongs in the Biblical canon. As an example, this is from Second Maccabees chapter 6, starting at verse 18. This is taken from the King James Version, in which Maccabees is in a section between the Old and New Testaments titled The Apocrypha.

Here’s the background. Following the death of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid dynasty ruled Judea. They were keen to Hellenize their subjects. This is usually presented in Western Civilization 101 as a Good Thing, bringing the light of Greek culture and the seeds of democracy to lands groaning under oriental despotism. That view is not without basis, but inevitably there’s more to it than that. In this case, acting like a civilized Greek meant eating some of the pig sacrificed to Zeus. This was a problem for observant Jews.

Eleazar one of the principal scribes, an aged man, and of a well favoured countenance, was constrained to open his mouth, and to eat swine’s flesh. But he, choosing rather to die gloriously, than to live stained with such an abomination, spit it forth, and came of his own accord to the torment, as it behoved them to come, that are resolute to stand out against such things, as are not lawful for love of life to be tasted.

But they that had the charge of that wicked feast, for the old acquaintance they had with the man, taking him aside, besought him to bring flesh of his own provision, such as was lawful for him to use, and make as if he did eat of the flesh taken from the sacrifice commanded by the king; that in so doing he might be delivered from death, and for the old friendship with them find favour.

But he began to consider discreetly, and as became his age, and the excellency of his ancient years, and the honour of his gray head, whereon was come, and his most honest education from a child, or rather the holy law made and given by God: therefore he answered accordingly, and willed them straightways to send him to the grave. “For it becometh not our age,” said he, “in any wise to dissemble, whereby many young persons might think that Eleazar, being fourscore years old and ten, were now gone to a strange religion; and so they through mine hypocrisy, and desire to live a little time and a moment longer, should be deceived by me, and I get a stain to mine old age, and make it abominable. For though for the present time I should be delivered from the punishment of men: yet should I not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither alive, nor dead. Wherefore now, manfully changing this life, I will shew myself such an one as mine age requireth, and leave a notable example to such as be young to die willingly and courageously for the honourable and holy laws.”

And when he had said these words, immediately he went to the torment: they that led him changing the good will they bare him a little before into hatred, because the foresaid speeches proceeded, as they thought, from a desperate mind.

But when he was ready to die with stripes, he groaned, and said, “It is manifest unto the Lord, that hath the holy knowledge, that whereas I might have been delivered from death, I [now] endure sore pains in body by being beaten: but in soul am well content to suffer these things, because I fear him.” And thus this man died, leaving his death for an example of a noble courage, and a memorial of virtue not only unto young men, but unto all his nation. — King James Bible, 2 Maccabees, chapter 6, verses 18 through 31

I took out the verse numbers and broke it into paragraphs for readability. “they that led him changing the good will they bare him a little before into hatred, because the foresaid speeches proceeded, as they thought, from a desperate mind.” A note in the text about “desperate mind” says “or madness or pride.” It made Eleazar’s friends angry that he rejected their suggestion, and their good will toward him became hatred. It’s easier for them to haul off the old man to a brutal death if they can work up some hatred. It reminds me of this comment on an earlier post about people resenting a moral challenge.

Reading the Bible

Growing up, I thought the Bible was the just the King James Bible, unless you could read Greek and Hebrew. At some point I learned that Catholics had more books in their Bibles, and later still that some books didn’t count somehow, being “apocryphal.” The King James Bible had had them too, but separated out into a section between the Old and New Testaments, the same ones the Catholic Bibles had, so I thought, until some time in the 1800s when most publishers took the section of apocrypha out of the KJV.

So Christians disagree about just what is part of the Bible and what isn’t, and I want to err on the side of reading too much. I finished the Jerusalem Bible last year, and I hope to work through the King James, especially the Psalms and New Testament. My purpose in reading is not exclusively religious. I figured if Handel wrote an oratorio about Judas Maccabeus, it must be important enough for me to read, if only for the cultural references. Divinely inspired, canonical, duterocanonical, or apocryphal, Judith Beheading Holofernes is a common theme of art, likewise Tobit and the Archangel Raphael.

Turns out the KJV apocrypha and the ‘extra’ books in the Catholics’ Bibles are not quite the same books. Some material is divided differently among the books, the names of the books are confusing and variable, and there is material in the KJV apocrypha that isn’t in the Catholic canon: First Esdras, Second Esdras, and The Prayer of Manasseh. These three do appear in the appendix to the Vulgate, along with Psalm 151 and the Letter to the Laodicieans.

A year or so ago, I thought I had finally read the Bible, but is seems I missed those books. I missed 1 and 2 Esdras because I thought those were different names for Ezra and Nehemiah (and if you look at that link, I think you’ll agree my error was understandable). Until now I didn’t have a Bible that included 1 and 2 Esdras. The other day I got a copy of the King James Bible of 1611. I saw Esdras there in the Apocrypha, and gradually it dawned on me that there was material here I had not read.

So, now I’m reading First Esdras. If I’m going to say I have read the Bible, I don’t want to seem to quibble. “What about Tobit, and Second Esdras?” some wise guy would ask, and I wanted to answer “Oh sure; Esdras, of course, is apocryphal, but everyone who’s anyone reads Tobit.” That should be a conversation starter, but the conversation probably won’t really get going until I leave the room.