it was genius: old is the new new

I often feel frustrated when reading contemporary work, especially the work of my peers.  Everything seems worn out and boring.  Everyone writes with incomplete sentences.  We all try to sound innovative and shocking and use vivid, emotive language; we strive to write ironically and absurdly; the literary Titans among us may even succeed in sending their readers into fits of depression.   However, the sixties are long over, and old innovations are no longer innovative.  The old clichés have been replaced by new ones. 

Now, I have nothing against older work.  Before a cliché was cliché, it was genius.  Rather, what irks me is work which parades innovation the same way works have been parading innovation for decades.   The new is not forever young. 

I see two main things which inhibit writers (not only writers, but all artists, which is to say, all people, but writers, for the sake of this essay):  first, it is impossible to escape one’s context; second, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  These inhibitions are inescapable, but they are not unconquerable.  They are the time to beat.  Only the best runners make it.

If inhibition one is that the writer is necessarily in relationship with his context, then in order to succeed as an original, creative artist, he must gain a wider perspective on that context.  He must avoid “chronological snobbery,” that is, the idea that newness or oldness equals inherent worth.  He must expose himself to a wide variety of literature and ideas from different cultures and different times, past and present.  He must engage with his current culture through the lens of history.  He cannot escape a relationship with his culture, whether with or against it, but he can think carefully on it, in the honest humility that comes from realizing the shortcomings of his own perceptions. 

If inhibition two is that “there is nothing new under the sun”, then the writer’s job is get over the delusion of newness.  The truly new doesn’t actually exist.  This doesn’t mean originality doesn’t exist:  originality is timelessness.  But in order to achieve this originality, originality cannot be the goal, for it does not exist independently.  It is a by-product of beauty.  If the essence of a work is beauty, it will be original also.  If the essence of a work is mere imitation of beauty, it will soon fade into forgotten fad.  This is why Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and Tolkien will last.  They did not invent Hamlet, conceive of the saving nature of beauty, or beget fantasy: but they achieved beauty in the forms they knew, and, as a result, achieved timeless originality. 

And what is a self-critical writer to do?  Most of the time, I find my work sub-par.  But I keep reading the great works and I keep aiming for beauty in my writing.  Sometimes I even try to push boundaries—even pen a fragment or two (as that hasn’t been done yet)—but my goal in boundary pushing is not boundary pushing.  It’s beauty.  And maybe, someday, I’ll just begin to begin to border on it.    

Medieval Comic Tales

In the time I have for recreation I chose the collection of Medieval Comic Tales edited by Derek Brewer to fill the hours before bed for a few evenings, and found it more than satisfactory for entertainment.

The book is categorised by nation and includes a selection of interesting or historically significant tales alongside those which appear to be solely entertainment. Like our own world, the medieval was a lewd and earthy one, which these tales illustrate. I don't recommend them for anyone of particularly morally squeamish ideas. Sometimes, the poor morals are an example of the way we aren't to live. Sometimes the rampant extramarital affairs of men and women seem to be expected or encouraged. The themes of the tales and the way they appear may be familiar to those who read fairy stories or modern fantasy. An observing mind will take notice of the fact that the human intellect remains what it was, half a millennia ago. As our nature is static, so is the palette from which we draw our stories: life and the oddities of survival.

I liked it because it was easy to read, the stories are all very short, and the introduction is a helpful treatise on the endurance and inspiration of comedy by a Cambridge man (the editor) so you know it's good. It's under two hundred pages and they flow quickly. While some are of dubious morality, others are strictly Christian, and others are fun, funny, or exciting. Coming from this current prejudiced era I found myself in surprise at the innovation in plot and character, a fact which should have simply affirmed an existing belief: that as we humans are not in a constant upward climb as some would suggest, our capabilities would be undiminished in antiquity as they are today.

I imagine the tales told by a storyteller of intimate acquaintance; we are sat beside a fire in a hall that evokes the same authenticity as the words being read (or rather spoken from memory, should we be so fortunate); there's a wolfhound of some sort stretched by the warming glow at our feet, and so it continues whilst steam rises from a cup of something indistinguishable but importantly hot. If that image is appealing, pick a copy up when you get the chance. It's a title worth sitting on any shelf, and not one I would be ashamed to be seen in ownership of by man or beast.

The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward

One could spend many hours searching for a work of study on any period of history to equal Desmond Seward's summation in 265 pages of the Hundred Years War. For those who, like me, struggle to gain any lasting knowledge from some of the world's most boring treatises on a subject that should have more fire and inspiration than any other (namely, history written by dull historians), this coverage of an endlessly confusing era of important English and French drama flows more smoothly than any novel and wastes not a single word.

For the first time in my life I feel as if I have a grasp of the time period, the events, and the genealogy that surrounds this often spoken of but rarely understood series of conflicts. From Edward IIIs strong, if unjust, action at the start in 1337 to Henry VIs weak finish in 1453 we have a well-researched, unclogged perspective on the politics of the war, the effects on all classes during both the troubled peacetime and years of conflict, as well as religious or otherwise objection or promotion of the stunning atrocities committed by both peoples on each other, or themselves.

What I'm trying to say is that having read this book I feel that I understand what happened and why it happened, to the extent of our knowledge based on the sources that have survived. Seward writes with talent and clarity, and has such a grasp of things himself that, like a well-written novel, we know he's not giving us everything he knows—just everything that we need to know. He's the sort of historian who seems very trustworthy; like any history it should be taken with the grain of salt that comes by reading other sources, especially those primary to the case. Some things seem a little too simple in his retelling of it, and that may be because our expectations surpass the situation's reality, or that it has been simplified more than is healthy.

I am not yet a historian, and certainly not one with a knowledge of the War like Seward; I could not attempt to pass judgement for or against it in any informed way. But I do know that there is much to be gained from this book and that it takes little effort to pick it up; the only difficulty is putting it down before it's finished.

I wish my report could be less glowing; after all, it's the negative things we say that set us out as truly critical thinkers, as the great brains of the age we inhabit...but having wracked my brain all I can say is that I wish it were longer, and I wish he wrote books on every subject. If I sound at all like a giggling teenage fangirl, there may be some simplistic truth to the thought. I don't really mind, to be honest.

Artur, Gwenwhyvawr and Myrddin: Ancient Britons of the North

I'm not actually writing about King Arthur, Guinevere, or Merlin. Though no doubt, given the subject of the book I'm about to review, they will come up.

I've been doing research for a project I was assigned on a module I'm taking at University, which led me to a pursuit of King Arthur. I stumbled across this book and, finding it easy to read, got through it whilst on the bus going down to Cardiff on Saturday.

I found dozens of books in our library alone with as many solutions to solving the mystery surrounding this legendary king; since the middle of the 19th century writers have puzzled over it, and every solvent appears true till put to the scrutiny of another.

Alexander and William McCall, Alex and Will I'll call them, are two passionate brothers with an interesting proposition that, if nothing else, is engaging and easy to get a handle on. For this reason alone I recommend the book as a study into a more reasonable look at King Arthur than you are likely to get out of the cinema (even those wretched excuses for films purporting to be realistic, whether 2004's King Arthur or the 2007 The Last Legion), or in any work remotely linked to fiction.

Not being a scholar in the subject, nor having vastly undergone a study in the existing solutions that counter Alex and Will's, I cannot say whether, in the light of other critics their logic holds up. They do, however, present a believable genealogy linking Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Camelot, and Avalon complete with dates, historical evidence through the centuries, and compounding folklore.

The McCall's propose that Arthur was not a king but a successful war leader and son of Aidan, King of the Dalriada in 6th century lowland Scotland. He was 3/4ths Briton, and through matrilineal descent had charge of the lands pertaining to his British mother's side of things, including land called Camelon and Avalond, whose names betray certain similarities to later legends. Even Mordred is accounted for, and several of Arthur's knights. Given the time period he was in it is inaccurate to attribute our later ideas of 'kingship' upon a people or group of peoples who would have been bereft of the very notion.

Alex and Will present a good case; certainly compelling, and plainly written enough that, despite some confusing family back and forths become, in the end, a negotiable web. They tend to repeat certain things over again in different ways and various sections of the book; once in a while this is tedious. Mostly it serves to job an ailing memory such as my own.

As much as I would recommend any book, this one passes, in my humble opinion, the sharpest muster. Whether you like their interpretation or throw it out entirely due to actual or emotional reasons, it provides a wide background to early Britain through the eyes of chroniclers often ignored or passed over due to more prominent successors.

Lloyd Alexander: Westmark's Theo

For the enjoyment of our readers, we have blown the dust off a former issue. This article concerns a character in Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy. If you have not yet discovered this series, we urge you: find out what you're missing.

Saving Taran Wanderer of The Prydain Chronicles, Theo in Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark is his most developed hero. Born an orphan and raised a printer’s devil, Theo has a strong conscience and heavy unwillingness to break or appear to break the law. He is an innocent, idealistic wight, a fellow who knows how things should be done, but possesses none of the know-how to do them.

He falls in with a pair of mountebanks—Count Las Bombas and Musket the dwarf—meeting a young street urchin named Mickle, who joins up with them. Eventually, however, Theo cannot bring himself to continue helping deceive the peasants with the groups’ trickery and leaves without a farewell. It is this decision that leads him to a character studied in-depth further in: His name, or what he calls himself, is Florian. With Florian, Theo begins to see a bit more the way things are, and he starts to lose some of his idealisms, being replaced with realisms. Still, he manages to retain a strict conscience, something few characters in the series—or any series—possess or have the patience for. Warning: Spoilers here and further in. Use your discretion.

Theo cannot bring himself to kill a man when faced with it, and in so doing, he almost lets one of his friends get killed. The inability to do what needed to be done haunts him the rest of his life.
Even at the end of Westmark, Theo lets Cabbarus live, a decision that torments him often: should he have killed him and had the villain’s blood on his conscience? Did saving his life enable the subsequent bloodshed? The answer is never clearly given. It is these gritty questions among others that lend to Westmark’s gritty realism, and without a Christian world- view, things may seem rather hopeless.
In The Kestrel, Theo’s character begins to develop even more. After losing one of his closest friends to the invading Regian army, Theo undergoes a change. During the previous days of the war, he had learned to kill—but he never liked it. Now, he is no longer Theo but Colonel Kestrel, the bloodiest captain in the war, whose followers scream the hawk’s ferocious cry as he leads them into battle. Colonel Kestrel loves killing.

It is difficult for us to watch this transformation, and in his new guise, Kestrel almost kills the one he loves more than anything else. After this happens, the grip that the madness of killing held him with slips and he returns a bit to his former self. And yet, as with everything we do, our actions never leave us. Kestrel never dies, even if Theo buries his darker nature most of the time. Alexander never portrayed a greater truth than in his depiction of the evils of war and the realism of what happens to her victims left alive.

At the end of The Kestrel, Theo locks himself away in the attic of a friend’s house, refusing to see even Mickle. He sits down to draw, to paint—using his own blood and the dirt and grime he collects in the streets of Marianstat. He paints soldiers he fought with; peasants he met; people he killed; people who died with him—everything he experienced in his time as Colo- nel Kestrel. And when he is done, the haunted look in his eyes disappears. He set himself free from it, as far as is possible.

The Beggar Queen gives us a last look at his dynamic character. We see him after his days as Kestrel, and he has changed. The change is so natural, his character so real, we scarcely notice it until someone—or thing—reminds us.

Theo fears what he was as Kestrel, but he becomes something even worse, for a time, in this final book. He becomes so different that for a time, we know him almost as much as he knows himself—very little indeed.

In the final chapters of The Beggar Queen, as the cli- max has been reached and we prepare to leave the characters for the last time, we all know Theo very well. We know him so well because Theo is us. Maybe even more so than Taran Wanderer. Male or female, it matters not; if you are human, then you know what Theo went through, you know what happened, and you know what he is feeling. Westmark is real; it is truth. Lloyd Alexander shows us weakness, he shows us strength. He shows us life. Theo is weak and human. He fails, badly. But what he becomes is what we all wish to become. He is not arrogant; he is not proud of his accomplishments—yet, he has gained a great deal. He did not subdue life and, as it were, fate; instead, he learned from it. His story, like ours, is far from over. 

Books

I own more books than I could read in a year. Of those, I have not read three quarters. One endeavour of mine this year as I embark on further study at university is to read much and often. Even then, I collect books so much faster than I can do anything with them I fear the cost of moving my library even across town by the time I reach an age of maturity in which I attain lodging of my own.

The majority of books I collect—more recently—are historical; I would the reading of books were as addicting to me now as their purchase. I had an old habit, once, of spending more time in the page than perched before the screen. The dilapidation of my character falls as rapidly as my reading, of any book—as does my proficiency with the written word in speaking and writing, both fictional and semi-abrasive (as I qualify this particular piece of work, in that it grants heavy abuse to any involved in the reading of it).

I should like to write a guide for those fallen out of love with reading seeking to spring back into such a euphoric state; alas, my qualifications lack. In time, this shall be my final goal. For now, I stand with all those who have found time and deficiency in good discipline to turn them from a preferred path.

The Greatest of Men

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.  The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.^1”  So wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel, Crime and Punishment.  He spoke well.  Suffering serves people as a fire serves gold: to prove and to purify.  One of the ways it does this is by shaping a person’s perspective so that he may begin to understand the people who suffer beside him and so that he may begin to glimpse the things which matter most.  This, according to Dostoevsky, is what it means to be one of those “really great men”—or women:  to pass through deep sadness which “passes gradually into quiet tender joy.^2” It is through suffering that people can have a truer perspective on the world. 

An individual’s perspective is shaped by his or her experience.  If a person has never suffered, how can that person have a perspective on the suffering of others that is able to be sympathetic?  How can people know what they have not experienced?  Our sympathy for those suffering from starvation is greatly increased if we ever go hungry.  Our ability to comfort others stems from our own experience of a similar pain.  On the night I broke my leg falling on Mt. Katahdin I remember being wheeled into the emergency room and passing an adjacent room in which an older man was dying from a heart attack; and as I lay on my bed there, I could hear a little boy moaning in pain on the other side of the sickly pastel dividing curtain.  Before, I could have sympathized with them on an intellectual level: I could have understood that they were uncomfortable.  However, I could not have understood their pain in a meaningful, experiential, genuine way, and even my best-intentioned effort to console them would have sounded cold if I had never suffered in a similar way.  It is through suffering that people gain a perspective that enables them to sympathize with others who have suffered. 

This understanding, sympathetic perspective that is gained through suffering lends clarity on those things in life which matter most.  It is in moments of pain or sorrow that people have their eyes opened to see the most important things: when the house is burning down, make sure the kids get out.  When deep tragedy strikes on the eleventh of September, it is time to cancel school and to go home to be with mom and dad.  In times of economic drought, people learn what it is they really need.  It is as though a film accumulates on the eyes when there is no suffering but only ease.  A season of suffering serves to clear this film away.  It cures the perspective and gives it clarity to see again the things that matter more than anything else. 

And if, as Dostoevsky claims, "The really great men must...have great sadness on earth," then the greatest of them is he who suffered most: he who suffered for unnumbered crimes not his own; he who was alone in the valley of the shadow of death.  It is he who lives now to sympathize perfectly.  It is he who sees all things most clearly.

¹Dostoevsky, Fyodor.  Crime and Punishment.  <http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66336-pain-and-suffering-are-always-inevitable-for-a-large intelligence?auto_login_attempted=true>. 

²Dostoevsky, Fyodor.  <http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/54235-it-s-the-great-mystery-of-human-life-that-old-grief>.  

But What of Beauty?

I just finished reading Waiting For Godot. It is a play where nothing at all happens and the two main characters seek endlessly to distract themselves from this fact. One of the most bothersome things about this play (and I think the author, Samuel Beckett, wanted it to be bothersome) is the utter futility represented in both acts. The characters ramble on in vain conversations about a variety of things. They occasionally border on the interesting, but more often merely frustratingly engage with meaninglessness. If ever they begin to go somewhere, they soon come around to exactly where they were before: and so the cycle goes. This, I think, is Beckett’s point:

“Estragon: ‘Well, shall we go?’

Vladimir: ‘Yes, let’s go.’

They do not move.” (Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

The characters speak of moving. They talk about changing their circumstances. But they never actually do anything that finds them different than they were before they did it. Both of the characters seem largely blind to this fact. Estragon, for his part, never remembers the day before; so why should he change? Vladamir, while he remembers some, refuses to take the risk of leaving, lest he should miss Godot.

The question as to whether or not this is an allegory of Beckett’s on the nature of human existence seems like the wrong question. This is a story, not a treatise, and that does not rob it of meaning: if anything, it amplifies it. If this is the fullness of the reality of Estragon’s and Vladamir’s, world, then it seems a futile place to live indeed: for nothing there matters. For those who encounter this story, their recognition of themselves in it, the recognition of their world in it, and the fear that recognition touches off, are proof of its power.  Its worth is in this ability to take the reader by the collar and shake him up and ask,"Do you see this?  Do you see what a frustrating mess we all are if this is all there is?"

But there is a problem: we have seen beauty.  Undeniable reality broke through with a revelation of himself.  Eucatastrophe has swept over everything. Waiting for Godot is a lie, but it is one worth reading, as long as you remember it's a lie.  It is a powerful expression of the logical conclusions of God-denial, and a clear view of where we would be.  

to see what is there

"You can't go wrong if your opening quote is by C.S. Lewis.  People will at least read that far.  Everybody has a Lewis-soft spot."--Anonymous

Well, then.

"Chronological snobbery", as coined by Lewis, is  "the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them."  (Lewis, Surprised by Joy)

Classes have begun in earnest here at the University of Maine, and in the wake of their first attack this quote comes to mind.  Chronological snobbery is the climate here in many areas: in the professors, in the students, in the notes on the textbooks, in the iPhones.  Oh, the iPhones; they are so cool. It is not the only climate, but it does seem to be the predominant one.   

But then I see that I have taken up a snobbery of my own, which, I am sure, Lewis would never have intended his quote to produce: a reverse-direction chronological snobbery.  We are pendulumic people, and one of the rarest things to come by--rare because it is so difficult to mine, and requires years of grace--is a clear perception: a true view of self, of others, of past, of present, of God; in a word, of reality.

Perception and reality are tricky, tangled, high-flung words.  Simply put, perception is what one senses is, and reality is what actually is.  Perception is what is seen; reality is what exists, seen or not. They are not the same, though our culture often claims they are—and the difference is crucial.  The lumping of perception and reality has crept into nearly every crevice of life—into art, where “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, into English, where eisegesis replaces exegesis, into conversation, where “like, you know what I mean, for me, but maybe not for you” replaces “actually, you’re wrong here, and let me show you why”.  It has not crept so much into science and math, because, well, two plus two is four, no matter how well one argues otherwise.  If we begin tampering with truth in math and science, things begin to turn disastrous with slightly more conspicuity than in the humanities (only slightly).

This is because reality matters.  If I perceive that gravity does not exist and leap from the top of the Empire State Building, I will find reality exists (apart from perception), that it matters, and that the key to wisdom is to have my perception as closely tuned to reality as possible. 

The problem is, we are all humans; and humans, as history has shown time and again, often perceive things to be real that are not real at all.  So how can we truly know reality?  We are all humans; we are all subject to perceive things through our own five or six senses; history shows that we have been wrong before, so how can one person claim he has found the truth?  Every truth claim made by a human being is based on his perception.  Human perception cannot be trusted.  How can we know reality at all? (How can you trust what I am saying here at all?  Am I not a human like you, and is this not merely my perception?) 

At this point, some resign themselves to thinking that reality, though it exists, cannot be known. No one, then, can claim that cannibalism is mean, and that food charities are nice.  It’s all a matter of one’s perception. 

In order for reality to be known, it must be revealed.  Eyes must be opened and ears unstopped. Reality must reveal itself to us.  The ultimate word on what reality is must be reality’s own word, not the word of the one who perceives.  The only way reality can be known is by the revelation of itself.  Anything that claims to be a true revelation of reality that is the work of a human alone must be immediately recognized as simply another human perception.  But anything that claims to reality’s revelation of itself—say, the very words of God, who is the Ultimate Reality, and who creates and sustains all reality—must be taken very seriously.  For if it is what it claims to be, our perception must become attuned to it, or we will never have any true wisdom at all.  Is this all simply my perception?  Maybe.  But try reading the Book.

This, then, must be the thing:  to learn the past, to learn the present, to learn humility, and to live in truth and love.  And this comes through a right view of reality.  

Epitaph to a Monument

I live in the land of Wales. There's no better place to study history, and no better place to become so accustomed to it that even what is great becomes trite. Human nature adapts—when and how it can—to whatever it is surrounded by. Our attention span is as the length of our own arms; once acclimatised, it is on to the next thrill, the next sight for sore eyes.

It is an effort worth the trouble to work against this tendency; but beyond a point we must accept its inevitability. The fact is, we can sustain only a limited amount of high voltage before we lose our capacity to be amazed entirely.

I have mourned the unfortunate incident that prevented me being born in the country in which I belong—an incident best described as the location of my parents and their respective nationalities—but I do wonder where my appreciation would be for history were I unwillingly exposed to it simply by stepping out my door.

The past is to be respected, always; even for a moment, superiority in the present regarding that which has come before disgusts me, and treads most obnoxiously on any code of morality on which I build my life. We so readily will ourselves the betters of our equals. Man is man, or no.

Sometimes, the best way to respect the past is to bury it, or let it slip into quiet decay without interference. Sometimes it is preservation. But if we look to it for the purpose of fixing our own mistakes, we will find in it nothing of true import. What is the purpose of history? Is it evil to ignore it?

Past lives demand the equal attention of those in the present; acknowledgement of their existence, pursuit of increased discovery regarding them, and honest, well-thought-out opinions about them is, I believe, necessary in a moral and educational sense, for everyone. When true importance is put to the past—in proportion equal to the present days—then everything before us becomes far more clear.