Light On Dark Water

A few miscellaneous things

I haven’t had time or mental space to write anything substantial this week. But here are a few interesting things I’ve run across.

  • At First Thoughts, the First Things blog, here’s one of those silly little games that book and music lovers like to play:  If you had a shelf of books to help explain yourself, which two books would form the outer boundaries—the bookends—of you? I’m not sure I get this idea entirely. At first I drew a complete blank: “the outer boundaries of me”?—meaning…what exactly? But soon two books did present themselves to my mind: The Lord of the Rings and Four Quartets. I suppose they explain me in some way; at any rate they are the two books that I would least like to live without, which certainly says something about me.

    Here are Sally Thomas’s thoughts on the question; though she doesn’t finally settle on only two books, her choices do overlap with mine significantly. What are yours?

  • Speaking of Four Quartets: I did, finally, finish Thomas Howard’s book about the Quartets, Dove Descending, and I really want to discuss it. Suffice for now to say that it vastly expanded my understanding of the poem and made me love it even more. In fact I might not have described it as “indispensable” before reading Howard.

  • Also at First Thoughts: liberal arts types really should not mess with stuff like quantum physics, because an actual physicist may come along and beat them up. This has been a temptation for some years now: a poet or philosopher or theologian or literary critic latches on to some highly simplified bit of esoteric physics and tries to appropriate it to support his views in his own field. It’s generally a big mistake.

  • Eve Tushnet completely knocks me out again.

  • In a comment thread, Janet linked to this profound meditation on marriage by Betty Duffy.

  • And my wife reminded me of this ancient truth: “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.”

Maclin Horton
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21 responses to “A few miscellaneous things”

  1. Janet

    Apparently Eve Tushnet knocked you out to the extent that you did the link incorrectly.
    AMDG

    Reply
  2. Janet

    I wrote on Sally’s blog that my bookends would probably be Brideshead and Pilgrims End. I didn’t say why, because I was too busy. Here are my reasons. Brideshead is the journey–all the temptations (well, I don’t have all those temptations, the joys and sorrows and lost loves and found loves and the One Love. Pilgrims Inn is like the goal. In fact it almost explains that phrase “eternal rest.” Not sleeping forever but doing whatever you are doing in peace.
    AMDG

    Reply
  3. Mac

    Thanks–a little overzealous search-and-replacing, because it really bothers me to use tick marks instead of curly quotes. So I went through that post replacing tick marks with html code for curly quotes, including where they were supposed to stay plain.
    I was in too much of a hurry to read the comments at Sally’s. But those choices seem very appropriated. And I love that last line of yours.

    Reply
  4. antiaphrodite

    “At first I drew a complete blank: “the outer boundaries of me”?—meaning…what exactly?”
    I’m not sure I understood either. Two books that–what, describe myself?
    Is it required that I have read them?

    Reply
  5. Mac

    Well, i think that was the assumption…:-) But I suppose if you just thought they were really really pretty that would say something, too.

    Reply
  6. antiaphrodite

    “But I suppose if you just thought they were really really pretty that would say something, too.”
    It would say quite a bit. But I asked because I’m not sure I’ve read anything explicitly nihilistic.

    Reply
  7. Janet

    “But those choices seem very appropriated.”
    Nope, I chose them myself. 😉
    AMDG

    Reply
  8. Dale Nelson

    The (Lutheran) Book of Concord and CSL’s That Hideous Strength would catch quite a bit of what I’m all about or anyway would like to be all about.

    Reply
  9. Mac

    Dang it, Janet, I was going to fix that before you had a chance to zing me, but I had to be in a meeting.

    Reply
  10. Mac

    Dale, THS and Perelandra wouldn’t be bad picks for me.

    Reply
  11. Janet

    Do you guys mean that you are just heads or that you want to wipe all organic life from the face of the earth?
    AMDG

    Reply
  12. Mac

    Don’t tempt me (on that last point).

    Reply
  13. Janet

    Well, before you do it could you fix the First Things link?
    And as for appropriation, why would you want to rob me of my joy?
    AMDG

    Reply
  14. Janet

    I like Karen’s ancient truth, too. Well, I’m not sure I like it, but I affirm it.
    AMDG

    Reply
  15. Mac

    What the $#@^&* was the matter with me today? Actually all but one of those links was wrong. They may be fixed now, who knows?

    Reply
  16. Mac

    And thanks for pointing them out, btw.

    Reply
  17. Janet

    Well, considering that I’ve only ever been able to get about 5 links to work, it comforting to think that even such an advanced techie person as you messes them up.
    AMDG

    Reply
  18. Paul

    As I said over at Sally’s blog: I can think of plenty of books I’d want in the middle of the shelf, easy to reach and somehow at the “core”, but trying to come up with “bookends” was just beyond me (except in the very literal sense of Homer’s Iliad and Asimov’s Guide to Sceince being at either end of the bookcase in front of me).
    Now, thanks to Anti, I’ve got it: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and St Thérèse of Lisieux’s autobiography. These are my “outer boundaries” because they’re on my shelves and I keep meaning to read them and never getting round to it (or persisting: I’ve started both several times).

    Reply
  19. antiaphrodite

    “These are my “outer boundaries” because they’re on my shelves and I keep meaning to read them…”
    Well, glad to be of some help 🙂

    Reply
  20. Mac

    Ulysses is worth reading, but I don’t know that I would ever have put the necessary time & effort into it if I hadn’t had to for a class (35 years ago).

    Reply
  21. Anne-Marie

    “eternal rest.” Not sleeping forever but doing whatever you are doing in peace.
    Janet, thank you, thank you. Now I can pray “eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord” for my mother without feeling as though I’m wishing her into Hell.

    Reply

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