Entries Tagged 'reading' ↓
September 29th, 2017 — reading
Recently in Russia: four links
I guess (readingwise) we’re going to Russia this weekend. Here are four interesting reads today:
- “Israel Trade with Russia Leaps by 25%,” by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Forward, September 29, 2017.
- “Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder takes seat on Rosneft board,” and “The Rosneft seat and Gerhard Schröder’s Kremlin credentials,” by editors at Deutsche Welle, September 29, 2017.
- “Cooking with Gogol,” by Valerie Stivers, The Paris Review, September 29, 2017.
- UPDATED: Here’s one more:
September 26th, 2017 — reading
The Religious Diplomacy of Joseph P. Kennedy
Religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who seeks to obtain through their practicing it a specific purpose with respect to them or by means of them.
––Al-Farabi (872–951 AD), The Book of Religion[1]
Al Smith’s presidential loss in 1928 and Jack Kennedy’s Houston speech in 1960 concerning religion and government have both been run through the ringer aplenty. There are shelfs and stacks of books that compare and contrast (and exhaust) those two events, and I’m honestly not very interested in reading more about them.
But after reading Robert Dalleck’s A Life Unfinished: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (2001), I was struck that the most interesting character was Kennedy’s father Joseph Patrick Kennedy.
So soon enough I began reading David Nasaw’s The Patriarch: the Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (2012), and soon enough, I came upon these two quite remarkable passages:
Opposing or remaining neutral to Jack’s candidacy, as the church leaders now appeared to be doing, was, Kennedy believed, a betrayal not only of him, his son, and his family, but of the millions of American Catholics who stood to benefit from the election of one of their own to the presidency of the United States. For perhaps the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since the death of Joe Jr., Joseph P. Kennedy was forced to reconsider, to reevaluate, the ties that bound him to his church. “My relationship with the Church will never be the same,†he confessed to Galeazzi in an April 17 letter,†and certainly, never the same with the hierarchy. But that will not make any difference to them, I am sure, and I can assure you that it will not make any difference to me. For the last few years which I have left, I will indulge myself at least in continuing to believe that friends are friends when you need them. Please do not be upset yourself about my attitude. I would not want anything to annoy you.†[2]
And:
[Billy] Graham, on arriving at the Palm Beach house in mid-January, was greeted by the president-elect. “My father’s out by the pool. He wants to talk to you.†At poolside, the two shook hands, then Kennedy, Graham recalled in his autobiography, “came straight to the point: ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ †Kennedy told the evangelist (and Nixon supporter) that he and Father Cavanaugh had been in Stuttgart, Germany, when Graham lectured through an interpreter to an audience of sixty thousand. “When we visited the pope three days later, we told him about it. He said he wished he had a dozen such evangelists in our church. When Jack was elected, I told him that one of the first things he should do was to get acquainted with you. I told him you could be a great asset to the country, helping heal the division over the religious problem in the campaign.’†[3]
So what’s happening to Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888–1969) in these two instances? If we apply Al-farabi’s formulation to these two instances, the first thing to consider is what we interpret Al-farabi to mean by “first ruler.†A literal interpretation would mean George Washington, and one could elaborate and discuss Washington’s deism and any sense of “civil religion†stemming from that which might’ve later been prescribed to the country’s citizenry. A contextual interpretation would mean John Kennedy, and one could elaborate and discuss Jack’s Catholicism and any sense of “civil religion.â€
In the first instance, Kennedy has lost tremendous faith in the administrators of American Catholicism following the election of his son to the presidency.
In the second, we see that, despite that loss of faith, Kennedy still wants what (he sees) as best for American Catholicism, and the best he could see for that Catholicism in 1960 was for it to attempt to reconcile, understand, and begin a dialogue with American Protestantism.
Nearly sixty years later, it is easy to say––particularly with the rise and fall of the Religious Right––that that reconciliation was never absolute. There seem to be more significant divisions within the American Protestantism of 2017 and within the American Catholicism of 2017 than the divisions between the two.
[1] Alfarabi, The Political Writings, Translated by Charles E. Butterworth. (Cornell UP, Ithaca, NY), “Book of Religion†p. 93, § 1.
[2] Nasaw, David. The Patriarch: the Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, (New York, NY: Penguin, 2012) 724.
[3] Nasaw 757.
September 19th, 2017 — reading
Howdy from Saudi: Two Recent Pieces on the Kingdom
One long:
“The Saudi Trillions” by Malise Ruthven, London Review of Books, September 2017.
One short:
“Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable” by Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post, September 18, 2017.
Update:
“Saudi Columnist in Exceptional Commentary on Saudi Regime’s Efforts to Silence ‘September 15 Movement’: It’s a Mistake to Restrict Citizens’ Freedom of Thought” by editors of MEMRI [Middle East Media Research Institute], September 19, 2017.
September 11th, 2017 — reading
Things Read Over the Weekend
“Famous Viking warrior burial revealed to be that of a woman,” by Jamie Seidel, News.com.au, September 10, 2107.
***
“How guest Hans Christian Andersen destroyed his friendship with Dickens,” by Vanessa Thorpe, The Guardian, September 9, 2017.
***
“Girls and Men: On Svetlana Alexievich’s ‘The Unwomanly Face of War‘,” by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, Los Angeles Review of Books, September 8, 2017.
***
“Traveler Restaurant: this small-town Connecticut restaurant gives each diner a free book from its vast library,” Atlasobscura.com.
August 14th, 2017 — reading
The Limits of Limiting Ourselves
No, I can’t hope to embrace the whole world in my verses,
no not though I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
and a voice made of iron. Be with me, sail down the coastline––
land lies in sight. Nor shall I hold you back with improptu
songs, untoward wandering, and windy introductions.
–Virgil, Georgics II, 41Â-46. Translated by Janet Lembke. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. 2005.
Suffice it now to say that [G.E.] Moore attacked the fog that secondhand Hegelians had spread over the British universities. A therapeutic effort was unquestionably called for; but the cure of a disease should not be taken for a panacea, let alone salvation. The limits of its [analytic philosophy’s] applicability should be recognized.
–Walter Kaufmann. Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. 1958. p. 26.
Economy and constraint are companion concepts, for the more highly constrained a system of multiple elements, the more economically it may be described and understood.
–Philip Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics†(Originally published in David E. Apter, ed. Ideology and Its Discontents. NY: The Free Press of Glencoe. 1964. Republished in Critical Review. Vol. 18. No. 1-3. (2006). pp. 1-–4 at 11–12.)
August 7th, 2017 — reading
Three Weekend Reads
Three reads I came across this weekend:
“The True American [Henry David Thoreau],” by Robert Pogue Harrison, New York Review of Books, August 17, 2017.
“The Most Anthologized Essays in the Last 25 Years: in which Joan Didion Appears More than Once,” by Emily Temple, Lithub.com, July 31, 2017.
“Nazi-looted books found in German libraries,” Deutsche Welle, August 6, 2017.
August 4th, 2017 — Books, reading
July 11th, 2017 — reading
I’ve been reading, and wondering for example, about the question of language–particularly the question of the language of community. I’m thinking: if you don’t speak the language of the community, you are in fact, not a part of the community, no matter who or what that community is. As Rod Dreher writes in in The Benedict Option:
Americans cannot stand to contemplate defeat or to accept limits of any kind. But American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears…. [1]
The Benedictine example is a sign of hope but also a warning: no matter what a Christian’s circumstances, he cannot live faithfully if God is only a part of his life, bracketed away from the rest. In the end, either Christ is at the center of our lives, or the Self and all its idolatries are. There is no middle ground. [2]
With His help, we can piece together the fragment of our lives and order them around Him, but it will not be easy, and we can’t do it alone. To strive for anything less, though, is to live out the saying of the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy: “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.†[3]
(Sarcastically) I say Dreher makes it seem like everything is crystal clear to orthodox Christians 24/7––but I counter that it seems easy to imagine not having certainty about what your life is centered around and be content with what is “random†and “liquid.†But perhaps I am an outsider and unaccustomed to understanding Dreher’s language. Compare Augustine:
Whenever we express anything in words, our hearer either does not know whether it is true, or he knows it is untrue, or he knows it is true. In the first of these three, it is a matter of belief or opinion or doubt; in the second, of opposition and denial; in the third, of attesting to what is true. In none of these cases, therefore, does he learn. It follows, therefore, that one who does not grasp the reality after hearing our words, or who knows that what he heard is untrue, or who could have given the same answer, if asked, has learned nothing by any words of mine. [4]
Compare Robert Gates on A&M:
If you’re on the outside looking in, you can’t understand it. If you’re on the inside looking out, you can’t explain it. [5]
Compare Alan Jacobs on the idea of “code switchingâ€:
What is required of serious religious believers in a pluralistic society is the ability to code-switch: never to forget or neglect their own native religious tongue, but also never to forget that they live in a society of people for whom that language is gibberish. To speak only in the language of pragmatism is to bring nothing distinctive to the table; to speak only a private language of revelation and self-proclaimed authority is to leave the table altogether. For their own good, but also for the common good, religious believers need to be always bilingually present. [6]
See also: “Rereading Ruthie Leming” and “Reading About Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option (Part III).” As well as Dreher’s “When is a Sandwich Not a Sandwich” responding to David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America,” for further conversation on the language of community.
NOTES
[1] Dreher, The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christian in a Post-Christian Nation 12.
[2] “There is no middle groundâ€â€“–yet just a few paragraphs before, Dreher held:
Wall Street. Conservative Christians can and should continue working with liberals to combat sex trafficking, poverty, AIDS, and the like. (p. 84)
Isn’t the second quotation an example, in fact, of middle ground?
[3] Dreher, The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christian in a Post-Christian Nation 75–76.
[4] Augustine Aurelius. De magistro. (The Teacher.) The Fathers of the Church – A New Translation. Vol. 59. Translated by Robert P. Russell. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 1968. XII, 40, p. 55.
[5] Gates, Robert. A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service. NY: Knopf. 2015. p. 17.
[6] Jacobs, Alan. “When Character No Longer Counts.†National Affairs. No. 32 (Spring 2017.)
June 24th, 2017 — Books, reading
Deep Reading and Deep Book Collecting
Read about deep book collecting in “10 Famous Book Hoarders” by Emily Temple at LitHub, June 22, 2017.
Then read about deep reading in “What does it mean for a journalist today to be a Serious Reader?” by Danny Funt at Columbia Journalism Review, June 14, 2017.
May 26th, 2017 — reading
Michael Morton: a Falsely-Accused Prisoner, Turned-Reader, Turned-Writer
I’ve been wanting to read Michael Morton’s memoir of being falsely-accused of the murder of his wife, how the legal system works in Williamson County, Texas, and how he found the ability to forgive his accusers.
There will be plenty to ponder, compare, and write about concerning this terrific book. But for now I will only note that a great surprise was discovering that Micheal Morton is a great writer; and even more surprisingly, an enthusiastic reader:
We devoured everything from the classics to Stephen King, and we passed each ripped and dog-eared copy from cellblock to cellblock, bunk to bunk. As quickly as I read one, I would be handed another. We would wave each other on to or off of a planned selection. We critiqued each author’s work with the clarity and strength of opinion that could come only from never having written a book ourselves.
Reading was the only means of escape available to us. With a book, we could climb over the walls, walk on the beach, meet new friends, and mourn the loss of someone we felt we had gotten to know. We got books from the library, ordered them through friends or family, and eagerly anticipated mail deliveries with book-shaped boxes. We were intellectually starving, and each new read was a feast….[1]
Stacked in my cell, there were always books and authors, characters and adventures—real or imagined—waiting to sustain me intellectually and emotionally, to give me a place to play out my anger, nurture my hope, and indulge my ache for escape. As soon as one book ended, another began. Sometimes, I read two at a time, jumping back and forth from one universe to another. It was the only freedom I had….[2]
Books like The Odyssey and authors like Cormac McCarthy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reminded me that even the longest journey has a finish line, that someday I would close the book on this chapter of my life. Reading reminded me that finding justice in the end was possible…. [3]
Inside, I’d been reading so much I felt like I was doing time with Mark Twain, sharing a cell with John Steinbeck, and sitting in the dayroom with Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving. Occasionally Tom Robbins would pop in. Stephen King was always lurking around a dark corner, motioning for me to join him someplace terrifying. They had all become my friends—men I could count on to keep me distracted at night and entertained in the lonely hours when I couldn’t find anyone to talk with who knew how to read. [4]
NOTES
[1] Morton, Michael. Getting Life: an Innocent Man’s 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace. NY: Simon & Schuster. 2014.  pp. 127–28.
[2] Morton, Getting Life 171.
[3] Morton, Getting Life 172.
[4] Morton, Getting Life 131.
