Of course, if you have any right to call yourself an educated man, some of that impact will be books. Books were the first long-distance communication, and they still remain one of the few that can allow you to commune with the dead, at least without involving the Witch of Endor and a few sleazy devils. So here are some of my favorite semi-seances of the last six months, with both the living and the dead.
Finished
L’Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory (Penguin edition). Great glories, great vulgarities (I particularly enjoyed the episode of Sir Lancelot getting shot in the buttock by an erring gentlewoman hunter) and great pains. Sometimes the medievals were far more honest than we about the sins of those in power, but yet held out the possibility of redemption to the uttermost. I'm looking forward to doing parts of this with my students in the months ahead--as soon as I figure out which parts to use!
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson. This is one of those books I should have been exposed to years ago but wasn’t. This is high-level poetry; images chasing sounds around words and through line breaks until you forget just where you are and long to be in a higher, holier time. It is instructive to note where Tennyson departed from Arthurian legend—Arthur being a one-woman man, for example. Some things the Victorians just couldn't handle.
The Templars by Dan Jones. A broad overview of the history of the Knights Templar. It was calm, factual, and well-researched, particularly about some of their exploits in the Holy Land. He doesn't deal much with the later legends and embellishments of Templar achievements, instead sticking rather close to verifiable medieval history. Though I've seen a friend or two post some criticism of Jones' work, I very much enjoyed it.
A Practical View of Christianity by William Wilberforce. This has been on my list for years and years; I’m glad I finally got to it. Every "New Christian Right" and "Christian Nationalist" thinker ought to be required to read this as an extremely helpful corrective to some of the sloppy thinking in our own day; in our desperation for solutions we must remember that even when society and government were on the church’s side, there were massive problems—it still comes down to individual, personal obedience to all of what God said. Very good. Some modern should republish it—the Hendrickson Classics edition has a significant number of vocabulary definitions in parentheses that are both unnecessary and quite annoying.
Fern Seed and Elephants by C.S. Lewis. A collection of seven of his essays: “Membership,” “Learning in War-Time,” “On Forgiveness,” “Historicism,” “The World’s Last Night,” “Religion and Rocketry,” “The Efficacy of Prayer,” and the titular essay. All very good. If you want the title reference explained you will need to pester Tim Griffith, NSA professor, into publishing his episode on medieval fern seed somewhere.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Translated Robin Buss (2003). I read an abridged version of this back in high school but soldiered through the whole thing. I was chiefly struck by how much of what we would now call "classical education" was simply taken for granted--the thing contains jokes about the precise wording of lines in Horace (which the reader is expected to recognize) and offhand references to Plutarch, Thucydides, Caesar, and forty more. Many good lines, but I choose to share this one, highly applicable in an age of AI and machine "learning": "Two years!” exclaimed Dantes; “do you really believe I can acquire all these things in so short a time?”—“Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other."
Non Nobis by Tom Garfield. The story of the first thirty years or so of that pioneering institution Logos School. If you've ever met Tom, then you know that this is witty, hilarious, and full of lots of faith. Any
teacher or school administrator will identify with many of the struggles. Tom reads it himself on Canon+, which just makes it even better.
A Treatise on the Vocations by William Perkins. This work is stereotypically methodical, like so much Puritan writing, and yet a great reminder of the perils and pitfalls of our work. Perkins makes the vocations of all men twofold—first the general (to follow Christ) and the second special (the modern vocation). We are always bound by both, though we tend to forget one in the demands of the other. This one will be reread at some point.
A Treatise on the Vocations by William Perkins. This work is stereotypically methodical, like so much Puritan writing, and yet a great reminder of the perils and pitfalls of our work. Perkins makes the vocations of all men twofold—first the general (to follow Christ) and the second special (the modern vocation). We are always bound by both, though we tend to forget one in the demands of the other. This one will be reread at some point.
Some Stuff In Progress
The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto. A history of the Dutch settlement at Manhattan--what will become New York City. This one is for an upcoming project, so I should be done shortly.
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. I read chunks of this in college, but it's time to dive into the whole thing. So far, his system would work great, if we were completely reasoning beings (which Hobbes frequently reminds us we're not, so the whole thing is ironic to the nth degree).
Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgement by Bryan Garsten. This is a fun companion to Leviathan, since this work is about the death of rhetoric as a political art and its replacement by universal, liberal "principles"--a work he claims Hobbes helped begin. I wandered by this one on the shelf of Bucer's, a local coffee shop, and got hooked. I keep telling myself it's professionally relevant.
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends: The Complete Collection by the Rev. W. Awdry. This is purely for fun. It's always great to get transported back to your childhood and hear Ringo Starr's lightly sarcastic tones rolling out those train sounds.
