Egregious Reader

I am reading through Marilynn Robinson's latest book of essays today am trying to follow the article on Austerity and Ideology. It is thoughts like this that seem so new to me. She is talking about the cold war and where we have landed ... (America won and Russia lost): "I know we capitalists are supposed to feel triumphant about this, and I may cause scandal by noting that the United States has had a long history of wealth and Russia a much longer history of poverty, that the United States built up its economy during World War II, while Russia suffered devastation. Perhaps I lament a readiness for competition that cannot acknowledge its advantage, now more common by the day." Or in another passage where she references the quick return to power that took place after the 2008 economic crisis: "It is this supranational power, Economics Pantocrator, that failed us all in fairly recent memory. It has emerged from the ashes with its power and its prestige enhanced e...

The ultimate put-down of AM radio (and tv talks shows): A fool takes no pleasure in     understanding, but only in expressing personal     opinion. Proverbs 18:2 NRSV The second ultimate put-down of AM radio: In the wee, wee hours your mind get hazy Radio relay towers lead me to my baby The radio's jammed up with talk show stations It's just talk, talk, talk, talk, till you lose your patience Mister state trooper, please don't stop me Hey, somebody out there, listen to my last prayer Hiho silver-o, deliver me from nowhere  Bruce Springsteen - State Trooper

"Put your hands into the mire. They will learn the kinship of the shaped and unshapen, the living and the dead." Wendell Berry Put your hands into the mire, reach into the bright spirit and bloody tissues inside your ribs, feel the diving spirit and grasp at the bright blood, the wise blood and the cold head, the knowing brain and the stony heart and when you have found your kinship with the red clay and the stony loam, then find a place to wait. Get up and run like hell. Lie down and die. Go out find the biggest giant and remove his head. Hold all those close dear and hold all those dear close. Let them go when they turn away and let them return when they turn toward. Leap and lie. Bound and bounden. The Mad Farmer also tells us: "Don't worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own. If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed. But the real...

"The Christian religion stands or falls by belief in the divine revelation that became historically real, tangible and visible--that is, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear--and thus in its very essence contains questions that we ask ourselves today about the relationship between history and spirit, or, applied to the Bible, between letter and spirit, scripture and revelation, man's word and God's." Stands or falls on spirit made historical ... and its immediate application to letter vs. spirit. He goes on to say: "All attempted pneumatological interpretation is prayer, is supplication to the Holy Spirit which alone, as it pleases, gives it the hearing and understanding without which the most highly intellectual exegesis is nothing. Textual understanding and interpretation, preaching, that is, the realization of God, is contained in the prayer: Veni creator spiritus [come creator spirit]." He also wrote that textual criticism left nothing ...

I am nearing the end of my journey with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Quixote spends days and days, going without sleeping and eating for long stretches of time, reading the books of chivalry. And it drives him mad, he decides to revive the old, lost idea of knights errand and go about seeking damsels to save, the poor to succor and giants to slay. The book is tremendously funny, but it is also tragic, especially as he becomes famous and people began to deceive and exploit him for their own amusement. The danger of reading is the madness it can create where you are willing to charge upon a flock of sheep, lancing them right and left thinking you are fighting a vast army. Or more famously, you are to attack giants only to find them windmills. The greatness of it is that you take on and try and live out powerful ideals. Sometimes Quixote will give explanation that he is living his highest moral values as knight errand. Heschel writes:  "Books are neither an asylum for the ...

I have been writing short stories lately and really enjoying the exploration that takes place and the almost aliveness of the characters. They are both me and not me ... I came across this the other day in an essay by a writer I really like (Marilynne Robinson) and it describes well the creation of fictional characters from my experience: For me, at least, writing consists very largely of exploring intuition.   A character is really the sense of a character, embodied, attired, and given voice as he or she seems to require. Where does this creature come from? From watching, I suppose. From reading emotional significance in gestures and inflections, as we all do all the time. These moments of intuitive recognition float free from their particular occasions and recombine themselves into nonexistent people the writer and, if all goes well, the reader feel they know. There is a great difference, in fiction and in life, between knowing someone and knowing  about  someon...

Amazing. My first Stegner, but hope to read a lot more. It was an intense exploration of his life and so therefore, male and female, mother and father, abuse and joy, home and homelessness, family shame. Here is a good taste of what you get: Thinking of homes and burial grounds and things of ages and peoples past, driving to Reno where his folks live now, Bruce says to himself: "Those were the things that not only his family, but thousands of Americans had missed. The whole nation had been footloose too long, Heaven had been just over the next range for too many generations. Why remain in one dull plot of earth when Heaven was reachable, was touchable, was just over there? The whole race was like the fir tree in the fairy-tale which wanted to be cut down and dressed up with lights and bangles and colored paper, and see the world and be a Christmas tree. Well, he said, thinking of the closed banks, the crashed market that had ruined thousands and cut his father's savings in h...

like loose leaf paper scattered by the wind went my life         and my soul Log after log of solid                 living wood         falling finally landed on         my rotted heart and splintered it irreconcilably.