Anti-Climacus

LINK: I have not intended to neglect you, dear readers, but it is the end of the semester, with all of its attendant chicken-with-head-cut-off insanity, upon which has been piled additional car problems (thankfully, finally in the hands of one who is competent to address them), and a new, interesting angle which may produce a chapter for me in the near-term (if anyone can recommend a book on the historical reading of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, especially 1 Samuel 8, would be forever indebted). So, little time for blogging. But via Opinio Juris, I came across Doris Lessing's Nobel lecture, which is well worth the time invested in it. A sample:

"I belong to a little organisation which started out with the intention of getting books into the villages. There was a group of people who in another connection had travelled Zimbabwe at its grass roots. They reported that the villages, unlike what people reported, are full of intelligent people, teachers retired, teachers on leave, children on holidays, old people. I myself paid for a little survey, of what people wanted to read, and found the results were the same as a Swedish survey, that I had not known about. People wanted to read what people in Europe want to read, if they read at all – novels of all kinds, science fiction, poetry, detective fiction, plays, Shakespeare, and the do-it-yourself books, like how to open a bank account, were low in the list. All of Shakespeare: they knew the name. A problem with finding books for villagers is that they don't know what is available, so a school set book, like the Mayor of Casterbridge, becomes popular because they know it is there. Animal Farm, for obvious reasons is the most popular of all novels."

On the whole, a very interesting meditation on books and education, the value of each, and how quick we are to forget these.

I am reminded, tangentally, of my favorite article that ever appeared on (late and much lamented) Stylus, on being a Christian and a popular music fan:

"I never intended to bury CCM, but over time, it happened. Any third party would’ve held it to be inevitable. Much of what Mr. Sullivan said in GQ about the tepid musical bounds of most CCM is true; but it would not have behooved his article to trumpet the numerous exceptions. To be sure, my journey into secular music has been quite the lesser salvation. The core principle informing my adolescent faves remains constant: Jesus Christ is the son of God whose willing death enabled the eternal life of a human race irredeemable otherwise. And if I shake my head wanly at a lot of my first choices in music, I still must salute the beliefs that informed both the product and my purchase. Yeah, the secular peaks or quality are higher. Yeah, there’s so much areligious stuff that lays bare the soul. Yeah, you can be a believer and operate outside the lines of CCM. Yeah, those were some resonant, joyous times."

The phrase "quite the lesser salvation" has stuck with me since I first read i. It seems vaguely right, with respect to music: my life is different because, at a certain point, I decided I was going to give punk music a try--R.E.M. begot Patti Smtih, begot the Sex Pistols, etc etc. The same is true with respect to literature: at one point in my life, I was beset by a number of problems philosophical and personal in nature, and I turned to literature (and then philosophy, and then political theory) out of the conviction that this was a way I could organize and understand my experience.

And "salvation" does seem to me to be the proper way to think about my experience: before literature came along, I had spent some time entertaining the notion that perhaps four-year college was not the way to go (I was a slacker and angry at the world--neither of these look particularly good in retrospect, but, Camus-like, I feel I should see my past for what it was), that I might be perfectly happy kicking around for a few years until I figured things out--think John Cusak in Say Anything, minus the charisma and general good-nature.

Dante and Eliot and Plato, well, it was something I was clearly made for; I remember, quite distinctly, reading the David Grene translations of Sophocles that were at the local coffeeshop while waiting for the rest of my friends to show for the evening. It was, well, someplace that I fit, and the mode of comprehension required was something I could do well, and the meaning and purpose I feel in my life, or in the work of my dissertation, is possible to me only because of those previous moments. So I don't pretend to know exactly what Lessing's people know, when they want so desperately to have something to read, but I think I know what it means to hang on a paragraph of Anna Karenina (or a similar work) as though something vital hinges on understanding the section just read.

I have some related thoughts on how this relates back to teaching, but those need to percolate more. Perhaps later this evening.