“We can always become more human”
– Zena Hitz
Tag: reading
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.“
From L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.“
William FaulknerAnd from Breaking Bread with the Dead:
The decisions of our ancestors, however strange those people may be to us, touch us and our world; and our decisions will touch the lives of those who come after us. By understanding what moved them and what they hope for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely-in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, they didn’t. By understanding what moved them and what they hoped for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely–in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, as they didn’t. We judge them, as we should, as we must; but if we judge them fairly and proportionately, as we ourselves hope someday to be judged, then we may use them well with an eye toward the future.
Jacobs, Alan. Breaking bread with the dead: a reader’s guide to a more tranquil mind. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. (see page 143)You often hear “Forget it! The past is in the past.” sure, but the consequences of our decisions can reverberate longer into the future than we expect.
Social movements like Effective Altruism and organizations like The Long Now Foundation recognize this. The better choices we make today, paired with long-term preparation can give our decendants a chance to flourish.
Too deep for a Sunday morning?
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This is the first line/verse from Beowulf that captured me:
I have never seen so impressive or large
an assembly of strangers. Stoutness of heart,
bravery not banishment, must have brought you to
Hrothgar.”
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc“Stoutness of heart” depicts strength, resilience. Something to aspire to.
If you’re looking to read more classics this year, Seamus Heaney‘s translation of Beowulf is an approachable entry point.
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First appearing in his Essay “On Living in an Atomic Age“. Lewis answers the question – how to live in a time of uncertainty?
Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plagued visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat at night….The first action to take is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb come when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Baxter M. Jason, The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022. (see page 14)Whatever 2023 brings, let’s heed these words.
Do human things. Live.
Happy New Year!
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Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees.
Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for reading.
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Below is the list of the books that most shaped C.S. Lewis’s world view. Originally published in the Christian Century, but captured here from Jason M. Baxter‘s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind:
- Phantastes – George MacDonald
- Everlasting Man – G.K. Chesterton
- Aeneid – Virgil
- The Temple – George Herbert
- Prelude – William Wordsworth
- The Idea of the Holy – Rudolf Otto
- Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
- Life of Johnson – James Boswell
- Descent into Hell – Charles Williams
- Theism and Humanism – Arthur James Balfour
George MacDonald’s Phantastes stands out. The subtitle is: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. I’ve never read it, but an entire book on Faeries, written by a Christian Congregational minister?
The sheer intellectual power of these authors is striking. I don’t think anyone of them were only writers. Maybe Virgil.
Taking a deeper look we learn Arthur James Balfour was a statesman and Prime Minister.
Charles Williams wrote poems, novels, and plays, but was also a theologian and literary critic. “Inklings” member too.
Rudolf Otto was a theologian, philosopher, and scholar.
Boethius? Boethius was a Roman senator, consul, historian, philosopher, Saint, and Martyr.
Intellectual titans, the lot of them.
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University of Toronto professor Alexandra Ghostafson shares her tips for reading philosophy. They’re superb tips for reading anything really.
Download the pdf here.
Starting out, read twice. Read once quickly to get the gist of the paper, and once more slowly to get the details. This can be time consuming, but it still takes less time than trying to both orient yourself and get all the details in the first pass!
Take reading notes. During the first pass, make notes for yourself in the margin of the paper. Point out places you want to pay closer attention to on the second go, and highlight sections that seem especially important. After this first pass, you might want to write down initial impression or questions for yourself to answer after your second read–these might be about what the author is doing in a certain section, what a certain term means, etc.
Find the argument. On the second pass, you might start with finding the author’s conclusion, or what it is they are arguing for. Once you’ve found what they are arguing for, read the paper from start to finish looking for premises—these are reasons that the author gives for accepting their conclusion. Make note of where they are in the paper, writing down page numbers. The premises together with the conclusion make up the author’s argument.
Rewrite the argument. Once you’ve reread the paper and have found the author’s argument, try to paraphrase it. Writing it down in your own words will help you think about what the author is saying and whether it seems plausible to you.
Write down your thoughts. If you are able to answer any of the questions you wrote for yourself after your first reading, do so. Do you have any new questions? Write them down! These questions might have more depth to them than before-for instance, are there any premises that seem especially convincing or unconvincing? Why? Are there any background presuppositions that the author seems to be committed to? What are they and why does the author hold them? Your questions also might not be philosophical, but methodological: why does the author do what she does in section X? Not all your questions have to be ‘deep’, however-it’s perfectly fine to ask what an author’s conclusion is if you can’t find it, or what the purpose of reading this paper is! Whatever your questions or impressions, write them down.
Bring the material and your notes to class. Bring the paper and what you wrote down about it with you to class! Asking a question that you wrote down when you read the material helps take off some of the pressure of coming up with a question on the spot. Plus, if someone else has your same question, class discussion may help you answer it! And again, bring the paper with you, too-having the paper to refer to will help facilitate class discussion and your own understanding.
Revisit the paper. After class, you might want to revisit the paper or the question you wrote down about it. Has your impression remained the same? Have you answered all your questions? Do you have new ones? Keep going!
Rewriting the argument in your own words is a powerful practice. In his book, How to Take Smart Notes, Sönke Ahren’s also highlights the value of “translating” a text into your own words:
We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words. By doing this, we not only get a better sense of our ability to understand, but also increase our ability to clearly and concisely express our understanding – which in return helps to grasp ideas more quickly.
Ahren, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Sönke Ahren, 2017. (see page 54) -
Twitter isn’t all terrible. Recently rabbi, poet, and podcaster, Zohar Atkins posted a thread of his reflections on the Great Books.
He begins with the question: “What makes for a Great Book? And how should you approach one?”
A great list of the Great Books can be found on the St. John’s College Great Books curriculum page. Many of the titles are intimidating. Like Herodotus’ Histories, and Antoine Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry. But one shouldn’t avoid the intimidating.
There are surprises too. Works like Benjamin Franklin’s Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity” and Alfred Hitchcock, Selected movies.
Reading one intimidating text, and one surprising text, could be an optimal entry point.
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From Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Two solid paragraphs from Gordon S. Wood on Thomas Jefferson’s endless curiosity.
He was interested in more things and knew about more things than any other American. When he was abroad he traveled to more varied places in Europe than Adam’s ever did, and kept a detailed record of all that he had seen, especially of the many vineyards he visited.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10Not sure how one measures that Jefferson was interested in more things, and knew more things than any other American, but I trust Mr. Wood here. Also, Jefferson’s record keeping is legendary.
He amassed nearly seven thousand books and consulted them constantly; he wanted both his library and his mind to embrace virtually all of human knowledge, and he came as close to that embrace as an eighteenth century American could. Every aspect of natural history and science fascinated him.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10, 11It wasn’t enough that Thomas Jefferson owned seven thousand books. He consulted them regularly.
He knew about flowers, plants, birds, and animals, and he had a passion for all facets of agriculture. He had a fascination for meteorology, archaeology, and the origins of the American Indians. He loved mathematics and sought to apply mathematical principles to almost everything, from coinage and weights and measures to the frequency of rebellions and the length of people’s lives. He was an inveterate tinkerer and inventor and was constantly thinking of newer and better ways of doing things, whether it was plowing, the copying of handwriting, or measuring distances.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 11It’s hard to think of any modern, public person, with Jefferson’s insatiable appetite for “all of human knowledge”.
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What draws us to the fictional characters? There’s so much really. How the character is introduced. How they speak. Their perfections. Their flaws.
In Rooftoppers, author Katherine Rundell introduces us to Charles Maxim. He is Sophie’s ward.
Charles is not a smiler. He is not a skipping and kicking your heels with joy type of man. He eats and sleeps little but is somehow not cranky. He is kind. He is generous. He is quotable.
Curiously, Katherine Rundell introduces Charles to us multiple times with different methods. The first intro is a third person introduction:
Charles ate little, and slept rarely, and he did not smile as often as other people. But he had kindness where other people had lungs, and politeness in his fingertips.
Rundell, Katherine. Rooftoppers. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013, pg 11Then through his character assessment file at the National Childcare Agency:
“C.P. Maxim is bookish, as one would expect of a scholar-also apparently generous, awkward, industrious. He is unusually tall, but doctors’ reports suggest he is otherwise healthy. He is stubbornly certain of his ability to care for a female ward.”
Rundell, Katherine. Rooftoppers. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013, pg 8Clever approach that. Reinforces who Charles Maxim is without boring us. Katherine Rundell doesn’t create balsa wood characters.
Ok, onto the quotes.
Aptly named, a Charles Maxim quote book should exist. Here’s a few to take home with you.
On parenting:
“I am sure the secrets of child care, dark and mysterious though they no doubt are, are not impenetrable.”
On books:
“Books crowbar the the world open for you.”
On eating ice cream:
“I have a theory” he said, “That the the best place to eat ice cream is in the rain on the outside box of a four-horse carriage.”
On the importance of umbrellas:
“I am an Englishman. I always have an umbrella. I would no more go out without my umbrella than I would leave the house without my small intestine.”
On life:
Never ignore a possible!
Pick up Rooftoppers from somewhere!
