E.C. Walsh Blogsphere

As part of my long-running tradition of acquiring more books than I am likely to ever actually read, this post is about a new one called “Archeology & Science Delve 4,000 Years into the Past To Document: The Bible as History,” sometimes referenced simply as “The Bible as History.”

It was published in German originally in 1955. This edition comes from a 1981 English version. One of the reviews on the back cover says it is “a lively blend of drama and reporting that reads like a detective story grafted on a history book.”

Two memories come to mind about this initially. One is that the ABC newsman Peter Jennings did a lot of work on the factually historic background of “The Bible” that I found interesting. Jennings died slightly young at 67. From what I heard, there was a lot of envy/spite toward him from colleagues because he was a sort of golden-boy. I think people envied for their good looks, productivity, and intelligence often turn to smoking for relaxation.

The other is that in literary theory there is a sort of binary between the Semitic, which one tends to relate with “The Bible” or Judaic texts, and the Hellenic associated with ancient Greece. I need to think/research about this more before having anything more to write about it.

Is money the root of all evil? No, but it doesn’t necessarily make you happy. I am thinking of the Vanderbilt family after touring the Biltmore Estate today.

The estate is still run by a scion of George Vanderbilt, who built it as a summer home away from his sprawling railroad, steamship, etc. empire. It is expensive to tour, but I think of it as a Disney World for single people. Half of it is open to the public at cost, and the other half, roughly, has a vineyard, livestock, and wildlife that need to be culled occasionally.

What prompted the comment in the first paragraph of this blog was the suicide of another Vanderbilt scion Anderson Cooper’s brother. Anderson Cooper seems like a smart and successful person, albeit homosexual (that’s his business; I have no trouble with gays as long they start in adulthood, keep their private lives private, and don’t molest children).

Stress ball, stress ball, what’s the point of it all?

And why not return my call?

Methinks I’m heading for a fall.

Sometimes it makes me want to bawl.

That is all.

“Ode to a Stress Ball” by yours truly

Stress ball as you bounce and bounce and bounce

I shall renounce the tears and fears of all the years.

But it appears the neighbors doth think my point belabors,

So I shall take you down the hall and stop your bouncing

Lest I fall down the stairs and have nightmares.

But out the front door I shall resume your bounce

With every ounce of strength I can muster, such is your luster.

Oh stress ball, stress ball, by some finer name you I should call.

For all the relief you bring, I want to sing.

If I were locked away in Sing Sing,

Such peace you would bring. Stress ball.

 

 

 

“Guyland is the locker room writ large: the world where young men both test and prove themselves as men and develop the defining attitudes and self-images they will carry into adulthood.”

More from the cover flap of Guyland. Apparently the author Kimmel interviewed a lot of people for this book. I remember reading an interview with former First Lady Laura Bush where the journalist asked what her most important goal to reform public policy was. Bush replied something simple like “boys.” The interviewer was taken aback by such a blunt answer.

She had a point. Both she and her husband had trouble reaching maturity, as I understand it. Both Laura and George W. Bush seem to have had drinking problems when young. In conversation, I heard a young liberal journalist mocking  Laura Bush for being a librarian; I though it was unfair. “Librarians are only interested in the outsides of books,” I heard one of my grad school classmates say. So what.

“The average young American man today is moving through a new stage of development, a buddy culture unfazed by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and other nuisances of adult life. Sociologist and gender studies authority Michael Kimmel has identified this territory as ‘Guyland,’ a place that is both a stage of life and a social arena.”

More from the book flap of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. I’m looking forward to reading the book itself. One of the reviewers says it is a companion piece to Reviving Ophelia, in that it introduces readers to the world of young men the way that book did to the world of young women.

What interests me about the direct quote above is the way the words “buddy” and “guy” are used. It reflects the difference between denotation and connotation and the importance of context. In this context, buddy and guy are pejoratives associated with people who have no familial responsibilities and live for their own pleasure. One of the slightly older guys in high school used to greet me with the word “buddy.” I took it as a sarcastic insult, but I think the dictionary definition is just a casual friend. Words.

Picked up a book from the used book store today. It’s called Guyland, and the cover flap notes it’s about initiation rights to adulthood that seem to have gone wrong. It was published in 2008.

The cover flap says, “the passage from adolescence to adulthood was once clear, coherent, and relatively secure: in their late teenage years and early twenties, guys ‘put away childish things’ and entered their futures as responsible adults.”

I don’t know. I think male maturity has a lot do with just calming down. And my understanding is you can’t do that in your own nuclear family for whatever Freudian/emotional reasons. So you need your cousins or friends to really do it.

“Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy,” said FSF. To me the difference between Fitzgerald and Hemingway was that the former had  a better understanding of tragedy. Maybe he understood it too well.

I have seen a few of Englishman Noel Coward’s plays but not read his work or studied it. It seemed to me he dealt with themes similar to Fitzgerald’s but had more of a sense of humor about it. This is something I heard when living/working overseas: that Americans are too serious.

We have reasons to be serious.

“We have always had a next one, after all, and there’s no good reason we shouldn’t start this one now. If only people could travel as easily as words. Wouldn’t that be something? If only we could  be so easily revised.”

So begins Therese Anne Fowler’s historical novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, following the quotation of what appears to be a letter from Zelda to Scott from her sanatorium in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to hear Fowler speak about her book when I was teaching at University of Mary Washington. I think it is interesting the relationship between a wife and her husband when the husband is very successful. Many men have power/intellect but don’t know how to use it. A good woman shows them.

If the quoted letter that begins Fowler’s novel is true, Zelda was a good writer too (I haven’t read her novel). She speaks of “you with your bad heart, me with my bad head.” The letter is entirely affectionate. I don’t know enough of their lives to understand why their marriage ended so badly.

I have more to say on this but want to make an irrelevant statement. A classmate from my youth who tried but failed to stop me from making a fatal error died recently. Requiescat in pace.

Got a copy of the paperback version of Stephen King’s The Institute yesterday and started it today. The reviews say it is a horror novel but not of the supernatural variety. It appears to have first been published last year but only in paperback this month.

The notion of institutions as sometimes malevolent entities goes way back in literature. Whether it is a hospital, a corporation, a church, or a government, these larger communities representing what other people think of the individual intrigue us, don’t they? I think the appeal of horror to some people has a lot to do with the idea that the environment can be against you. Sometimes it feels that way.

I think King is a serious writer. I haven’t read all his work by far, but most of what I’ve read of him I’ve liked. He made a funny comment in an interview about his popular success to the effect that it helps to be able to pay for the groceries.