On Writing

From Peter Leithart:

"Writing a book is like groping through a cave that no one else has explored or ever will, because you create the cave as you go. When it’s all done I can’t remember how I got through all the tunnels to emerge, blinking, into the sun. Once the book is published, readers will (I hope) be able to follow my simplified map. What they won’t see are all the blind alleys I tried out along the way."

"[T]he process of writing...is an almost entirely solitary experience. You might discuss a major decision with an editor or a friend, but even the most diligent editor and the closest friend will quickly find you tedious if you let too much of your hand-wringing show. Time was when there would be physical evidence of paths not chosen, but now that writers use word processing programs most of that is erased, revised, and lost forever. “Submerge” and “surface” are too exact to be entirely metaphorical. For every book, fiction or non, there is a fantasy book that exists (or existed) only in the mind of the author."

"[The experience of writing is] also seductive in a gnostic sort of way. The cave I’ve been in existed only for this book. Next time around, I’ll be creating an entirely new cave to explore. Easing back into life after the book is done, the world seems peopled by unfamiliar beings from a denser reality. I look at them as a spy might who has just returned from a solo mission in an exotic locale. If I could only tell them where I’ve been...but they wouldn’t understand, and the place I’ve been doesn’t exist anyway."

Rob, Lie, Kill

I haven't done much reading lately, much to my chagrin, but when have I've ever been able to sate the reading bug? I am making a concentrated effort to change that though, and now that I'm no longer in school I really have no excuse for lazy reading habits. My most recent "conquest" is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and while I'm proud to have completed such a significant (not to mention hefty!) piece of literature, I certainly can't boast about the 4+ months it took me to get through it. Hopefully I'll show a bit more concentration with the next few books I pick up...though I may not be able to proceed directly to another Russian novel as I had originally planned (it's a genre which I have neglected in the past, again to my regret).

Just one note on the quotes: somehow they all come from the very end of the book. I hope that's only incidental and not an indicator that I somehow didn't pay attention to the rest of the work. Though I'm inclined to doubt the latter since I read approximately the first half in the summer of 2006 and re-read the entire piece this time around, thus doubling up on 400 or so pages. Then again, perhaps a third reading is in order to grasp the full weight of Tolstoy's writing.

Regardless, without further ado, and in order of appearance, I give you quotations.

     "Understanding clearly for the first time that for every man and for himself nothing lay ahead but suffering, death and eternal oblivion, [Levin] decided that it was impossible to live that way, that he had either to explain his life so that it did not look like the wicked mockery of some devil, or shoot himself [...]
     'What would I be and how would I live my life, if I did not have those beliefs, did not know that one should live for God and not for one's needs? I would rob, lie, kill. Nothing of what constitutes the main joys of my life would exist for me.' And, making the greatest efforts of imagination, he was still unable to imagine the beastly being that he homself would be if he did not know what he lived for.
     'I sought answer to my question. But the answer to my question could not come from thought, which is incommensurable with the question. The answer was given by life itself, in my knowledge of what is good and what is bad. And I did not acquire that knowledge through anything, it was given to me as it is to everyone, givenbecause I could not take it from anywhere.
     'Where did I take it from? Was it through reason that I arrived at the necessity of loving my neighbor and not throttling him? I was told it as a child, and I joyfully believed it, because they told me what was in my soul. And who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law which demands that everyone who hinders the satisfaction of my desires should be throttled. That is the conclusion of reason. Reason could not discover love for the other, because it's unreasonable.'"
—Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Group: New York, 2000. pp 796-797.

     "'And don't all philosophical theories do the same thing, leading man by a way of thought that is strange and unnatural to him to the knowldege of what he has long known and known so certainly that without it he would not even be able to live?'"
—ibid. pg 798.

     "'It's the newspapers that all say the same thing,' said the prince. 'That's true. And it's so much the same that it's like frogs before a thunderstorm. You can't hear anything on account of them.'"
—ibid. pg 808.

Brilliance

“She got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, ‘What an idiot her teacher must be,’ and thinking about her teacher made me realize—the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a ‘brilliant student’ is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them. ”

~Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

Poético

The Rules of Evidence
Lee Robinson

What you want to say most
is inadmissible.
Say it anyway.
Say it again.
What they tell you is irrelevant
can’t be denied and will
eventually be heard.
Every question
is a leading question.
Ask it anyway, then expect
what you won’t get.
There is no such thing
as the original
so you’ll have to make do
with a reasonable facsimile.
The history of the world
is hearsay. Hear it.
The whole truth
is unspeakable
and nothing but the truth
is a lie.
I swear this.
My oath is a kiss.
I swear
by everything
incredible.

10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will...

Canto porque hay luz y sombras,
porque hay pesar y alegría,
porque hay temor y esperanza,
porque hay amor y perfidia.

Canto porque existo y siento,
porque lo grande me admira,
porque lo bello me encanta,
porque lo malo me irrita.

Canto porque ve mi mente
concordancias infinitas,
y placeres misteriosos,
y verdades escondidas.

~Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

Summer in Summary

Number of Hours Worked: 530.25

Miles put on Car: 2969

Movies Watched (in theatres): 3

Books Read, in order of preference:
1) I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe
2) Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
3) Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
4) The Bonfire of Vanities, Tom Wolfe
5) Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
6) The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
7) Driving Blind, Ray Bradbury
8) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
9) Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut

Just Because

"Some while back one night I dreamed that I was motoring along a country road with my inspirational Greek muse. She occupied the driver's seat while I occupied the passenger's place with a second, student's, wheel.

I could not help but notice that she was driving, serenely, with a clean white blindfold over her eyes, while her hands barely touched the steering wheel.

And as she drove she whispered notions, concepts, ideas, immense truths, fabulous lies, which I hastened to jot down.

A time finally came, however, when, curious, I reached over and nabbed the edge of her blindfold to peer underneath.

Her eyes, like the eyes of an ancient statue, were rounded pure white marbles. Sightless, they stared at the road ahead, which caused me, in panic, to seize my wheel and almost run us off the road."

~Ray Bradbury, Driving Blind

On Fiction

"Why do we read fiction anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language—or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself."

~Orson Scott Card

First Impressions

Almost the end of my first week here on campus...I can't believe it's gone by this quickly!

Of course, I've already gone on a couple of expeditions to the library and filled my desk with books of all kinds. Have I mentioned my compulsive library habits? Anyway, I don't have much homework just yet, so it's all good. Here's what I've got thus far:

• Nothing Serious, P.G. Wodehouse
• Augustine, Great Books Series
• Locke, Berekeley, Hume, Great Books Series
• Mathematical Logic, J. Shoenfield
• Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
• A Writer’s Journal, H.D. Thoreau
• Good News from Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Gracia Ellwood
• Fourteen Short Stories, Henry James
• C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith, Richard B. Cunningham
• Collected Plays, Charles Williams
• Latin in Church, F. Brittain

Other than that and an incident in New Testament class relating to my "fascination" with Dorothy Sayers (my professor shares the same literary tastes), the week has been fairly uneventful, or rather unremarkable but full of events. On Monday night, the night before classes began, Allison (my room mate) and I stayed out past midnight...exploring the old administration building & theatre here on campus. What fun! The buildings were completely empty and a sort of "sanctuary" from the endless cacophony of orientation.

Speaking of sanctuaries, I went to mass last night. I guess it was a little awkward for me, not knowing all the "rituals," but it was a much-needed break from harried campus life. It gave me a little time to refocus and set my priorities straight. I must say, I really admire the solemnity and sense of awe in the Catholic liturgy. And I didn't feel as if the formality was forced or "dead;" it was a very graceful sort of formality, a reverence which is sadly lacking in a lot of churches today.

Fascinated with Sayers

Only on the eighteenth page of Dorothy Sayers' Whimsical Christian and I've already filled my notebook with three pages worth of quotes & notes. Honestly, it's a bit overwhelming, so I'm sure I'll have to re-read it over the summer. Anyway, here is an excellent example of Sayers' versatility as a writer:

Hynm Suitable for the Vigil of the Enlightenment

"The day that Nature gave is ending
The hand of Man turns on the light;
We praise thee, Progress, for defending
Our nerves against the dreadful night.

As o'er each continent and island
The switches spread synthetic day,
The noise of mirth is never silent,
Nor dies the stain of toil away.

We thank thee that thy speed incessant
Provides upon this whirling ball
No time to brood on things unpleasant--
No time, in fact, to think at all.

Secure amid the soothing riot
Of crank and sound track, plane and car,
We shall not be condemned to quiet,
Nor left alone with what we are.

By lavish and progressive measures
Our neighbor's wants are all relieved;
We are not called to share his pleasures
And in his grief we are not grieved.

Thy wingèd wheels o'erspan the oceans,
Machining out the Standard Man.
Our food, our learning, our emotions
Are processed for us in the can.

All bars of color, caste, and nation
Must yield to movies and the mike;
We need not seek communication,
For thou dost make us all alive.

So be it! Let not sleep nor slackness
Impede they Progress, Light sublime;
Nor ever let us glimpse the blackness
That yawns behind the gates of Time."

latin and poetry...

Ok, time for a second post.

Here's a really cool poem- for those of you who know Latin (a very useful thing I might add), try and translate:

Tres Anuli regibus Alfonum sub caelo,
Septem Dominis Nanorum in lapidis aulis,
Novem Hominibus Mortalibus ad morendum damnatis,
Unus Domino Obscuro in solio obscuro,
In Terra Mordore ubi Umbrae,
Unus Anulus ad eos omnes regendos,
Unus Anulus ad eos inveniendos,
Unus Anulus ad eos omnes ferendos et eos in tenebris astringendos,
In Terra Mordore ubi Umbrae.