Reading
I’m going in: The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist 📚
The Uses of Pessimism by Roger Scruton:
Unscrupulous optimists believe that the difficulties and disorders of humankind can be overcome by some large-scale adjustment: it suffices to devise a new arrangement, a new system, and people will be released from their temporary prison into a realm of success. When it comes to helping others, therefore, all their efforts are put into the abstract scheme for human improvement, and none whatsoever into the personal virtue that might enable them to play the small part that it is given to humans to play in bettering the lot of their fellows. Hope, in their frame of mind, ceases to be a personal virtue, tempering griefs and troubles, teaching patience and sacrifice, and preparing the soul for agape. Instead, it becomes a mechanism for turning problems into solutions and grief into exultation, without pausing to study the accumulated evidence of human nature, which tells us that the only improvement that lies within our control is the improvement of ourselves.
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The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom, from Book VIII:
“Mustn’t it first be told how the transformation from timarchy to oligarchy takes place?”
“Yes.”
“And really,” I said, “the way it is transformed is plain even to a blind man.”
“How?”
“The treasure house full of gold,” I said, “which each man has, destroys that regime. First they seek out expenditures for themselves and pervert the laws in that direction; they themselves and their wives disobey them.”
“That’s likely,” he said.
“Next, I suppose, one man sees the other and enters into a rivalry with him, and thus they made the multitude like themselves.”
“That’s likely.”
“Well, then,” I said, “from there they progress in money-making, and the more honorable they consider it, the less honorable they consider virtue. Or isn’t virtue in tension with wealth, as though each were lying in the scale of a balance, always inclining in opposite directions?”
“Quite so,” he said.
“Surely, when wealth and the wealthy are honored in a city, virtue and the good men are less honorable.”
“Plainly.”
“Surely, what happens to be honored is practiced, and what is without honor is neglected.”
“That’s so.”
“Instead of men who love victory and honor, they finally become lovers of money-making and money; and they praise and admire the wealthy man and bring him to the ruling offices, while they dishonor the poor man.”
“Certainly.”
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Finished reading: Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer by Christopher Beha. A very good book. More thoughts coming soon in The Dispatch. 📚
Finished reading: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner, a powerful book that will make you despair of humanity. Representative passage:
“You’re from the Park Service, aren’t you?” Mulholland demanded more than asked.
“Yes, I am,” said Albright. “Why do you ask?”
“Why?” Mulholland said archly. “Why? I’ll tell you why. You have a beautiful park up north. A majestic park. Yosemite Park, it’s called. You’ve been there, have you?” Albright said he had. He was the park’s superintendent. “Well, I’m going to tell you what I’d do with your park. Do you want to know what I would do?”
Albright said he did.
“Well, I’ll tell you. You know this new photographic process they’ve invented? It’s called Pathé. It makes everything seem lifelike. The hues and coloration are magnificent. Well, then, what I would do, if I were custodian of your park, is I’d hire a dozen of the best photographers in the world. I’d build them cabins in Yosemite Valley and pay them something and give them all the film they wanted. I’d say, ‘This park is yours. It’s yours for one year. I want you to take photographs in every season. I want you to capture all the colors, all the waterfalls, all the snow, and all the majesty. I especially want you to photograph the rivers. In the early summer, when the Merced River roars, I want to see that.’ And then I’d leave them be. And in a year I’d come back, and take their film, and send it out and have it developed and treated by Pathé. And then I would print the pictures in thousands of books and send them to every library. I would urge every magazine in the country to print them and tell every gallery and museum to hang them. I would make certain that every American saw them. And then,” Mulholland said slowly, with what Albright remembered as a vulpine grin, “and then do you know what I would do? I’d go in there and build a dam from one side of that valley to the other and stop the goddamned waste!”
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Currently reading: Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer by Christopher Beha 📚
Finished reading: The Way of Dante by Richard Hughes Gibson. Full disclosure: Rick is one of my dearest friends. But by any measure this is a wonderful book. Lewis, Williams, and Sayers were all serious readers of Dante, but they read Dante in sustained and energetic conversation — often amounting to disputation, especially when DLS was involved — with one another. Rick beautifully traces this evolving dialogue, with the unique genius of Dante at the center of it all. 📚
Finished reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. Just re-read this for the first time since it came out, fourteen years ago. What an extraordinary book. 📚
Currently reading: Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, ed. Edward M. Burns. Two volumes, nearly 2000 pages. Lots of academic and literary gossip punctuated by extended passages of intellectual fireworks. When it’s good it’s great. It will take me a long time to read it; I have made a pledge to myself to be patient. Burns made the decision to annotate everything — there must be 250 pages of notes here — but he still manages to leave out some things that need to be explained, and fails to correct many misspellings while also “correcting” spellings that were right. Moreover, from time to time he will add a note referring the reader to a letter that isn’t here, or is misdated and therefore unfindable. I can’t blame him: the task was immense and he made it immenser than it needed to be, so the opportunities for error number in the thousands. I’m sure I would’ve done worse. Still, one must come to this prepared to be often confused, or brought up short by editorial mistakes. Posts will be forthcoming. 📚
For the rest of this term I’ll be teaching two books: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy L. Sayers — I suspect that all my blogging, or almost all, will be about them. 📚