Alan Jacobs

Some writers, though, scribble and tap more fruitfully than others. Next month brings with it the scent of rose petals, cushions and lapdogs: all heralding the re-publication of Barbara Cartland’s first novel, Jig-Saw. She was a 19-year-old ingénue when she wrote it in 1920; by the time she died, nearly 80 years later, she had produced 722 much-loved, mostly romantic works of fiction. In case you thought you’d read that number wrongly, I’ll spell it out: seven hundred and twenty-two. By my calculations, that means Cartland cracked out a book pretty much every 40 days.

Of course Franzen wrote the autobiography—just as he wrote each word of the novel [Freedom]—and placed it in the narrative in a considered way; so why shouldn’t he tinker with the text, inflecting it with his own ideas and language? But for a realist novel to succeed, certain central conceits must remain intact. If the writer tells us that a text is the autobiography written by a character, and that that text figures as agent of action within the story itself, then we must believe it to be a real thing. And a real thing would be written in a consistent and believable voice, Patty’s voice. Otherwise, the delicate gravity of a novel’s solar system gets thrown too far out of whack, and its planets start to spin out of orbit.

Is liberalism any better off now that Juan Williams ‘got what was coming to him’ for going on Fox in the first place? Aren’t Fox News’s millions of viewers considerably less likely to have their assumptions challenged now that one of their more liberal commentators has a highly personal reason to drift rightward, or at least hold a grudge against the left? Indeed, doesn’t this imbroglio just guarantee that both NPR listeners and Fox News watchers will find themselves wound a little tighter in their respective ideological cocoons? I think so, and I don’t think anyone should be happy about it.

A plot, if there is to be one, must be a secret. A secret that, if only we knew it, would dispel our frustration, lead us to salvation; or else the knowing of it in itself would be salvation. Does such a luminous secret exist?

Yes, provided it is never known. Known, it will only disappoint us. Hadn’t Aglie spoken of the yearning of mystery that stirred the age of the Antonines? Yet someone had just arrived and declared himself the Son of God, the Son of God made flesh, to redeem the sins of the world. Was that a run-of-the-mill mystery? And he promised salvation to all: you only had to love your neighbor. Was that a trivial secret? And he bequeathed the idea that whoever uttered the right words at the right time could turn a chunk of bread and a half-glass of wine into the body and blood of the Son of God, and be nourished by it. Was that a paltry riddle? And then he led the Church fathers to ponder and proclaim that God was one and Triune and that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, but that the Son did not proceed from the Father and the Spirit. Was that some easy formula for hylics? And yet they, who now had salvation within their grasp — do-it-yourself salvation — turned deaf ears. Is that all there is to it? How trite. And they kept scouring the Mediterranean in their boats, looking for a lost knowledge, of which those thirty-denarii dogmas were but the superficial veil, the parable for the poor in spirit, the allusive hieroglyph, the wink of the eye at the pneumatics. The mystery of the Trinity? Too simple: there had to be more to it.

landscapelifescape:

Hunza, Gilgit, Pakistan

Color Bonanza (by Atif Saeed)

Amish country, in Kelly’s telling, is a version of the hippie-nerd Maker Faire without the colorful clothing. The Amish may not have cars or buttons, but they do have ‘alpha-geeks,’ 'early adopters’ and enough clever retro-futuristic contraptions to do any steampunk proud. Behind one electricity-free farmhouse, Kelly finds a workshop vibrating with 'an ear-cracking racket of power sanders, power saws, power planers, power drills and so on,’ all powered by a diesel generator driving a compressed-air system known locally as 'Amish electricity.’ Everywhere he goes, Amish D.I.Y.-ers show off 'their geekiest hacks.’

The Amish, Kelly says, are the ones who stand athwart technological history and shout 'Maybe!’ They reject cars and credit cards but are enthusiastic users of disposable diapers, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Different sects, like the ultra-strict Old Order Amish, take different approaches. But in general they make a distinction between technologies that will strengthen the community — like genetically modified corn, which is easier to harvest using older equipment, and thus helps keeps family farms together — and those that might weaken it, like cellphones, which, along with artificial insemination and solar power, are still being debated.

the relative value of innovation

These people remind me of wine snobs - they can detect all these subtle notes and flavours but the average person probably won’t notice all these tiny flourishes on a font. When you’re reading an article you’re not thinking about the font. You have to be looking at fonts all day before you start getting emotional about them… . The other day I heard that people are getting ‘font paralysis’. They couldn’t move forward with their work because they were unable to decide on which font to use.

The narrowing effect of technology on language itself is something I discussed with the novelist Joseph O’Connor, best known for the success of his 2003 novel Star of the Sea. ‘A friend recently showed me a really beautiful downloadable edition of Alice In Wonderland, full of gorgeously ticking clocks and a dormouse whose snores were audible, and it was amazingly impressive,’ he explained. 'And yet. Joyce filled his books with music by learning to use words. The same with Proust or Márquez or Toni Morrison. I think if the author is doing a good job, you should be hearing the dormouse snore already. Too many novels are film scripts waiting to happen.’

oh, for the good old days