Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I have loved Yiyun Li ever since I first read Gold Boy, Emerald Girl back in 2013. I followed that up with the eviseceratingly tragic yet beautiful The Vagrants about a year ago. It is hard to believe that English isn’t her first language - she shares Conrad’s ability to make amazing art in a language she didn’t grow up speaking. As this book reveals, she intentionally chose to write only in English, and never in her native Chinese. 

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life was published in 2017, five years after Yiyun had a serious mental breakdown, attempted suicide twice, and landed in the hospital for her own protection. The book itself is a series of essays wherein she explores her own psyche, her breakdown, her past, and her relationship to literature and writing. At least, that is the best I can do to explain the book, because it isn’t really like anything I have read before. And it is really, really good. Her writing is so luminous, and simultaneously oblique and devastatingly revealing, it draws you in. 

Yiyun has said in the past that she is “not an autobiographical writer.” That is, her stories are not about her or people she knew. But, as she admits in this book, that was a lie. I don’t think it was a lie in the sense of being actually untrue. She doesn’t write stories with her as a character. But if I am reading her essay on this issue correctly, her story is told through the psyches of her characters, not their situations, plots, or choices. And that feels right, after reading this book. She is a very private person, and her characters tend to keep their emotions mostly out of sight. But, just as her stories reveal the emotions of her characters in such flayed reality that you want to look away, her essays in this book are as introspective and self-revealing as anything I have ever read. I mean, you can see the viscera and throbbing arteries of her emotional experiences. It is hard to take at times, which is why I read the book slowly. The reality is just too real to be looked in the face. 

In an interesting coincidence, this is the second book I have read in as many months that had autobiographical explorations of depression and suicide. The other was a fictional work, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater. While the two are very different - psychologically different too - the share that uncomfortable look into mental illness. As an example, Emezi’s character has multiple personalities, tends to be loud and act out, and seems like a being on fire more often than not. It is a violent vision of suicide, of self destruction, and inner torment. Yiyun’s on the other hand, is that of a person who is quiet, pleasant, polite, thoughtful, ridiculously erudite - but who is dying internally, filled with a rather quiet self-loathing and distaste for living. It’s really spooky the way she writes it. 

As I noted in the former review, I am not particularly prone to either depression or suicidal thoughts. I’ve been in a few dark places, but they tend to be connected to circumstances, not major depression. And also, I joke that I am more homicidal than suicidal. (Don’t worry, I’m not homicidal. I’m not a violent person, but more of a fuzzball with a smart mouth. I just tend to get angry rather than depressed.) So these books were really more about seeing into the mind of someone else, and recognizing some of the darkness, if not its manifestations. It is an indication of how good the writing is that these books felt so real and familiar - and how deeply they messed with my emotions while reading. 

Yiyun takes an interesting approach to things in the book. For the most part, she doesn’t talk directly about what happened or what she did. Rather, she talks about other writers. Some of these are ones I might have guessed: Turgenev, Chekhov, Marianne Moore, Stefan Zweig. But some were a bit surprising, such as Thomas Hardy. Wait, what?? And some others which I haven’t read, and were not that familiar with, such as Elizabeth Bowen, John McGahern, and William Trevor. (The last of which she formed a friendship with, and who gets most of a chapter to himself.) Yiyun traces her love affair with literature from her childhood through the present, and you can see exactly how she ended up going from a promising career in science to taking the leap into writing. 

Rather than try further to explain the book, let me mention a few quotes that I wrote down as particularly insightful. 

After years of living in America, I still feel a momentary elation whenever I see advertisements for weight-loss programs, teeth-whitening strips, hair-loss treatments, or plastic surgery with the contrasting effects shown under before and after. The certainty in that pronouncement--for each unfortunate or inconvenient situation, there is a solution to make it no longer be--both attracts and perplexes me. Life can be reset, it seems to say; time can be separated. But that logic appears to me as unlikely as traveling to another place to become a different person. Altered sceneries are at best distractions, or else new settings for old habits. What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self. Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself. 

Cue a bit of Clint Black? What makes this a particularly great insight is her understanding of the American mythos, and the way we built an economy on the lie that we can become fundamentally different people if we consume the right way.  

There is another moment when Yiyun recalls a visit to Ireland during a heat wave, and notes that, like music, weather can be a crucial part of a memory - and trigger it. 

Children, unlike their elders, do not converse about the weather. It is a fact to them, connected to the present only. Is it because weather can represent too much that it is often reduced to small talk? Weather gives experiences a place in time: a mood in which to inset a memory, a variable or a constant when comparing now and then. 

It’s bits like that which separate competent writers from the best, and I can only dream of being able to write - and observe - like that. Or how about this recalling of what reading meant to her during her deeply unpleasant time in the Chinese Army? 

I did not see myself in Scarlett O’Hara; or Anna Karenina, or Tess Durbeyfield or Jane Erye; nor did I look for myself in Jean-Christophe or Nick Adams or Paul Morel or the old man fighting the sea. To read oneself into another person’s tale is the opposite of how and why I read. To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence. 

That last sentence is amazing. And I think that, while I am not so inwardly turned as Yiyun, I get that feeling. Perhaps it is how introverts tend to read? 

Running through the book is Yiyun’s own history, which certainly contributed to her breakdown. Her mother was, to put it mildly, abusive. And probably mentally ill. Yiyun was the favorite child, so her sister probably had it worse, but the things Yiyun tells of her childhood make it clear that her mother abused everyone in the family, including her father. Some of the things said and done are just horrifying, such as her mother telling her that she “deserved the ugliest death” because she didn’t love her mother enough, and on the day she got married, telling her that she had left her with only the hope for Li’s divorce. I mean, it’s bad, and yet Yiyun remains haunted and drawn to her mother. In this context, and the fact that her parents’ memories - even though she doesn’t share them - still affect her in unexpected ways, she quotes Ralph Ellison: “Things were not supposed to be this way.” 

One of the chapters is largely about Turgenev, who had a similarly abusive and possessive mother. How about this fact? After disowning Turgenev’s brother for marrying, and then acting indifferent when the children of that marriage died in the same year, she told Turgenev, “I alone conceived you. You are an egoist of egoist. I know your character better than you know yourself...I prophesy that you will not be loved by your wife.” 

Ouch. But Yiyun’s mother said something similar to her: “I don’t even need to lay my eyes on you to know everything about you because you came from my body.” Apparently, she said this to the young Li regularly. She then asks, “How do we live with what we have, unhaunted?” And the answer is clearly that we cannot. We remain haunted. 

I must admit, a good bit of this resonated with me. My mother was not even in the same class as these controlling and abusive mothers, but she was damaged by her own childhood, and never really was able to transition from the mother of children to the mother of adults in a healthy manner. I did hear all too often during my teens that she feared I would marry a sweet girl and run roughshod over her. In the actual event, I married a strong, confident, and assertive woman, and I am pretty sure my mom was disappointed, which is why she eventually antagonized my wife until she was unwilling to waste time on my parents at all. So yes, I am very much haunted, and have to live with what I have. Things were not supposed to be this way. 

Returning again near the end of the book to her mother, Yiyun gives yet another facet of the issue. 

Writing is the only part of my life I have taken beyond my mother’s storytelling. I have avoided writing in an autobiographical voice because I cannot bear that it could be overwritten by my mother’s omniscience. I can easily see all other parts of my life in her narrative: my marriage, my children, my past. Just as she demands to come into my narrative, I demand to be left out of hers. There is no way to change that; not a happy ending, not even an ending is possible.

Perhaps the most difficult and haunting part of the book is Yiyun’s description of her never-ending quest to be invisible, to not matter, to prove that nothing matters. And it is clear that she wants to be visible, to be loved, to matter, and to prove that everything matters. There is a line in which she perhaps allows herself a glimpse of why. 

Nothing matters. The belief was fallible, but I knew from experience that absence is more reliable than presence, and a lie sustains life with absoluteness that truth fails to offer. 

There are layers to unpack in that one. Most obvious is that Yiyun finds that reality leads her toward suicide, and that some form of self-delusion appears necessary to prevent that. This is some crazy philosophical stuff, to be sure, and it isn’t just her. (As the book makes clear.) But I think too that she hits on a truth about...truth. Truth is complicated and messy and human and ambiguous. A lie is absolute. Lies tell you that everything can be summed up in one rule, one statement, one “truth.” And this is why cults thrive and hate multiplies and people embrace obvious untruths. It is far easier - and simpler because it is absolute - to say “my problems are the fault of those people,” than to look at the complexities of life. Far easier to exterminate the Jews, or deport immigrants, than to address the layers of kludge and rules and laws and systems which have choked the average person. Finding true solutions is always hard work - it is the work of reformation, not revolution - while “solutions” are easy to find. They have an absoluteness that truth cannot offer. On a related note, this observation is interesting, particularly in the context of whether wishing to escape suffering is selfish or not. (Many consider suicide selfish, but are other methods of escape likewise selfish?) 

It is easier to take something away than to give. Giving requires understanding and imagination; taking away requires only resolution and action.

This too ties back: giving - like truth - is complicated, and requires understanding the one to whom one gives, and imagination in finding a mutual good. That’s the complexity of truth. And the lie is easier - just take things away from other people. Send them back. Lock them up. Tell them to shut up. 

In the same chapter is an unexpected insight, which caught me off guard. I mentioned that I was not expecting Thomas Hardy to make an appearance. I was doubly not expecting to find a quote from Phillip Larkin about Jude the Obscure and the ensuing discussion to change my perspective on that book. Yiyun points out something that bothered me about the book: 

Sue is so incoherent that she raises in my mind the question of believability. Not that I don’t believe her as a character--a complaint one sometimes hears as a criticism of a less successful character--but I don’t believe a character can achieve inexplicability as she has. “Really too irritating not to have been a real person” was Larkin’s conclusion, and some biographers have suggested Hardy’s first wife as a model. 

This is true. Characters in stories are not allowed the luxury of being inexplicable. They have to do things for reasons, and Sue seems to have no reasons behind her behavior. She makes no sense. But this is, perhaps, the way a lot of people in real life are, if you think about it. Not everyone, clearly, but enough. The whole passage on Jude and Sue in particular, is really insightful. Even though I still dislike what Hardy did with her, I can understand it better. 

The chapter on language was also fascinating. Yiyun essentially “abandoned” (her words) three key things: her mother, her motherland, and her mother tongue. She compares herself to Nabokov, who likewise had to write in a non-native language. He did it for different reasons, though, and with reluctance. Yiyun did it intentionally, for rather complex reasons (although the fact that her mother cannot read English is one of them.) I can’t even begin to duplicate the extended exploration of this, but I think this line is a good start:

I feel a tinge of guild when I imagine Nabokov’s woe. Like all intimacies, the intimacy between one and one’s mother tongue can demand more than one is willing to give, or what one is capable of giving. If I allow myself to be honest, I would borrow from Nabokov for a stronger and stranger statement. My private salvation, which cannot and should not be anybody’s concern, is that I disowned my native language.

There are eight chapters, but also an “afterword” which seems in many ways to be its own chapter. I guess that is a matter of perspective. In any case, it has an amazing paragraph that I think makes a good way to finish this post. 

One cannot be an adept writer of one’s life; nor can one be a discerning reader of that tale. Not equipped with a novelist’s tools to create plots or maneuver pacing, to speak omnisciently or abandon an inconvenient point of view, to adjust time’s linearity and splice the less connected moments, the most interesting people among us, I often suspect, are flatter than the flattest character in a novel. Not only do we not have any alternatives, we discredit them. It has to be so--this indisputable conviction is often at the foundation of our decisions, including the most impulsive or the most catastrophic. It is easier to be certain of one thing than to be uncertain of a hundred; easier for there to be one is than many might have beens.

Yiyun Li has written one short story collection and two novels that I have yet to read. I was reminded again with this book why I love her writing so much. I definitely have her other works on my list, and I truly hope that she stays with us for a long time. 

***

This interview in The Guardian in relation to this book is pretty fascinating. 

***

A tragic footnote: soon after this book was published, Yiyun's teenaged son committed suicide. The amount of pain in this family of generations is lacerating. I wish I had a cure to offer, but life and humans are too complicated for simple answers.

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

Source of book: I own this.

Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books need to be read in order, or they make no sense. They are intended to be, in addition to murder mysteries, a story of the de Luce family, and later books assume you know the details from the earlier ones. Conveniently, I started reading the series shortly after starting this blog, so you can read them in order and then read my thoughts on each book. Here they are in order:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

A Red Herring Without Mustard

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Speaking From Among the Bones

The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place is therefore the ninth installment. After the original, Bradley contracted to write a total of seven, then extended it to ten. I have no seen any further news, so the next might well be the last. And, after all, Bradley is age 81, having taken up novel writing in his retirement. 

This book picks up soon after the end of the last one. Flavia is now officially an orphan, after the death of her father. (Her mother died shortly after her birth.) Along with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, she is on a vacation planned by her family’s faithful servant Dogger. Rather than her hometown of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia gets to solve a mystery in a different (although somewhat similar) small post-war British village. Well, four murders, actually. 

While enjoying a pleasant fishing excursion, Flavia manages to catch a body - a young actor named Orlando. It turns out he is the son of the late vicar - who was hanged for the murder of three gossipy women who were snidely referred to as the “three graces.” 

There are plenty of possible suspects, of course. And a lot of skeletons in the closets of more than a few people. 

This being a murder mystery, I won’t go any further than that. 

I wouldn’t mind mentioning a few details, however. As in the other books, Bradley’s love for literature and music are apparent. A minor character complains about Daphne, saying that you can’t trust a person who reads Trollope. I obviously disagree with this assessment - and I suspect Bradley does too, since he manages to get a mention of this underrated Victorian author into most of the books. 

Another fitting book reference comes from Dogger, quoting Milton’s Areopagitica.

“A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

The musical selections are always interesting too: not too obscure, but not exactly mainstream either. Rather, they are the sort of works that Classical buffs know and love, and that might be passingly familiar to everyone else. 

In this case, Bradley uses Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Clocking in at about an hour and fifteen minutes, it serves to give Flavia a window of time to do some sleuthing. 

While these books aren’t exactly high literature, Bradley does write well. I find them a cut about typical genre fiction. 

I should mention a couple of witty lines I liked. This one is courtesy of Mrs. Dandyman, the proprietor of the circus, allegedly quoting the late vicar. 

“There’s nothing so deadly as an acid tongue driven by a pious mind.” 

True that. 

And finally, a line from Flavia herself, who makes an educated assumption, and wins a gasp from the new vicar. 

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Feminine intuition,” I replied. Which was an outright lie. Feminine intuition is no more than an acceptable excuse for female brains.” 

Very true indeed. It can’t be that women are as smart (and often smarter) than men, right? It has to be some mysterious “intuition” they are born with, rather than that. And Flavia is both smart and observant, two traits which are necessary to make a good sleuth. 

I had fun with this light, quick read. But definitely start at the beginning.

***

How about a bit of Bach? 

Such A Strange Lady by Janet Hitchman

Source of book: I own this. 

My wife has outstanding taste in books, and never fails to find me great used books for various occasions, including Christmas of 2016, when she found this one. 

Such A Strange Lady is a biography - the very first written - of Dorothy L. Sayers. (The “L” was important to her - it was from her maternal ancestor Percival Leigh - one of the founders of Punch.) Most will know her, if at all, for her Lord Peter Wimsey murder mysteries, although the number of people I know who have heard of her is disappointingly small. Fewer still will know of her amazing feminist essays, collected as Are Women Human? And yes, you absolutely should read them. 

My history with Sayers starts with her short story “The Inspiration of Mr. Budd,” which I read for 7th or 8th grade literature. I was smitten, but didn’t really follow up on her at the time. Later, in law school, a good friend happened to bring Murder Must Advertise along to a law school conference. I borrowed it, and read it before we had to return to our respective coasts. (There is a reason I wasn’t an A+ law student. I cared...enough. But not enough to work that hard and give up reading for fun. Oh well, no real regrets.) 

So anyway, it was interesting to read more about her life. She was the child of a country clergyman - one who actually exemplified the Christian ethic, often giving away more of his modest income than he could afford to help the poor. He also was determined to give young Dorothy - an only child, and a bit peculiar - as good an education as a boy. She wasn’t exactly a model student, although she was obviously highly intelligent. She was also socially awkward, tall and big boned, louder than people thought she should be. She got through school fine, and managed to get into Oxford. She completed her courses there with moderate distinction. But she was given no degree - Oxford didn’t get those to women at the time. (She would eventually get her degree many years later, and Oxford would see the error of its ways after she left.) 

Sayers struggled after graduation to find her place in the world. She taught. And hated it. She wrote, but took a while to find success - which she did by writing genre fiction - the Lord Peter mysteries, which she felt were beneath her, but they paid the bills. She worked for a while in advertising, where she was actually pretty good. Although most of us are too young (and in my case too American) to remember it, there was a fantastically successful campaign for Colman’s Mustard, featuring the fictional adventures of the “Mustard Club.” While the idea wasn’t hers, she ended up writing most of the copy. And, she later used her experiences in Murder Must Advertise.

Later, Sayers would return to her more scholarly roots, with a series of plays (performed mostly on radio) with religious themes, several books on theology and religion, and a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Predictably, this last drew some undeserved derision - how could a mere writer of mystery novels attempt a translation. Sayers reminded the critics that long before she was a writer of fiction, she was a scholar - and the fiction served to pay her bills. 

Sayers had little luck in love, alas. She had a child out of wedlock. The father is unknown to this day - she was extremely private about it. She gave the boy her name, although she outsourced the raising for the most part. She later married a flaky sort, who slept around on her, and drank. They seemed to get along after a fashion, although she didn’t exactly mourn his death openly. (To be honest, I wonder if she was on the Autism spectrum. It would make sense of many things about her. As the author puts it about her childhood, “Like the cat, an animal she dearly loved, she tolerated, rather than embraced, civilization.”)  

There are some highly interesting things in this short book. First is the fact that the author had to make do with a relative minimum of information. Her family refused to cooperate at all, leading to an absolutely fantastic line in the introduction:

“I must absolve from any errors Miss Sayers’ family, close friends, and executors, from whom I had no assistance whatsoever.”

I also must quote a few things regarding the religious plays. During World War Two, Sayers wrote a radio production for the BBC on the life of Christ. It was a multi-part series, to be performed by actors (horrors!) and in modern English. Predictably, this was met with great pearl clutching by the Fundies of 1940s British society, and much pressure was put on the BBC to cancel it. This was particularly silly as Sayers wrote a rather respectful play, in keeping with her devout beliefs - but also her modern artistic sensibilities. As with modern Fundie boycott campaigns, this rather backfired. The BBC stood firm, and the campaign gave free publicity to Sayers. As she put it in her tributes to the actors and producers, with her characteristic wit:

It is moreover irresistibly tempting (though is it kind or Christian?) to mention the Lord’s Day Observance Society and the Protestant Truth Society, who so obligingly did all our publicity for us at, I fear, considerable expense to themselves. Without their efforts, the plays might have slipped by with comparatively little notice, being given at an hour inconvenient for grown-up listening. These doughty opponents secured for us a large increase in our adult audience and thus enabled the political and theological issues in the most important part of the story to be treated with more breadth and pungency than might otherwise have seemed justifiable...The irony of the situation is, however, not of my making--it is part of the universal comedy. Let us record the plain fact: the opposition did us good service; let our gratitude for that go where all gratitude is due. 

Also fascinating to me regarding the plays is her nuanced take on one of the underrated characters in the Gospels: Judas Iscariot. To portray him as a cartoon villain is indefensible in my mind. Sayers wrote about this to her producer when the project was in progress. 

Judas is an insoluble riddle. He can’t have been awful from the start, or Christ would never have called him. I mean, one can’t suppose that He deliberately chose a traitor in order to get Himself betrayed--that savours too much of the agent provocateur, and isn’t the sort of thing one would expect of any decent man, let alone of any decent God--to do. And He can’t have been so stupid as to have been taken in by an obviously bad hat;--quite apart from any doctrinal assumptions. He was far too good a psychologist. Judas must have been a case of corruptio optima pessima; but what corrupted him? Disappointment at finding that the earthly kingdom wasn’t coming along? or defeatism, feeling that the war was lost, and one had better make terms quickly? Or just (as the Gospels seem rather unconvincingly to suggest) money and alarm for his own interests? If we can get a coherent Judas we can probably get a coherent plot.

I have wondered along the same lines since my youth. It is so refreshing to hear Sayers talk of the same questions. In fact, I must say that whenever I read her writing, I find gems like this, where she understands the nuance and asks the hard questions. It was unsurprising to discover that she flirted with agnosticism in her teens and college years, before finding a more mystical and complex version of faith. 

For those who haven’t discovered Sayers, she is an underrated writer and thinker. She is also a member of my Fantasy Dinner Party. (You have one of those, right? Past and present people you would invite to the greatest dinner party of all time?) Sayers has been on my list for decades, and I still think she would be fantastic. 

English Music by Peter Ackroyd

Source of book: I own this.

I have enough books in my library that I can’t always remember where I got them and when. This is such a book. My best guess is that I found it at a library sale at least five years ago. It is a Franklin Library hardback signed by the author - and it matches copies of Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton - so I am pretty sure I found them together. After all, it is hard to pass up a really nice hardback.

What I am less sure of is that I had any idea who Peter Ackroyd was when I got the book. I may have been vaguely aware of him, but he wasn’t on any of my reading lists. In any event, he is still living and writing, and is best known for having a wide variety of subjects and styles, from well respected biographies to fiction spanning a range of genres.

English Music is a somewhat unusual book. One could even argue that it is two books in one and that either part could stand alone.

The odd numbered chapters form one of the parts: they are a first person narrative by the protagonist, Timothy Harcombe, of his life. That part of the story is essentially a coming-of-age story as well as a tale of a boy and his complex relationship with his father. Clement Harcombe is a former circus performer turned faith healer, who has raised Timothy alone since birth - Timothy’s mother died in childbirth. Although the character has all the hallmarks of a charlatan, Clement actually does have the ability to heal - as long as he has Timothy to assist him. (It is never clear to the reader or to the characters exactly how much of the ability belongs to Clement and how much to Timothy - although it does seem that the two of them have to work together.) Timothy is taken from his father to go live with his maternal grandparents - and get a real education and grow up as a normal child. He ends up seeing his father again a few times during childhood and then as an adult - and eventually goes back to working with his father. Their both loving and dysfunctional relationship forms the core of the narrative - and it is clear that Timothy is torn between his two natures: his conventional aristocratic mother, and his self-taught bohemian father. These two natures are represented in a rather metaphorical way by the art which forms the second part of the book. Timothy’s father teaches him during his childhood using English literature. When he goes to live with his grandparents, he discovers his mother’s collection of classical music - primarily English composers. The author combines these traits in Timothy, and literature and music in what he calls “English Music,” which is really the entire art of the English people, from painting to music to literature to poetry.

The second part of the book is rather distinctive. The even numbered chapters represent dreams (or visions or hallucinations) that Timothy has during his unconscious spells which afflict him during times of stress. These dream sequences are told in the third person, who observes Timothy as he interacts with various representatives of “English Music.”

So, for example, in the first one, Timothy finds himself in a world which is a mashup of Pilgrim’s Progress and Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Yes, that is as odd as it sounds. Furthermore, Ackroyd writes these sequences in the style of those stories - and yes, Bunyan and Carroll mixed together does make for a bizarre style.

That is just one example. Other chapters feature Great Expectations, Robinson Crusoe, Morte d’Arthur, and Sherlock Holmes. The poetry of William Blake gets a chapter, as does the gallery of great English painters. William Hogarth gets a chapter to himself - a harrowing vision of Gin Alley and Bedlam. Composer William Byrd gets a chapter as well. There are other authors and books that get at least small references.

Ackroyd has been criticized for his choices in putting together his English pantheon. Women are barely mentioned (just George Eliot and Emily Bronte), and his idea that English art forms a single, coherent narrative is both a stretch and a bit jingoistic. On the other hand, you can tell Ackroyd loves the artists he selects, and is intimately familiar with their works. This isn’t just a greatest hits list, but an exploration of the artists that made Ackroyd who he is. I myself have mixed feelings about this, because I am an Anglophile myself. If I were to pick, I would say that English literature has been the most consistently influential and best written (on average) for the last 500 or so years. But of course, I am biased both because my native language is English, and I grew up immersed in the English language classics. Music and the visual arts, however, are different - England has a few distinguished names, but is hardly a leader in those areas.

As for the book itself, I thought it was good, but not great. The writing is excellent of course - Ackroyd is a craftsman of words. The dream interludes were quite interesting, whether or not you agree with his theory. I would go so far as to say that his ability to write “in the style of” is quite impressive - the poetry in particular is spot on. Where I felt it fell a bit flat was in the basic concept. The faith healing just feels kind of weird, as it is never given an explanation or a reason for existing. The book isn’t written like Magical Realism, and it has no other supernatural elements - or even the acknowledgement of any. We are just to assume that within an otherwise realistic book that two characters can heal people without knowing how they do it, or with any natural or supernatural explanation suggested. I also found Timothy to be annoyingly directionless. He never does seem to have any idea what he wants to do with his life. And that includes even in his old age. He never really does find himself or get beyond his tendency to expect that others will give his life direction. For that reason, it was difficult to warm up to him as a protagonist. I kept waiting for him to grow or discover something about himself. But it never really happens.

I am rather curious to read some more Ackroyd, however, because he is clearly a skilled writer, and his other books are apparently quite different from this one and from each other.

***

So, a few things from the book:

A number of paintings become part of the story. Here is one I particularly like, “Landscape With A Castle” by John Martin. 

William Byrd wrote nearly 500 works - a prodigious output to be sure - and also taught extensively. He is one of the few of his time to live long enough to see his works go out of style. In recent times, his music has been rediscovered. Here is a taste of his skill:

Although it doesn’t make it into the book, I figure I might link one of my favorite English composers, Ralph Vaughn Williams. This work is a bit more obscure, but it is one I have played - and it is quite fun.

This Thing We Call Literature by Arthur Krystal

Source of book: Kindle

I don’t read many books on electronic media, I will admit. I like the feel, smell, and general sensation of a book in my hands. However, there are some cases when electronic media works well. For obscure books that are in the public domain, this is often the only realistic way of reading them. I also find that if I have to wait in court, I already have my tablet with me, and can sneak a read. So I read a few of these that way.

In this case, my brother-in-law (who has supplied me with several intriguing books in the past) got this for me - in Kindle format. So I went with it.

This Thing We Call Literature is a collection of essays by Arthur Krystal, a critic and screenwriter best known for his work in The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. About the only other factoid I found quickly was that his grandparents died in the Holocaust. (This is relevant in connection with one of the essays - on Erich Auerbach.)

This collection of essays come from a variety of sources - these were mostly for various magazines over the last couple decades. The author apologizes at the outset for the fact that there is some overlap between each, which makes for a certain degree of repetition in themes. This isn’t particularly problematic in light of the fact that the collection is short, and Kristal isn’t given to wordiness. Each essay is tight and self-contained. I think I had run across at least one of his articles in The New Yorker at some point or another - probably the one on Fitzgerald from 2009.

The theme that ties the collection together is the question of what exactly makes a work “literature.” To a degree, Justice Potter Stewart’s line about obscenity, usually shortened to “I know it when I see it,” is the applicable test. But there is more to it than that. Throughout the course of the book, Krystal takes on a few modern trends in literary criticism, specifically Literary Theory, and the trend toward “democratization” - that is, that all works are “literature.” (Regarding the former, the two best things on Literary Theory that I have read have been David Foster Wallace’s essay and Ron Rosenbaum’s The Shakespeare Wars.) Krystal is a conservative (some might say reactionary), so his position on both of these trends is “I’m agin’ ‘em.” Well, more or less. His position is perhaps a bit more nuanced than that, but the bottom line is that Krystal believes that literature is a higher form of art, that there is a true canon of literature, and that the idea of both of those is worth defending vigorously.

In general, I tend to agree with Krystal on this. I think he makes many good points. I did, however, find some of his rhetoric (and particularly tone) to be a bit off-putting. He does sound from time to time like a cantankerous old man, and his acknowledgement of the whiteness and maleness of the Western canon isn’t followed up by any ideas on how to take a more globalist and egalitarian approach to the canon.

That quibble aside, let me hit on some of the key ideas.

First, I do absolutely agree in a distinction between literature and genre fiction. Krystal has no problem per se with genre - a point he makes clear - but he objects to including true genre fiction in the category of literature. Genre is written with its own rules (often specific to the genre), and to fulfil specific expectations. Literature is written with different - and higher expectations. It has the goal of telling us the truth about the human condition in some way. And, as the author puts it, “[A]uthors rely more on accuracy of characterization than on the events that their characters react to. It’s what separates great novels from merely good or pleasurable ones. It’s the difference between Anna Karenina and Bridget Jones.”

I must agree with this part wholeheartedly. My very favorite novelists are fantastic because they are so very good at characterization. (In case you wondered: Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James come to mind immediately when I think of outstanding characterization.)

When it comes to the authors at each end of the spectrum, Krystal is obviously correct. Nobody should confuse Clive Cussler with Nathaniel Hawthorne. I do take issue with some of his other choices, however. He lumps Pearl Buck and Ursula Le Guin with genre, which I think is a bit unfair. By his own litmus test, they at least aim for writing literature, and I have found their works to indeed tell the truth about the human condition using compelling characterization. Perhaps I would modify his claim by noting that it is not only possible to write literature when writing genre, but that many have done it since the first novel was written.

Again, I grant Krystal’s fundamental point, that most genre novels are not literature. And this includes the good (but not great) ones. There are indeed well written, thoroughly enjoyable genre works that are also clearly not literature. But I think there is some overlap at the very top of some genres - and that Krystal’s own test explains why.

One of the best essays in this collection is “A Sad Road to Everything.” Krystal expands on his theme that literature is, above all, about ideas and truth. One of his laments about the modern state of literature and literary ideas is that we have little in the way of vibrant ideas to discuss anymore. In the aftermath of postmodernism, which certainly had its place, but didn’t give way to a subsequent movement - at least that is readily apparent at this moment - literature itself seems to have lost its way as well. In a later chapter, Krystal looks at the decline of philosophy and its connection to a decline in literature. At the beginning of the essay, Krystal notes the tension that exists in human civilization between freedom and order. You need the order to protect freedom, but the order interferes with that freedom, and so on. Literature has always explored this greater tension, whether in the Greek Tragedies or in the Novel of Manners. On a national scale or the personal one, this tension continues to define our experiences.

Krystal also notes that, to anyone who thinks, there is something both very right and very wrong about life. Literature helps us make sense of that paradox.

I absolutely must mention a Tom Waits quote from this chapter, which made me laugh.

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

Also fascinating was the chapter on Erich Auerbach, who may be the best known writer on comparative literature. Auerbach was essentially exiled from Nazi Germany as a Jew, and wrote his masterpiece, Mimesis, while in Istanbul. I confess I wasn’t that familiar with Mimesis, but am tempted to give it a try, even though it is quite the heavy tome. As Krystal says about it, “For many critics, Auerbach, in recapitulating Western literature from Homer to Virginia Woolf, wasn’t just shaking his fist at the forces that drove him into exile; he was, in effect, building the very thing the Nazis wished to tear down. In light of the modern nexus between a revitalized ethno-nationalism and the celebration of ignorance, this seems more important than ever.

There are a few more quotes that were quite good. The first is a set, from a chapter on lists in literature:

“What list, after all, is complete or completely true? You’d need to have access to the mind of God to answer that question, and God, I’m afraid, is not on everyone’s list of things that are complete or completely true.”

“That said, there is something reassuring about a list, a precision and formality that makes us think we’ve got a handle on things. Isn’t every list in reality a ceremonial flourish against amnesia and chaos?”

I also have to mention this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

“Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside of you - like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist - or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore, around which pedants can easily drone their notes and explanations.”

I am clearly in the first camp.

There is quite a lot to think about in this collection of essays, at least if you love and care about literature. I am perhaps unusual in that I read more of the Western canon than genre over the years. I also have been making a concerted attempt in the last several to read more modern works - and more outside of the white, male, Western box. Ultimately, what makes literature what it is is that something that is truly timeless. Sure, every work is a product of its time and place, and understanding those factors can aid in understanding the work and its meaning. But the very best works will always resonate with those who think and feel and care.

This book is definitely worth reading. Alternately, you can find the individual essays in their original context with a web search.

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Obviously, we need some Tom Waits.

There is No Such Thing as an Objective, Clearly Correct, Interpretation of Scripture

Just a thought regarding interpretation of the Bible or any ancient text, which grew out of a conversation I had with some friends. The initial conversation was about white Evangelicalism’s inability to show basic empathy for those outside the tribe, but my friends joined in on the question of theology.

My view is that Bill Gothard was right about one thing: morality drives theology, rather than the other way around. It was a need to justify slavery and later Jim Crow that formed American Evangelical theology in the first place, which is why it seems designed to justify cruelty. In my view, thus, the cure isn’t to just try a more literalist or serious hermeneutic - we have to address the underlying evil that drives the interpretation. And that’s how we got off on the question of whether there is one “objective” way to approach scripture (and thus guarantee “correct” theology.) This is my response:

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While some interpretations are better than others, there is no such thing as an objective, exclusively, obviously correct interpretation. Each of us must grapple with the following points at which subjectivity is inevitable:

1. Our own interpretation as we read. Each of us brings our own biases to a reading. Many of these are ones we are completely unaware of, while a few are ones we know, and can thus attempt to compensate for. Each of us, when we read, interpret certain words and phrases in light of our theological upbringing and tradition. We just assume the meaning of them to be thus and such. Not just the literal meaning of the words, but also the theological meaning of them. Furthermore, we apply the meanings that apply in our culture to our reading. Just as one example, “marriage” as we understand it – even a Victorian understanding – is so different from the understanding under the Greco-Roman Domestic Codes that a person from that era would be unable to recognize our institution as the same thing. Likewise, an observer from the Ancient Near East would be unable to recognize a Greco-Roman marriage as the same institution. So when we see “marriage” in a text, how we apply that to a vastly different situation is by definition an act of interpretation. That is just one example. We do that with pretty much everything we read. To read is to interpret.

And that is even before we get to the real challenge: how do we live in imitation of Christ in our modern world? (And in light of vast political, economic, cultural, scientific, and social changes in the last 2000 years.) Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this crucial task has mostly been outsourced by Evangelicals to Fox News and Breitbart lately; which explains why “morality” seems to mean sexual moralism, Tribalism, and Ayn Rand economics.  

2. The interpretations of those who determined our theological tradition. For any Evangelical (or Christian of any theological tradition, for that matter) to claim that he or she is reading objectively, without depending on the specific theological and interpretive decisions made by those who founded their tradition is silly. None of us raised in that tradition (or any other) read the Bible with an open mind. We took for granted the teachings of people from Luther to Calvin to Spurgeon to…in many cases Henry Morris and Ken Ham. The interpretations these people made was also NOT objective. They were products of their own time, had their own prejudices, and so on. In many (probably most) cases, the cultural needs of their time and place drove their interpretation. (See slavery and Jim Crow, for example. Or reaction to Darwin.) Far more of what we believe the Bible says is actually what certain people our tradition follows believed it said. So our interpretations are colored by the interpretations of those who went before.

3. The interpretations of those who translated the English version we read. Anyone who thinks that this doesn’t matter displays their ignorance. Translation is an act of interpretation, even for modern texts. (Read two versions of, say Pablo Neruda, or Rainer Maria Rilke, if you have any doubts. Or check out the numerous translations of Inferno as I did in this post.) In every translation, decisions as to meaning must be made. Many of these are relatively uncontroversial, but in certain areas of doctrine, they can make a huge difference. (An example here is the KJV and the use of “deacon” when men are involved and “servant” where women are involved. Same word, different translation. And EVERY translation has some of these.) This isn’t a new problem. Research the Latin Vulgate, or the Septuagint. Each has significant differences from modern translations and the earliest manuscripts. The problem is compounded for ancient texts, because the meanings of words have been lost or obscured in many cases. Some words are unique to the Bible (including some of the ones in the New Testament.) Decisions about what these mean are a matter of interpretation – and controversy. When we read an ancient text translated into English, we are experiencing a layer of interpretation, not an objective reading of a text.

4. The interpretations of the scribes and copyists throughout history – and those who decided what to include in the collection.  This may come as a shock to those used to thinking of the Bible as a monolithic object, but there ARE no originals for the books contained in the Bible. We don’t have the original manuscript of ANY of it. That includes the New Testament, for which the oldest (small fragments) date only back to about 125 CE. Full books date back to no earlier than 200 CE, and some (like the Pastoral Epistles) do not appear until even later. And that is before you get to the question of what actually got included in our version of the NT - and what was omitted. This final process didn’t really finish until quite a bit later. In fact, determining what was “true” scripture seems not to have been a priority. Erasmus in the 16th Century CE put together the first printed Greek New Testament – and he had to make compromises between several versions. Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (fairly recently…), the most modern Hebrew manuscripts we had dated to about 1000 CE. That’s the Middle Ages. We have copies dating back to various times and places. These copies are not identical, and in some cases differ on very important words and phrases. To a historian or anthropologist, this is unsurprising. But it underscores the fact that even copying stuff is an interpretive act. 

 Early fragment (c. 125 CE) from the Gospel of John

 Part of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

I got to see these in person when they came to San Diego several years ago. Amazing.

And that is just for the written version. The evidence is overwhelming that the Old Testament wasn’t actually written down until centuries after most of the historical (or legendary in some cases) events would have taken place. Rather, the written documents seem to have appeared in (more or less) their current form around the time of the exile or post-exilic periods, depending on the book. Quite likely, these were edits and compilations of earlier texts (now lost) which were in turn taken from oral histories.

That’s a lot of interpretation right there. Someone (multiple someones, actually) decided to write down the stories. Many other persons edited, compiled, and selected them later. (And yes, this goes for the New Testament too – there was a lot of discussion about what was in or out, and humans made those decisions – an act of interpretation.) In essence, the whole process was a massive, long term project of interpretation. Ancient writers understood this, and, in fact, made changes for theological purposes as they went. (See, for one example, the differences in the histories in Samuel and Kings versus that in Chronicles. There are significant - and intentional - differences.)

5. The interpretations of the authors. Yeah, I know, Evangelicals will consider me a heretic for this one. Sorry. I can’t deny history and, well, the evidence of the text itself. The Bible isn’t a single book, literally dictated by God. It is a collection of books, written over a few thousand years, by humans. Yes, I believe these humans were inspired. (But the meaning of “inspired” is really loaded, isn’t it?) But there are too many disagreements and things that are not factually true for me to believe that they were a literal dictation, which would require a highly fallible God. (This ranges from math to science to history to theology. One of my epiphanies was to realize that the Bible is an argument between different theological perspectives rather than a unified systematic text.) But it should be kind of obvious that the authors themselves interpreted their inspiration based on their own culture and knowledge. Hence, the opening chapters of Genesis naturally are a retelling of an earlier Ancient Near East creation myth. Of course they assume ANE cosmology, rather than reflect a modern understanding of the universe. Of course Saint Paul assumes the fact of the Domestic Codes and the existence of slavery. Of course genocide was considered normal. In my view (and that of many others with a lot more knowledge in the area than me), God has always met us where we are. On a related note, I also don’t believe God has ceased to speak. Revelation didn’t magically end at the end of the 4th Century CE. We still have things to learn about a variety of subjects, including theology, and not all of those things will be in the Bible – any more than modern astrophysics is in there.

So before you assume that you somehow have the correct, objective reading of a text, consider that you are depending on at least five layers of interpretation. Maybe you are correct, but it isn’t inevitable. And there is nothing about your particular time in history or culture that allows you to see more clearly than either those who came before or those who will come after. We will, in my view, be wrong about many things, just as those who came before were. Likewise, by believing that some objective, unquestionably correct interpretation is possible, we make the Bible into an idol, something we worship and serve, rather than seeking to humbly follow Christ. It takes us ever further away from loving our neighbor, and ever less likely to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.

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I understand why Evangelicals fight this so hard: they have a theological - and psychological - need for the Bible to be something it isn’t. They need it to be a literally dictated, completely perfect, instruction book; with systematic theology to be discovered, rules for every situation, and without contradiction or argument. They need proof-texts to show the correctness of their views at every turn - something unassailable to competing arguments - something that will shut down opposing viewpoints.

That’s not the Bible we have. We have a Bible written by humans over at least a thousand years, with competing theological perspectives - indeed arguments. We have horrific Ancient Near East morality - genocides, women treated as chattel, slaughter of innocent children, slavery, and more. But we also have many beautiful things: a passionate concern for justice (including economic and social justice), deeply human stories, a profound poem about the problem of evil, early existentialism, gorgeous poetry, biting satire, and - most important - Christ himself. We have a radical, completely unexpected shift from the Torah as all-important, to a suffering Messiah who renders the very signs of being God’s people rendered irrelevant. At every point, our book is obviously of its time, while retaining (as the best books written do) a timeless quality that remains relevant to us today. Above all, it is a story. A story of God’s interaction with man throughout history - written by the men (and perhaps women) who earnestly sought the Divine.

Seen in that light, the Bible works. Seen as an instruction book, or treatise on systematic theology, it just doesn’t.

But for Evangelicals, their entire theological structure - and their sense of morality - depends on their delusion that they possess the One True Interpretation of the Holy Writ™, and without that, all they really have is their sexual moralism and commitment to toxic Republican politics.

I have come to realize that this is nothing less than idolatry. Bible-olatry. The veneration of an object - and one that doesn’t really even exist.

In fact, what they really worship is their preferred interpretation of said object. They worship their beliefs about God and the Bible.

And I also have come to realize that it is in fact a distraction. If they ceased to worship their interpretation of the Bible, they might have to actually look at the way that they have ignored the teachings and example of Christ - and see how horribly cruel they are to their fellow humans. That part is too uncomfortable to bear. So they fight tooth and nail to preserve their idol.

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Just a thought here: there have been a lot of really horrid interpretations of scripture in the past. The Bible has been cited to justify the Crusades, witch burning, the Native American Genocide, slavery, the denial of rights to women, the dehumanizing of others, Jim Crow, and in our own time, the unholy political alliance of Evangelicalism and the agenda of the Ku Klux Klan.

Each and every time, many of those who did evil truly believed they had the correct interpretation. As C. S. Lewis noted, the worst form of government is theocracy, because nobody is as capable of doing horrific evil as one who believes he does it in the name of God.

Nothing wrong with theology or pursuit of better interpretations. But history casts grave doubt on the idea that becoming better, embracing good and rejecting evil, is the inevitable result of trying to read the Bible with a more literal, detailed, and hermeneutically “correct” method. If anything, the opposite is true. The more obsessed we become with getting our beliefs right in every detail, the less our faith is focused on following Christ’s example. The more we focus on our theological structure, the less time and energy we have to take Christ’s command to love our neighbor seriously. The more we think of salvation and conversion as a mental agreement with doctrine, the less we are interested in doing for the “least of these” what we would do for Christ himself. Considering that Christ taught that our eternal destiny depended on this, I would think we might at least take that part seriously - and work on figuring out how to put those words into practice in our own world, rather than spend our time arguing about the details of justification. Just saying.

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By the way, my viewpoint about subjectivity and the five layers of interpretation are hardly controversial outside the Evangelical/Fundamentalist bubble. It is actually uncontroversial among serious bible scholars, archaeologists, historians, literature scholars, and so on. Even relatively conservative bible scholars acknowledge this subjectivity. It really is only those who are wedded to their own infallibility as interpreters who need the delusion of objectivity. And, realistically, this is a particular problem for American Fundamentalists, who need this idolatrous view of the Bible as their defense mechanism against modern understandings of reality.

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So how DO I approach scripture? Well, first, I recommend reading my three part series on Christianity and Culture:

Christianity and Culture PART 1: Asking the Right Questions

Christianity and Culture PART 2: Culture and Scripture

Christianity and Culture PART 3: How We Evaluate Morality in the Context of Culture

Second, Peter Enns should probably be credited with a significant role in the preservation of my faith over the last 5 years. People like him are examples of Christians who don’t suffer from the Evangelical/Fundamentalist allergy to reality and fact. This recent post gives his five principles for interpretation, and I find them persuasive.

Why I Interpret the Bible the Way I Do

Third, in exploring the way Christians outside the Evangelical/Fundamentalist bubble, I discovered that the literalist/theonomic approach is by no means the only way to approach scripture. In fact, it is mostly an historical anomaly. Perhaps my favorite formulation of a more balanced approach is that of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. Each of the four fit together and work together. In some areas, experience and reason provide better information than the others, and vice versa. Our knowledge of the natural world, for example, is better obtained by reading God’s world, rather than the writings of the ancients. On the other hand, scripture is the best source we have for the words of Christ as recalled and written down by his followers. Church tradition can give helpful guidance on how certain issues have been handled in the past, and what has and has not been beneficial in religious observance and Christian practice. Experience is both about our relationship with God in the present, and about how we interact with our fellow humans. Empathy should serve as a valuable source of information - we live in community, not as isolated individuals. In a global world, this means we cannot merely dehumanize others and reject their needs and experiences as irrelevant. It all works together. And each is relevant in how we interpret the other.

Note that the Wesleyan Quadrillateral is no modern, atheistic, relativistic [insert favorite Fundamentalist slur against outsiders here] idea: it came from the devout John Wesley hundreds of years ago.