Literature, Worship, and Life

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

We have this story all wrong. Frankenstein is the creator, not the monster. He is a college student, not a mad scientist. There is no hunchback named Igor. There is no lightning. Whatever we think we know about Frankenstein, we have it wrong.

Despite its awful adaptations in movies, cartoons and parodies, this is a fantastic story. It is gripping from start to finish (especially if you are a bit nerdy), it explores the glories and the dangers of putting our hopes in science and society, and, perhaps best of all, it is not too long. I have also been able to strike up conversations about this work in multiple venues, something I have yet to accomplish with any other piece of literature. I couldn't be happier with it.

Frankenstein, as a young man, represents the best society has to offer. He is brilliant, a family man, and in love. He goes to school and immediately finds he has a knack for the natural sciences.He excels in his studies and, after great labor, he discovers the secret to life. Instead of creating something small he decides to create something grand, something like a man but better: bigger, stronger, smarter. Yes smarter. The monster actually becomes quite articulate. Our good friend Frankenstein made but one teensy mistake, he made him hideously ugly. Not on purpose, he intended him to be superior in every way. Unfortunately for the monster (perhaps he would have a name if he were not so ugly) his hideousness was his undoing. Not even the good Christians in the book could accept him. Then again, they were French.

All of this is only the beginning to a marvelous tale. If your burned out on Twilight and Harry Potter and can't find anything else to suite your fancy, give Frankenstein a try.

Early Fantasy Book

George MacDonald is probably best known today for his influence on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. For that reason I decided to give this work a shot. Phantastes is a about a man who enters into fairy land (yes, with actual fairies that live in flowers and such) and the things that happened to him there. I was disappointed, but not entirely.

Right from the start I was reminded of Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" because the plot was practically non-existent and dreamlike. Luckily, by the end of the book, most of the random elements found their place in the stories resolution. That helped, but, like Carrol, he seemed to exult in the inexplicable and random to the frustration of the reader. This might be partially explained away as an attempt at allegory, but the allegory was all too hidden for the casual reader like myself (and everyone else I found online who read the book) to explain what was happening. Where the allegory was clear the story shined, but this was all too infrequent.

MacDonad's style itself was a bit distressing at first because his sentences could easily go on for half a page. Early on I found myself often reading and rereading single sentences to remind myself of the subject. By about a third of the way through this was no longer necessary as I had happily adapted. I say happily because these elaborate sentences were full of description and beauty that greatly aided this tale. It was not difficult to be swept away by his imagery even when it was difficult to know what was happening or where the story was going.

The most impressive part of the book took place in a library where the hero was reading several books. In this portion of the book the hero retold stories he had just read, stories that only barely touched on the rest of the book as it progressed, if at all. (Random!!!) Nevertheless, the second story, which made up the longest chapter in the book, was perhaps the best short story I have ever read. It showed me that the author was well aware of elements like plot, characterization, subtlety, tension and resolution, even if he chose not to use them in the larger story. In some ways this mini-story foreshadowed the hero's journey to come, but it stood well on its own and could be removed from this book with no damage done.

This book was MacDonald's first attempt at fantasy writing, and I have been told that his book Lilith, written many years later, was the fruit to this seed. Perhaps I will give it a try before too long as I would sincerely like to appreciate this author who inspired so many I love.

I read this book on my ipod as well, and continue to love the experience.

Emma by Jane Austin in ebook

Emma is the third Jane Austen book I've read. I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, loved Mansfield Park, and Emma was a joy from start to finish. I can see why this is one of her most recommended works.

To begin with, the characters were fantastic. Emma is beautiful and precocious; and she knows it. In a word, the perfect heroine. There's the narcissistic but loving father (if you can fit those together in your mind), the suave but eminently perplexing suitor, the wise brother-in-law, the naive younger friend, and on it goes. For those who know the genre these characters alone offer significant opportunity for misunderstanding,  anxiety, and ultimate happiness. What more could one want from a romance?

Austin's writing is some of the best I've seen. As I have developed a taste for literature my senses are continually awakened to new forms of beauty in writing and story. What I love about Austen is that the more I bring to the table the more she has to offers me as a reader. Every time I read one of her books I feel it is her best. I now believe that this has more to do with me than the works themselves. Her writing is like fine chocolate. Any fool can enjoy it but only one with refined taste can appreciate its purity, subtlety and the care that produced it. I look forward to improving my skills as a reader so I can enjoy her next work even more.

On another note, Emma is my first attempt at reading an ebook. A few months back I got an ipod touch with my laptop, replacing one that had been stolen. The device is ridiculously useful and I keep it on my person the way most people do there cell phones. I have long known that I could read ebooks on the ipod touch, but I was so convinced that I would loath the experience I never took it up. I was happily mistaken. While you lose the effect of paper and ink you also lose the weight. Apple's commitment to a slim and light device is much appreciated. Now I can read anywhere without remembering to grab my current book or get a light when things get dark. If I finish a book while I am out I have a few more already downloaded I can dive right into. The reading does not get tedious like I expected and even has some advantages. You can manipulate the font, color and brightness of the screen to perfectly suite your tastes. I am currently reading my books on a light blue screen with black, bolded letters, dimly lit (the screen, not me). Gone are the days of sitting in my uncomfortable couch instead of my comfy chair to get better lighting. Gone are the days of keeping a dictionary or computer close by so I can look up words I want to learn. Now I can just switch to the built in dictionary, look up the word, and switch back. Brilliant.

And, best of all, since most of the books I read are past the copyright date, everything I have wanted to read on it is free. This may be better than when McDonald's introduced the dollar menu.

by Neil Postman

In this book Neil Postman helps to expound the meaning of the expression, "the medium is the message," or, as he rephrases, "the medium is the metaphor". While I have long pondered the inherent meaning behind the forms of media we use to communicate and how those mediums affect our communication, Postman has brought much needed clarity and insight to my own musings on this subject.

Anyone who is an avid reader and movie goer should know that some elements that work well in writing do not always work well in a motion picture. In my own experience I have also noticed the limitations of drama and preaching as I seek to communicate the gospel during my yo-yo shows.

Every medium has both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to communication. A sermon can be useful for thorough examination of a text or detailed argumentation (though they are rarely used for this anymore). A skit cannot. On the other hand, a well done dramatization can implement metaphor and story with a terseness and power that words alone can rarely match.

Postman takes this truth as the foundation for his basic argument and builds upon it. Every form of communication has a bent towards a certain set of ideas that are convenient for that medium to express. The ideas that are easiest to express will become the most important ideas for a culture. This argument becomes clearest in his discussion of the news media. Before the advent of the telegraph information could only travel as fast as an individual could carry it. This meant that public discourse in news papers tended to be more local while major "world" events could be more thoroughly analyzed. This sounds backwards to us because we tend to think that more information would lead to better analysis, but the opposite is the case. Today we are bombarded by so much "news" information that has little or nothing to do with us at all that we have no time to thoughtfully consider the great events of our time. Consider this past election. Many of the best and most important things that were said never got any coverage or analysis at all because they could not be summarized in a 45 second clip in the evening news. In a media environment that favors short, fast, fresh, we have no time to think about what is happening, and just barely enough time to react so we can answer a question in a pole to make more news to respond to. Our debates today are not about polices but about looking pretty and not looking stupid. In contrast Postman describes a debate between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858. "Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln's reply." And this was a short debate. How much time do we give our politicians to tell us their answers to the current world crises? Two minutes, maybe three. Unlike the audiences in 1858 we are not ready to handle the real issues and so we do a little dance instead until someone misses a step.

Postman argues that television has done this to us. It is a medium that favors fast, brief, exciting communication, while shunning long thorough analysis. Consequently the fast and fresh information has become all that is important to us while we have lost our ability to think critically. Have you tried having a political conversation with someone you disagree with lately? How often does it resort to name calling and baseless arguments about associations? Have you ever had a thoughtful discussion about a real issue. If you have you are one of the lucky ones.

Postman also delves into the effect of television on education. Sesame Street was originally an experiment to see if education can be entertaining. They discovered that indeed it can. What they failed to see is that Sesame Street also taught us that education should be entertaining. Unfortunately entertainment can only handle certain kinds of discourse and learning so we end up crippling ourselves instead of simply making learning more fun. Anything that cannot be learned through entertainment is pushed to the side while we count to 10 in Spanish.

The insights of this book, which I have only pointed out a few, are profound and its implications vast. How much more does this apply to the internet than televison (the book was written in 1985). I will have to get his work "Informing ourselves to death" to find out. This book has certainly sparked a curiosity in me concerning this line of discussion. I would like to pursue it further.

I always enjoy reading books that I remember watching as cartoons or movies when I was a kid. It is fun to consider the differences between them and why those differences exist. The motion picture is a vastly different medium than print and, even with CG, there are somethings that just work better in writing (and vice-versa).

One element that is difficult to reproduce in film is the internal dialogue of the characters. Camera angles and facial expressions can go a long way to revealing a character's internal state, but the detail pales in comparison to a three page internal conversation as a character wrestles with what is happening around them. This happens often in the Alice books as she wonders whether her change in size and haphazard memory might mean that she has suddenly become someone else. Children's books seldom deal with personal identity crises, but this is a major theme in Wonderland albeit jettisoned by the film adaptations.

Both books were dreams and, overall, this didn't work for me. Character's would appear and disappear, scenes and scenery would inexplicably alter and, especially in Wonderland, there was almost no progression of story to speak of. Yes, she does chase the white rabbit, but when she finally catches up with him nothing really happens. Carroll constantly fills your mind with questions that drive the plot forward, but in the end he never answers them. And these are not life's imponderable questions either. They are the types of questions an author could answer if he chose. Sometimes it felt like he delighted in tormenting the reader.

All that's not to say that the books were not enjoyable. Carroll had a knack for word games and poking fun at the arbitrariness of language and etiquette. His portrayal of Alice, the young girl who thinks she knows what it means to be an adult, feels authentic and is never strained or cutesy. He weaves famous verse and nursery rhyme throughout the books (some of which he wrote himself, only to become classics later) adding to its classic appeal. It was clear that Carroll was both a lover of language and a critic of it, whether poetical, logical, or plain, and this love-hate relationship added fun and life to his works.

The Idiot is the second book I have read by Dostoyevsky. This book is dialogue driven, at times confusing (in a good way), and insightful. To say that it does not rely heavily on action (swords fights, conquest... movement) would be an understatement. Part two (of four) in particular takes place almost entirely in one room around a man recovering from an illness. People come in and talk, they leave talking and then more people come in and discuss what had been talked about. Knowing how difficult dialouge can be, it was rather impressive. Then again, how much talking can one really take?

The book is set in Russia among mid-to-upper-class folk, their families and acquaintances. The culture felt very much like what you might find in Dickens or Austen. When I said the book was hard to follow it was usually due to the aristocratic subtleties of the characters that the author would not explain in the moment, instead leaving the reader (and the main character) to wonder what was going on. I often wondered whether or not I had missed an important detail, only to have the entire matter explained to me later. Usually it is clear when authors are leading you along like this, but Dostoyevsky did a good job keeping mysteries alive and in the front of your mind without if feeling like some authorial trick. Quite impressive.

The most disappointing part about this book was the ending. Having read Crime and Punishment I expected something grandiose and compelling, instead I was greeted with tragedy; and not the good tragedy either where two stupid love sick teens kill themselves. No, in this story bad things happen to characters you actually like. And they don't get resolved. I could happily accept this if I could grasp some overarching meaning, but I will have to do some reading about the book before I can come to that. Crime and Punishment had a very clear purpose that was painted beautifully in the end. The Idiot was more troubling.

The school bookstore just went out of business so Chrissy and I picked up a few books on sale. One was a collection of short stories by Tolstoy (think War and Peace). The first story, Family Happiness, was about a young upper-class Russian girl whose parents recently died. According to the introduction, Tolstoy was working on his ability to get inside the heads of his characters so he challenged himself by writing about a young girl on the verge of being married. I have to say, he nailed it! (Not that I believe myself to be an expert on the inner workings of young women's minds. It read like the best of Jane Austin, and I consider her an expert on the subject.)

In this work he explored the meaning and experience of young love and how that transitions over the early years of marriage. I appreciated that his story did not conclude with a marriage, as so many of these types of stories do, but explored the first few years of marital bliss. (I always want to spell marital "martial"... I wonder what that means?) Since all stories need conflict the early years were not all bliss, but he did give the lovely couple three months of happiness before things started to come apart.

His take on love, forgiveness and regret were brilliant. Love is not all mushy mush, but some of that is fun and necessary indeed. As people mature their love cannot help but change, and it is useless trying to recapture what has been lost. Nevertheless, love can roll with life and make every season beautiful in its own way.