Second Terrace

Book report

Well, not a book report: rather, a small volume of short stories. Five stories, to be exact, and from one author.

I like short stories. They fit my attention span. Good novels, like -- say -- the best of them, The Brothers Karamazov, have to become a chore in the best meaning of the term. A novel like that is something that emerges from a life review, while sorting photographs into piles of years, and then you remark, "Oh my, that's the decade I read Dostoevsky ... gee, I suppose I must get back to him by now."

So far, my favorite short story writers include Flannery O'Connor (of course). Also Mark Twain (although he can get surprisingly creepy -- I'm thinking especially of "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger": he is not the happy cornpone sotwitted southern gentleman that stars in TV Land (even a horrible Star Trek TNG episode -- a real McCoy of an emetic, that one). And Jorge Luis Borges. Yes. Everyone of a certain temperament should read "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."

I would mention, were it not so expected from dull repetition on my part, the little volume Tree and Leaf that contains the great essay "On Fairy Stories," and one of my all-time favorite stories, "Leaf by Niggle." One of these days, I'd like to do a series of retreat-type presentations, out in the woods, on this story, seeing as it is a pretty artifice of myth, beauty, goodness and eternity. But I won't since my wont is mentioning that environmentalist tree-hugger and monarchian-anarchist probably overmuch.

So I will mention another monarchian-anarchist. Probably less genial or convivial. But certainly of a piece with a lot of other authors.

The volume I am thinking of is The Devil and Pierre Gernet, by the inimitable David Bentley Hart.

As you would expect, his wordsmithery justifies the continued publication of the OED. I could just see Hemingway sniffing at DBH the way he did at Faulkner: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

And too, the autobiographical note sort of glowers in the subtext -- I wouldn't even try to prise it out if I were you, seeing as it is layered over with ironic self-deprecation, amongst other types of Empsonian ambiguity (especially the fifth and seventh types).

But I will say, without reservation, that the stories are beautiful. And tragic. And comic. And of the "problem play" sort of unsettled inconclusiveness that sets off Shakespeare's Measure for Measure --  very much like an unresolved seventh chord.

Take, for example, this paragraph, whose poignance will linger for more than a day for you:

Otherwise I knew, from early on, that mine was a strange and intelligent child who took the world into himself at a somewhat different angle than did children cast in a more ordinary mold. When he was five or six, it was evident to me that he was unable quite to absorb the social grammar of other children, or of anyone else; he could not quite "read" the emotions of others, or even his own emotions. All his responses seemed either too extreme or too mild. And then there was the delightful -- but also slightly uncanny -- absence of any impulse towards malice in him, and his consequent inability to anticipate or understand malice in others. He always expected -- joyously expected -- kindness, and could become easily distraught when he belatedly realized that another child wished to mock or provoke him, and was utterly defenseless against the pain and perplexity it could suddenly wake in him; and yet he remained unable to respond in kind. Of himself, after all, he was so boundlessly prepared to be happy, and so innocently ready for everyone else to be happy along with him. (from "A Voice from the Emerald World," p96)

None of these five stories are "potboilers" or pageturners. Not much in the way of plot or excitement. Some reviewers have wondered whether there was enough character development. I think there is more development of character, rather, in the most important character in any narrative -- and that is the reader himself, who allies himself with the narrator. At this elevated point of view, the postmodern Hart rightly sets the critical path of becoming in the mind of the beholder.

I am surprised, pleasantly, by this little volume. Buy it, despite your uncertainties.

Counseling note, little and bright

-- Edward Hopper, "Pennsylvania Coal Town," 1947

He sat down in my office, in the oversized jet-leather club chair, nestled by the literary bookshelf (across from the two shelves of bible and theology).

He was tired. His face showed the downturned use of some years of a low-rent, on and off again shop job, punctuated by a bimonthly visit to a smoke-hazed oldies bar just blocks away from his 1950s ranch-style home, where his dog awaited him, tail wagging, every late afternoon.

He is a refugee from all the old charismatic waves that washed over the Burgh since the early 70s. He's visited about every single phase of emotion and claimed every promise. He's made a lot of positive confessions that have not worked out, and so weary he's entered our old and open doors.

Now he's gotten into difficulty again, and that's real and very hard. We will have to help him through with real practical plans. Who will take care of his loyal dog, who will wait for him every afternoon for the month that he's away? Who will watch his family home, of which he is the last of, out-surviving his mom and dad and sister and brothers? Who will cut the grass and sweep the walk these incarcerated days?

He is amazingly gentle and kind, merciful to the gruff and uncompassionate peers that surround his daily schedule. He's been scuffed, worn and torn by a lot of hard knocks, but the bitter speech, so expected, doesn't show.

He wears a coat and tie to church, sometimes threadbare, but "I want to look my best for God" he says.

I hear his narration, and I want to denounce the powers and anyone else, but he heads me off with "Whatever happens now I'll take from the Lord, as something I need to receive."

So we practice the whitelight arts of the Jesus Prayer and the Trisagion, then. I talk to him about the Liturgy and the Holy Mysteries, and about the ecclesial rehearsals of Heaven on earth.

(It is especially at a moment like this that I take refuge in old-fashioned christology, when and in Whom divine nature might meet human nature, Personally. Christology is best done, I think, on the discarded streets of the world's refugees.)

We begin to speak in tongues of angels -- or rather, the tongues of the Word made flesh. "I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me." "If God be for us who can be against us?" "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." "Perfect love casteth out all fear."

I swear to you all, upon the Altar and Heaven itself, that the air began to brighten at the iteration of these words. I felt the ebbing of the bleak tide.

He stood up after the prayer and smiled with a smile that the world thinks is unbecoming of the poor: but in the Kingdom, a smile such as this makes all the sense in the world.

Handshake, embrace of the meek.

He left, a small man, and I remained, just as small.

... for they shall inherit the earth.