Books

“Between [Lewis and Tolkien’s] shared fondness for medieval literature, for romance, for England, lay some important differences. Lewis had long understood the Middle Ages to be a period not of pristine simplicity but of rampant cultural admixture and amalgamation. Christianity and pagan mythology, science and theology, history and poetry, were all wrestled by those great medieval codifiers into a single, overarching system. Everything went into the pot; everything had to, to validate God’s plan. It never seems to have occurred to Lewis to regard the result as polluted.” (Miller, The Magician’s Book, p. 248) ...

I expected this to be a compelling, well-written entry in the addict’s memoir genre– and this is definitely that, with reflections about memory and how the stories we tell ourselves might not be true– but this book is much richer than that. To my mind, what makes this such a rich text are all of the things that are a little to the side of the main narrative arc of the book, but that give all of this (explanatory?) context to it. Carr is clear-eyed about the fact that the state of Minnesota and its generous welfare system allowed him to go to good, long-term rehab several times until it took. He talks about the support of his friends and family, making it abundantly clear that he was able to recover in no small part because he had extensive support. (And privilege! His career and his family gave him resources to navigate the various institutional systems he encountered.) He talks at some length about masculinity, about the significance and importance to him of being a man. ...

I’m no huge Grafton fan, though I like that her books are set in the Lew Archer cinematic universe. I find her early books too enamored of the PI tradition (and creaky PI witticisms); here she’s also indebted to Ross Macdonald’s themes, the interplay between respectable bourgeois families and institutions and those outside them. Gender roles here are interesting; the men don’t come off great, but there are few sympathetic women characters at all, most of whose bodies are described in harsh detail. A good book for a few days in the car, but not particularly memorable. ...

I take from Laura Miller’s discussion that many people strongly dislike this book, but I liked it. For one, there were a lot of weird little theological bits I found interesting (the righteous heathen bit with Emeth at the end, e.g., or the way people cling to their theological slogans to make sense of troubling events– “He is not a tame lion”). Even the broader issue it centers around– the conundrum of those who claim to speak with JC’s name and authority– is treated in an interesting and earnest way (in a way that the didactic part of Prince Caspian, about faith, emphatically wasn’t). There were parts I didn’t like, parts that were egregiously problematic, and it doesn’t hang together particularly well as a story, I don’t think; but this– with its wild mise en abyme/further up and further in finale– felt like a fitting end to the series. ...

In some sense, this isn’t a good book– and generally seems less magical than the other books– but it has some fun parts. It’s probably one of the lamest Narnia books: the plot “twists” are very obvious, Lewis’ antipathy towards Eustace’s school is just weird, and somehow Aslan’s land is just ok? There was cool Dantescan and evocative stuff at the end of the world, but Aslan’s land is just a forest? Also, is it just me, or are Eustace and Jill less compelling protagonists than the Pevenseys? They’re slow to pick up on the scheme of the giants, and slow to understand the situation with the prince and the gnomes. ...

This book is frustrating: too glib in some parts, too long in others (did we really need a discussion of school vouchers?). More than anything, I wanted more nuance. I often come down on the side of the authors, but their interpretations are too simplistic. That said, the sheer volume of nonsense tabulated in this book raises important questions, even if this book can’t or won’t intelligently answer them. A richer book might have included more of the cancelled speech, especially where it’s literary or artistic or academic. Somewhere between the unfocused, imprecise rant of this book and Nossel’s Dare to Speak (which I’ve also been dipping into) is the book on free speech given our current discourse that I want to read; Nossel’s book is better, but neither entirely satisfies. ...

“Maybe sometimes living at the edge of social change, at the seams between the world that we have and the world we are hoping to create, means that sometimes our sentences just trail off.” (Han, Undivided, p. 241) ...