I don’t have a Kindle. I have never used a Kindle. But I love the concept.

I do have books — lots of them. I love the concept and the craft of books. But I’m not a librarian for the sake of books.

I say these things because I agree to some extent with both of two opposing viewpoints on the Kindle’s impact on the culture of words and the future of books, both of which were published at theAtlantic.com.

Sven Birkerts’ article of March 2, 2009, “Resisting the Kindle,” laments the potential world created by the Kindle revolution in which “libraries survive as information centers rather than as repositories of printed books.” Professionally, I am actually fine with that. I am a librarian not primarily to preserve information but to make it available in ways that our students find helpful and accessible. Personally, however, his recognition that our literature is deeply contextual and historicized resonates with me. Consider:

Why, then, am I so uneasy about the page-to-screen transfer—a skeptic if not a downright resister? Perhaps it is because I see in the turning of literal pages—pages bound in literal books—a compelling larger value, and perceive in the move away from the book a move away from a certain kind of cultural understanding, one that I’m not confident that we are replacing, never mind improving upon. I’m not blind to the unwieldiness of the book, or to the cumbersome systems we must maintain to accommodate it—the vast libraries and complicated filing systems. But these structures evolved over centuries in ways that map our collective endeavor to understand and express our world. The book is part of a system. And that system stands for the labor and taxonomy of human understanding, and to touch a book is to touch that system, however lightly.

I think, though, that Matthew Battles’ article of March 5, 2009, “In Defense of the Kindle,” along with his 2003 book on the “unquiet history” of libraries, has helped to soothe my personal bibliophilic concerns:

Yet the culture of letters has always been subject to disruption and transformation. Indeed, since the advent of print, technologies of the book have changed dramatically, and with them the book’s place in society. The world of letters not only transcends these technological changes—it thrives because of them. Were that not the case, the cultural continuity that Birkerts holds so dear would have been lost long ago.

In other words, We didn’t start the fire. It was always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Last week I posted this 1946 essay by George Orwell lamenting the degradation of the English language at the hands of political speech. Today I read “Reviving Anorexic Web Writing,” an article which applies similar thoughts to the web’s contribution to the degradation of the English language. The author is Amber Simmons, a writer and a web designer at the University of Texas at Austin, who writes elsewhere about many things including “theology and faith” — but from a perspective unsympathetic with biblical theology. What she has to say about web programming at intersection with society, however, appears to be rather helpful. She writes in her lament over the web’s contribution to the degradation of the English language:

As our culture becomes increasingly digital, the art forms that support it must be constructed with the same care, deliberateness, and gusto as our traditional media. Intelligent content is the literature of our time. It is not enough that our printed books and magazines are ardently written and meticulously edited. Our culture loses much if we encourage online writers to sacrifice grace and personality on the altars of pith and scannability. Perhaps better advice is to encourage writers to say exactly what they mean with precisely the words required, however many they may be.

This article was published in the online magazine A List Apart (ISSN: 1534-0295) which explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

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A BBC News website poll which asks readers to identify ten classic English novels based on their first lines is more difficult than you might think. Their website explains:

Leading literary firms failed to recognise the work of Jane Austen when it was sent in by a prankster. The opening chapters of three novels were submitted under an invented name, with titles and character names changed. Think you can do better? Try our opening line quiz.

Take the BBC poll and try from yourself. I scored a 6 out of 10. Perhaps this previous poll was wrong.

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Well, on this point at least. His Politics and the English Language argues that slovenliness of language promotes foolish thoughts, and political language in particular has contributed greatly to the decline of clear expression. I think he was right. Words are chosen less and less today for the sake of their meaning.

He writes:

A man my take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided… If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous…

Did I mention he wrote this in 1946?

My apologies to whomever referred me to this piece. I would gladly provide a link if only I could remember where I saw it. Was it you?

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From Oxford University’s current online exhibit of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows and their famous Bodleian Library:

In the Spring of 1907, Kenneth Grahame and his wife travelled to Cornwall for a long holiday. Their seven year old son Alastair, or ‘Mouse’, agreed to remain with his nanny, Miss Stott – but only if his father continued to tell him bedtime stories by post.

His father agreed and over the next few months sent Alastair fifteen letters recounting the reckless adventures of Mr Toad and the attempts of his long-suffering friends, Mole, Rat and Badger, to rescue him from his various scrapes and teach him how to behave properly. The descriptions of the river and surrounding landscape draw upon Grahame’s own fond childhood memories of the countryside around the Thames.

The early letters to Alastair begin and end affectionately, combining real news with the story of Mr Toad. However, following Alastair’s demand to be called ‘Michael Robinson’ instead of his real name (which he decided he did not like), the letters abandon their chatty tone and simply tell the story, ending in each case, ‘to be continued’.

The letters were carefully preserved by Miss Stott and given to Elspeth, who persuaded her husband that they would make a wonderful book. Grahame followed her advice, developing his narrative and publishing it in 1908 as The Wind in the Willows.

The original letters were given to the Bodleian Library by Elspeth Grahame in 1943, and can be read here.

Here is letter number 7 (click for a larger view):

Popularity: 11% [?]

LibriVox, in their own words:

volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

From Aristotle’s Poetics to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, LibriVox has much to keep us enlightened (read: entertained) for quite some time. Feeling playful? Read (or, rather, listen to) Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Feeling devotional? How about Andrew Murray’s Absolute Surrender? Like to watch “House” on Tuesday nights? Try listening to P.G. Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves (Hugh Laurie played Mr. Wooster in the tv version of Jeeves and Wooster, based on this series of books). Feel like a trip down memory lane to Jr. High? Try Jack London’s Call of the Wild or White Fang. Feeling theological? Try C. S. Lewis’ Spirits in Bondage. Only have time for a brief diversion? Try a poem or a short story.For the entire catalog, click here.In short, we no longer have an excuse for eschewing the literary.

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According to this online quiz, I apparently am. Well, of sorts:

Take the quiz and report back. It would be an interesting exercise in the demographics of my readership (assuming I have one). And remember: there are no wrong answers. Only ignorant ones. Did that sound snobby?

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More new titles of interest in the library:

Michael D. Bush, This Incomplete One: Words Occasioned by the Death of a Young Person (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). A moving compilation of funeral and grave-side messages given on the occasion of the untimely death of a younger person, this short work includes contributions by sixteen different authors ranging from Karl Barth (upon the death of his own son) to Jonathan Edwards. Nicholas Wolterstorff’s foreword commends the editors choices in saying,

Michael Bush, the editor, could have found many sermons preached by Christian pastors at the funeral of a child that are not authentically Christian — sub-Christian sermons, pseudo-Christian, barely Christian. He has done a great service by culling out these authentically Christian, grief-laden hope-affirming sermons. [p. x.]

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Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). If you have a taste for art, music, or literature, then you may find this book of interest. It describes the creative genius in the life and work of people such as Albrecht Durer, J. S. Bach, and Jane Austen, and concludes by saying, “All creators agree that [creating] is a painful and often a terrifying experience, to be endured rather than relished, and preferable only to not being a creator at all.” [p. 286] While not a Christian work, this book provokes reflection on the imago Dei in the human’s ability to create, whether by visual art or written expression. Plus, I just plain like Durer. The art in this blog’s header is by Durer.

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William E. Mann, ed., The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA / Oxford, UK: 2005). All the topics you would expect to discuss in a typical philosophy of religion class at a typical university are addressed here. From Part I: The Concept of God, which covers omniscience, time, freedom, eternality and immutability, among others), through Part II: The Existence of God, which covers the ontological, cosmological, and design arguments as well as in introduction to theodicy, Part III: Religious Belief, and Part IV: Religion and Life, this book is clear and a relatively easy-to-read representation of the contemporary discussions of these issues. Just ask Wolterstorff. He loves it (see blurb on back cover).

Popularity: 28% [?]

I recently read (but didn’t understand) much of Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time. I have many questions and comments to make about this book, but you really don’t need to be subjected to that. Begbie (BLOKE #1) is Vice Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge University, where he teaches systematic theology. He is also an ordained Anglican minister and a member of the Doctrine Commission for the Church of England. And a musician.

He addresses many musical features such as rhythm, meter, resolution, repetition and improvisation and attempts to show how these aspects of music can inform theology. He specifically addresses creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He makes some quite interesting points, several of which he reiterates in the conclusion.

One paragraph in particular really set my thinking on a strange trajectory which ended with a re-reading of ‘Ainulindale‘ in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Begbie writes:

The second matter concerns the danger of deifying the dynamic patterns of creation and culture. At an early stage in writing, I considered calling this book ‘The Sound of God’. I quickly grew dissatisfied with that title. For if the creaturely rationality of music is to be given due weight, it is more accurate to speak of music, at its best, as the sound of the created order praising God, in its contingency, finitude and non-divinity. (This, as we have seen, was the heart of Barth’s theological appropriation of Mozart.) To say this is not to question either the reality or the created goodness of the world, or its power to glorify God; precisely the opposite, it is an attempt to ‘allow room’ for created reality to perform its true vocation in praising the Creator, refusing to assimilate what is properly creaturely to the divine. –p277.

He is, of course, right. Especially given his additional remarks on the impact of the fall on music in general. If music can help form theology by helping to form the theologian, as Begbie argues, then it can indeed occupy a substantive (and heretofore largely ignored) place in the dialogue of theology.

Enter the Oxford don, J. R. R. Tolkien (BLOKE #2).

One of the most beautiful pieces of English prose I have ever read is Tolkien’s Aunulindale — the creation myth in the fictional world of his “Middle Earth.” The Silmarillion is less well known than his Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit, which was even better), but the Silmarillion is the creation story of how the world in which Bilbo, Frodo and the gang came to be. It is a beautiful analogy of the Biblical creation story and the subsequent Fall (but don’t press the analogy too far — it is, after all, fiction). Tolkien tells of the Ainur (the Holy Ones), the music which Iluvatar (God) creates for them to perform for his good pleasure, and the discord that Melkor (Satan) creates by interjecting his own melody. Tolkien writes:

And it came to pass that Iluvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the spendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Iluvatar and were silent.

Then Iluvatar said to them: ‘Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.’

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void…

But now Iluvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor [interpretation:Satan] to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Iluvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself…

Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and , and straighway discord arose about him, and many that sang high him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider…

Then Iluvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them in Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’

I am sure that my relative ignorance of the academic study of music and its relation to theology and philosophy has led me to oversimplify this issue, but it seems to me that music is more unique and objectively substantive than theologians are usually willing to admit. Its mathematical complexity, its ability to convey emotion, its clear analogical relationship to creation ex nihilo by God, and, of course, the biblical presence of music before and after the eschatological realization of the kingdom of God all argue for more attention from theologians — especially from conservative, Reformed evangelical theologians.

We are quick to enter the discussion when it comes to music and worship style. We are quick to condemn the abuse of music’s ability to evoke emotional responses. We are quick to condemn the use of specific musical styles in corporate worship. And indeed we should continue to be vocal in these discussions. But implicit in these responses is the recognition that music must have a proper place in church life, and therefore in ecclesiology proper. If ecclesiology, then theology.

Begbie is right that music can help inform theology by helping to form the theologian. I’m sure Begbie goes astray at many points. But I’m also sure that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

So the result of all this is that I am longing all the more for the day when I join the real Ainur in an even more glorious melody in which God finds perfect pleasure and in which I find perfect satisfaction. A more glorious song that is not tainted by sin and the Fall. A more glorious orchestration of God in which my redemption is not only complete, but realized — and I finally see that God has made something beautiful of my life.

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And then, to complicate things even further, I read Carl Zimmer’s article on musical hallucinosis, the brain disorder that causes people to literally hear music all the time. Great. Musical hallucinations. I’ve been walking around for two weaks with the jingle from a 1980s television ad campaign stuck in my head — “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the Great Music which Tolkien imagined.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Daniel Defoe once had a classmate named Timothy Cruso. Any guesses from whence came the name of his famous Robinson Crusoe ? Defoe also apparently gained inspiration from the real-life (voluntary) abandonment of Alexander Selkirk on an island off the coast of Chile in 1704. Defoe’s imagination put the two together in 1719 and gave us the masterpiece, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, Written by Himself. This illustration is from the 1895 edition published by Nister (London) and Dutton (NY).Having come to the realization that I am alone on island with little hope of survival, no food, no clothes, no shelter, I doubt that I would be as articulate in my reflections on my circumstances:

I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstances I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few heirs, as to deliver my thougts from daily poring upon them, and afflicting my mind. And as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well I could, and to set the good against the evil…

I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island; void of all hope of recovery.

But I am alive, and not drowned as all my ship’s company was.

I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.

But I am singles out, too, from all the ship’s crew, to be spared from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.

I am divided from mankind, a solitary; one banished from human society.

But I am not starved and perishing on a barren place, affording no sustenance.

I have no clothes to cover me.

But I amin a hot climate, where if I had clothes I could hardly wear them.

I am without any defense, or means to resist any violence of man or beast.

But I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?

I have no soul to speak to or relieve me.

But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I have got out so many necessary things as will wither supply my wants or enable me to supply myself even as long as I live.

Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative, or something positive, to be thankful for in it.

Okay, so his misery was fictional. But he is right, is he not?

By the way, Selkirk was rescued after five years. Any idea how long our fictional Crusoe was fictionally marooned?

Popularity: 6% [?]