Category Archives: Books

C. S. Lewis on Writing

Over at Letters of Note via Fat Souls.

That’s where we find a transcript of C. S. Lewis’ wonderful letter to a young fan living in Florida in 1956 (a wild and exotic place). The whole letter is well worth reading. In it he gives advice on writing, which is good advice for communication generally.

Dig this:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Don’t Be Cool. Like Everything.

Came across this quote over at The Whole Garden Will Bow (whose excellent byline is hip est corpus). Blew my mind.

“The trap of reputation, for example. In this scenario, having garnered a considerable reputation or level of acclaim, one becomes paralyzed by the dreadful thought of losing it all by doing something… undignified. Uncool. This is a trap. Reputation is a trap that will turn you into a lifeless marble bust of yourself before you’re even dead. And then of courses there is reputation’s immortal big brother, Posterity, worrying about which has driven better women and men than you into the asylum. All these things… reputation, posterity, cool… should be tested to destruction by a course of deliberate sabotage. As the often-illuminating Escape and New Musical Express cartoonist Shaky Kane once remarked, “Don’t be cool. Like everything.” If you find yourself in danger of being taken seriously, then try to do something which undermines or sabotages that perception in some way. If your talent is of any genuine worth, it should be able to weather squalls of unpopularity and audience incomprehension. The only thing that might seriously endanger either your talent or your relationship with your talent is if you suddenly found yourself fashionable.”

― Alan Moore (of Watchmen and V for Vendetta fame)

Reading Poetry For Fun & Profit

On the Moral Instruction of Children Through the Reading of Poetry; or the Inculcation of Manly Virtues & Feminine Graces Through Verse

Oooh, how very Victorian of me. And truth be told, 19th century poetry is very suitable for children.

L’il Joffre and I had another bath-time poetry reading session last night, which reminded me I should post about this.

My daughter is eight, my oldest boy is seven. Of course, the bath-time readings are limited to the males (the younger ones will hang out with us occasionally). Except for the occasional book of poems for children from the library, or readings of humorous collections such as T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the kids’ exposure to poetry for a while was L’il Joffre reading me poems I enjoyed, which I didn’t think unsuitable to his age. Billy Collins, T. S. Eliot, G. M. Hopkins, or maybe some selections from an anthology. My personal favorites.

I soon realized, however, that I was missing out on two opportunities. I now take those opportunities, and you might want to as well.

1. Read ballads or epic poetry to your kids. It’ll be a while before we tackle anything truly epic, such as The Poem of the Cid, or Beowulf, or even The Ballad of the White Horse. The kids are reading prose versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey for school, but of course, that doesn’t count as poetry. But I do think their appetite is already whet for such things when they’re ready. Several weeks ago we all sat down in the living room to hear me read Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. They loved it, and are still talking about it. I stopped every few verses so we could talk about what was happening and to make sure everyone was following the story. Even the five-year-old was able to follow the poem that way. We’ve read The Highwayman and The Lady of Shallot, which my daughter especially enjoyed (she has a Loreena McKennitt album in her room with sung versions of both poems).

The children’s own ability to read poetry has begun to improve as they hear me read. Joffre, for example, is now getting over his annoying habit of ending lines in an overly-dramatic whisper. The children have always imitated my rhetorical style when reading prose stories to each other, and the example of poetry emphasizes all the more the importance of reading well for effect.

Their sense of rhythm in particular is improving. And the potential to mix this with music, particularly in our family, which seriously lacks any musical gifting, is enormous. I’ve mentioned the McKennitt ballads. You can work in the other direction as well. I’m a big fan of folk ballads, so reading versions of songs like John Henry, Barbara Allen, or The Dreadful Wind and Rain is a great way to expose them to good music.

And of course, as with fairy tales or any other folklore, ballads and epic poetry are an excellent way to place the kids in the story-context of their own lives…it helps them to understand that they are part of a people, and a part of humanity.

2. This one is kind of new on me. I use poetry as a tool of moral instruction. I don’t necessarily mean that poetry can teach you what is right and what is wrong, although that is certainly true, as it is with any kind of story-telling. And it’s true of any good poetry. I’m not speaking strictly of story-formats of poetry, as I was in the section above.

The other day, when Joffre offered to read me some poetry (he values the dad time, poetry or no), I decided to take an opportunity. I wanted him to read some poems that were particularly English, because we’d been talking a bit about the English context of our cultural background. I love the English story, and I am of the opinion that a sense of Americanness without a sense of Englishness can lead to some unfortunate historical and philosophical myopia. With that in mind I had him read some martial English poetry. L’il Joffre read me Rupert Brooke’s The Dead (“blow out, you bugles”) and The Soldier (” there’s some corner of a foreign field/ that is for ever England”). We read Alan Seeger’s I Have A Rendezvous With Death (“I to my pledged word am true/ I shall not fail that rendezvous”). We read Kipling’s Recessional (“God of our fathers, known of old”).

The session ended up not really being about Englishness. Which I suppose I should have foreseen. The conversation ended up revolving around the ethical and moral elements of the poetry.

Okay, so Alan Seeger was actually an American who served in the French Foreign Legion.

None of the poems we read were stories, really. But they painted vivid pictures of certain kinds of men, and a certain ethos. Do I want a British imperialist for a son? Of course not. But I would like a son who has a sense of duty, of honor, of courage. I loved the things we got to talk about through the reading of the poems. And this is beside the basic educational comprehension stuff (“Who was taking the writer’s hand?” “Death.” “That’s right.”). We talked about everything from burial rites to keeping promises to what happens when a nation forgets God.

Poetry as a tool of moral instruction. I just love saying that. So Victorian of me. But also very fun of me, no? They already love reading poetry, so this actually ends up being an enjoyable way for them to learn about what is meet and proper so to do. Like basketball.

I just gave two didactic reasons for the reading of poetry with your children. But of course, there are many other reasons, not least that which is common to every art: the glimpse of beauty.

Which is why we might have to read High Flight this evening.

C. S. Lewis’ 10 Favorite Books

According to Santa Cruz Books, this is the list of C. S. Lewis’ favorites.

1. Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women by George MacDonald
2. The Everlasting Man, by G. K. Chesterton
3. The Aeneid, by Virgil
4. The Temple, by George Herbert
5. The Prelude, by William Wordsworth
6. The Idea of the Holy, by Rudolf Otto
7. The Consolation of Philosophy, by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
8. The Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell
9. Descent into Hell, by Charles Williams
10. Theism and Humanism, by Arthur James Balfour

I’ve never read The Idea of the Holy, and both Samuel Johnson and James Boswell intimidate me. But suddenly I am inspired. Let’s see how long that lasts.

A Fertile Mind

I might be reading A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (buy from IndieBound by following link) by Amanda Foreman because it’s interesting. Or I might be reading it because the author got her doctorate in eighteenth-century English history from Oxford. Or because she’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Or perhaps because she’s Visiting Senior Research Fellow in History at Queen Mary College at the University of London. Or maybe because her dad wrote the screenplays to the classic films The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone.

But those are not the reasons I’m reading A World on Fire.

I’d picked up the book at the public library several times during previous visits. The mighty tome (1008 pages, three and a half pounds) looked very interesting to me, but I never took it home. I told myself what was probably the truth at the time, that I simply wouldn’t be serious about finishing a book of that scope and depth at this wild n’ crazy point in my life. The last time I hit the library I handled the book again, and finally took it home.

Why? Because the author is interested me in herself.

She’s all those things listed above. And she has five kids. Yeah, that brought me on board. Don’t know how she got ‘em, don’t know what she does with ‘em. But I know it can be done and ought to be done (at least by more people than currently do it). Ought at least to be a desirable thing. You just have to choose how you’re going to live your life. If both spouses want to be astronauts, the several kids thing probably isn’t going to happen. So just do something else that’s awesome. Like writing ground-breaking popular histories. Have your cake and eat it too.

This woman gave up on all her "professional" aspirations in order to become a mom.

The Hobbit Preview Came Out Today

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells,
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

Huzzah! The first preview of next December’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is out. There’s a subtitle there, by the way, because Peter Jackson will be taking two installments to complete the story. Which I for one am very glad of.

Please note how very many pipes are lit when the dwarves gather in Bilbo’s home. The pipe and pipe tobacco industry is going to have to brace itself for another infusion of college-aged pipe smokers soon.

I’m not geeking out over this the way I was about the Fellowship of Ring film before it came out. I’d call it a more mature excitement. Which is still hopping up and down, it’s just not digging around all over the internet trying to discover all the juicy details.

As a celebration of the upcoming film, here’s a blast from the past: an excerpt from the record I used to listen to when I was a kid.

Tolkien Loved His Pipe Weed

“I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.”

-J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien was a man who loved his pipe and his tobacco. Anyone who has read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings could attest to that.  Here are a couple of videos of Tolkien with pipe in action.

Note in this first video that Tolkien uses his pipe as a rhetorical device. One can imagine him sitting in his study at Oxford, engaged with a handful of his students, waving his pipe vociferously about as he makes his point.

This second video is footage of Tolkien lighting his pipe. He gets a thick rich smoke going, and even casually blows off a smoke ring. Note the tiny bend to the stem of his billiard-style pipe.

Being Read Poetry In The Bath

One of my favorite random habits that my family has begun is L’il Joffre’s practice of reading to me while I bathe. I don’t remember how it started, but of his own initiative six-year-old Joffre began to read from the Acts of the Apostles to me during my bath. And I’m definitely a bath man, for the record.

Besides Scripture, we’ve begun to read poetry as well. Joffre’s reading of poetry (a different skill) has improved, and he’s even developing a bit of a taste for the stuff. I am very aware and very glad that these interactions began because of his initiative and his enthusiasm. All of a sudden this time I was keeping, not wrongly, to myself, became a positive part of my relationship with my son. If I get the tub going, he always offers to read, and I usually take him up on it. We might visit some old favorites. He might suggest some poems he’d read recently be re-read. We might go for something new.

More than once I have found that the kids profit greatly from participating in the things that I am already passionate about. They prosper from doing my things. If I’m able to stoop without being insulting (to condescend in the older sense of the word), they feel far more privileged to read poetry with me or to hand me tools than they do when I play Legos with them.

All the profiting and prospering is, of course, pretty sweet. Bottom line, though: it sure is fun to chill with the boy.