Tag: fiction

On John Milton’s Paradise Lost: Book 1—The Invocation of the Muse

The Prologue:

Having read the first four books (of twelve) from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and having at last begun to feel grounded with it—or perhaps at least gotten used to flights through the cosmos by Satan and the (good) heavenly hosts— it is time to return to the beginning of the poem to re-engage, reflect, and recite.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

As is the convention of the “epic,” Milton not only takes on big topics, but also saves us the effort of discerning those topics by telling us the answer in the opening lines: he will tell of the fall of humanity from grace when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command to stay away from the forbidden tree and its fruit:

Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing Heav’nly Muse (1.1-6a)

And so, Milton does as the great writers of epic tales had done before him: invokes his “Muse.” 

For Milton, though, the muse is not Calliope, but the same Holy Spirit who gave inspiration to Moses, writer of the Pentateuch:

That Shepherd who first taught the chosen Seed,

In the Beginning how the heav’ns and Earth

Rose out of Chaos . . . I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song (1.8-13)

And divine aid Milton will need, for he boasts of doing one better—nay, infinitely better—than Homer, Virgil, or the writer of Beowulf, writers who told tales of the origins of a people or nation.  In contrast, Milton shall narrate the event that affected not one, but all peoples and nations: when Satan succeeded in turning our first parents away from God. We await, then, “Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme” (1.16)

Milton prepares by reminding himself of the need to be virtuous (“And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure” 1.17-18), and thus worthy of receiving inspiration from the Muse, which will enable him to accomplish his task to “justify the ways of God to men” (1. 26). No grander goal has ever been undertaken by mere mortal writers! Note, though, the quid pro quo that Milton assumes is necessary for him to receive this inspiration.  Surely, he must be good enough before the Muse will reward him with its gift. It is ironic, then, that as Milton is about to embark on a tale of unmerited grace given from God to sinful humanity through Jesus Christ, he himself must be good enough to receive the free gift of inspiration.  Is he perhaps demonstrating the same vice that got Adam and Eve into trouble, namely, pride in himself and his own efforts?   

Nevertheless, it is not surprising that Milton cries out to the Heavenly Muse for inspiration, for whom among us have not cried out in hope or anxiousness or frustration for a neatly arranged and quickly delivered package of interesting thoughts and clever words, a package of inspiration that provides us with the material we need to fill up the page?

On Having Read a Good Portion of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch

This writer and book are what one reads to enjoy the craft of writing, as confirmed by Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch. Her descriptions are what catch my attention, along with her encyclopedic knowledge of furniture restoration, New York City, the art world (and what to do with a famous painting that one walks away with) and the dark shadows of alcohol and opioid dependency that drapes the directionless protagonist, Theo Decker, as he struggles through his teen years and early twenties, trying to find meaning and get on with his life after his mother is killed by a terrorist bombing of an art museum which Theo somehow survived but nevertheless carries with him through claustrophobia and anxiety when he is unable to avoid small spaces or large crowds. Tartt does not seem to be trying quite so hard to sound encyclopedic, though, as she did in her first novel, The Secret History, published in 1992.  The result is a greater smoothness in her work:   

Individual pedestrians floating up strangely isolated and lonely before my eyes, blank faces plugged into earbuds and staring straight ahead, lips moving silently, and the city noise dampened and deafened, under crushing, granite-colored skies that muffled the noise from the street, garbage and newsprint, concrete and drizzle, a dirty winter grayness weighing like stone.

Page after page of wonderful prose—Tartt’s novels are monstrously large, with The Goldfinch clocking in at 771 pages—but unlike the time I spent slogging through Middlemarch, reading The Goldfinch has been the literary equivalent of enjoying a Toblerone chocolate bar, though a good reading lamp, plush chair, cup of quality coffee, and the abandonment of everything digital are all I bring when I escape from the push of daily tasks and settle in to enjoy Tartt’s writing, the final 250 pages of which still await me.

On Books and Ballroom Dancing

(I recently discovered an essay that I wrote at the end of 2020; since we are now finishing up 2025, this seems like a good time to share it with you . . . )

“A series circuit is a Voltage Divider. Two light bulbs on the same series circuit share the voltage of the battery: if the battery is 9V, then each bulb gets 4.5 volts.

A parallel circuit avoids this problem. Two bulbs in a simple parallel circuit each enjoy the full voltage of the battery. This is why the bulbs in the parallel circuit will be brighter than those in the series circuit.”

                                                — https://www.bu.edu/gk12/jeff/Unit/Lesson6.htm

As my semester of teaching during this Covid epidemic was wearily coming to a close, I came to the unwanted realization that I was spending way too much of my time and energy—the very essence of my existence—on too many mundane details.  Whether as a college instructor, home-owner, or fellow-manager of a duplex that my wife has owned for years, I felt as if my life had become a series of one practical task after another, each reducing the energy or enthusiasm that remained for the next one in line.

Fortunately, my brain is wired in such a way that I am continually pondering the right things to do, and the right ways to do them.  This creates a good system of tracks to run on.  It gets things done even when I have little interest or energy for the task at hand, which was an especially good thing this past semester when the presence of Covid forced all of us to adjust, and then re-adjust, how we did everything from getting groceries to interacting via Zoom for online chats, meetings, and classes. And we did it!  We adjusted, and found ways to be productive.  We found ways to get through. 

But something was missing.  As my church celebrated the weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas, I realized that I wasn’t feeling “joy,” that sense of simple contentment and happiness.  So, I asked myself the question that I have returned to many times through the years: “What makes me happy?”  If I ignore those voices in my head that keep reminding me of what I “should” be doing with my time, and if I block out what modern culture tries to sell me on, what would I include on my list of sure-fire ways to make myself happy?

As I began my “happy list,” I looked back over the years and remembered what seemed perfectly normal to me as a seventeen-year-old (and which I realize now reveals what a nerd I was in high school): I had joined the “Book of the Month” club and enjoyed reading what a panel of experts had voted each month as the best new writing that was out there.  And the books really were great. To this day, I easily re-experience reading Kramer vs. Kramer, The World According to Garp, and The Girl in a Swing.  At the time of my first reading, I felt sophisticated, and challenged, and happy while reading those monthly selections. 

So the first thing I decided to do to get my life back on a happy track was to re-join The Book of the Month Club.  My first (and only selection so far) is The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, about an elderly aunt who takes her two grand-nieces across Italy with the goal of breaking a centuries-long curse that has kept the second-born daughters in the family from finding and marrying the one true love of their lives.  It is not great literature, but it is a good story.  Perhaps the quality of the writing doesn’t matter all that much because I am content when I settle into my upholstered chair and enjoy doing something that has absolutely no practical benefit other than making me happy.

A former version of my happy-list included not only reading, but also running, music, and movies.  Another activity would soon follow shortly after I entered college as a non-traditional student.  My first semester there—the second class I signed up for—was a ballroom dance class.  I had wanted to learn how to swing dance ever since American Graffiti was on the big screen and high schools held sock hops in never-been-there nostalgic fashion to revisit the 1950s.   Ballroom dancing was added to my happy-list, and never left.  Later, there was graduate school, then an offer to get paid to teach other people how to Swing and Lindy-Hop and Ballroom dance, and now a long-playing Recreation Department gig teaching ballroom dancing where I now live. 

In some ways, ballroom dancing is merely an escape from all of those mundane tasks that we as adults have to do simply because they need to be done.  But ballroom dancing is more than that: it’s being happy, happy listening to great music, of learning some dance steps, of moving to that music using those dance steps, of being around interesting and nice people.  It is also the magical transformation of your psyche that comes about on the dance floor, regardless of whether the day you just had was awful, mundane, or actually pretty good.  

It’s the start of a new year; what’s included on your happy-list?  

On Reading Middlemarch

Two-and-a-half years after starting it, I finally finished reading Middlemarch, the mammoth novel by George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880). It sat on my dresser for most of that duration, sometimes undisturbed for a month or two even though it was always readily available, until the challenge—or the guilt—of finishing a “classic” finally pushed me back to “pick it up and read” (the same conviction that Augustine silently heard before his conversion experience as he describes it in his Confessions).  As I returned to the book, the quip by Mark Twain more than once swirled around my brain: “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

I began reading Middlemarch as my “I’ll read this while traveling” book when I was finally able to visit Paris for the first time in May 2023.  Note to myself (and you): don’t lug around a 650-page book when you travel!  Instead, select one around 200 pages. (The Great Gatsby comes in at about 188 pages.  Perfect.) To those of you who read books on Kindl or whatever digital machine you prefer, I cannot relate.  I need the feel of material reality when I read, the feel of paper and the smell of a book (even the musty ones—maybe especially the musty ones). 

Perhaps what I like best, though, is the control I have with a book with paper pages versus one that boasts of its “digitality.”  When I read, I thumb my nose at the social expectation to be accessible 24/7.  I give myself the luxury of reading slowly, thinking deeply, and making connections mentally.  O.K., I confess that I also need to turn off the volume on my I-phone and stick it in my dresser amongst my socks so I cannot hear the buzzing when a text is sent to me, because my willpower is only as strong as the absence of my temptations.  

Augustine asserted that we mere mortals are no match for temptation—he listed avarice, ambition, and lust as the big three—and writers during the Enlightenment, even with its celebration of the rational, knew that our logic and our willpower could not overcome temptation.  We need a hedge, we need a double hedge, to avoid being controlled by our impulses and vices, which is why the Founding Fathers, those celebrators of Enlightenment thinking, admitted the inadequacies of the rational mind when they created a Constitution for these United States that incorporated a system of checks and balances. Our system of government was never meant to do things quickly; it was meant to do things deliberately, cooperatively, and well.

Some people praise Middlemarch as the best novel ever written in the English language.  I don’t. The plot takes so terribly long to unfold, and when it does it doesn’t startle or pull you in.  (Although, to be fair, perhaps it had more of a pull in the 1870s when it was first published.)

I do, however, feel that it is a worthwhile read: it is impressive how the author created an entire English village with a large cast of memorable characters, spanning the breadth of social classes as well as human virtues and vices.  Two characters, Edward Casaubon, the sour clergyman and inept scholar, and his much-younger, kind-yet-naïve wife, Dorothea, are two such examples. 

Why did I keep plugging away at the book, though? I think it came down to the physical challenge of deciphering the extremely dense and archaic writing style (double negatives abound), along with the intellectual joy of eventually comprehending the subtle sociological and psychological insights that Eliot/Evans reveals, as exemplified here:

“But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.”

We long to do yet are relieved not to have to.  Truer words were never spoken regarding the actions of a writer when faced with the task of writing, of needing to get thoughts down on paper, yet finding ways to justify the necessity of spending one’s time and energy doing almost anything else.  Jesus himself informs us that “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41 ESV).

I also kept reading because the writer’s thoughts are, at times, incredibly uplifting, especially when describing the kindness of Dorothea and her desire to help make the world a little better place, whether through patient words spoken during tense conversations or by means of a plan to build affordable housing for the poor. At the conclusion of the novel, the narrator has this to say about Dorothea while providing encouragement for those reading the book to fight the good fight:

Certainly, those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed results of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion . . . Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible . . . But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

In this way, Middlemarch did for me, the reader, what a daily reading of the Bible does: it reminds us that virtue is still a good in itself even when it seems overpowered by those who are “vicious” (as in its original meaning of “being filled with vices”), that God is still in control even when we do not have eyes to see Him, and that there are still people out there who trust that compassion is still superior to money, power, selfishness, and greed.