Finding out that there was an annotated “Wind in the Willows,” I just had to put it on my Christmas wish list. I had been assuming that even though other annotated classics have turned out to be disappointments, there was no way anyone could ruin “Wind in the Willows.” Right? Wrong. But the book did give me two insights and one rant-y screed. Being me, I’ll start with the screed. (BTW, I don’t think any of the following will make sense if you haven’t read the “Wind in the Willows.” But if you haven’t, stop reading this right now and go read that. Only, y’know … without annotations.) 1. We’re all a lot smarter than we thought we were. Or else, scholars and intellectuals are a lot dumber. Take your pick. But I’m pretty sure I’m right about that, because no smart person could’ve misjudged the audience and character of a beloved classic so outrageously. Any one of the millions of readers who have enjoyed this whimsical, poetic and utterly charming book would know that if you are going to add footnotes, they need to be in the same vein — playful, breezy, fun. And innocent, right? If you’re talking about a book with the harmless escapades of a couple of proper little English gentlemen who happen to be a mole, a rat, a toad and a badger, you don’t need to get into pointy-headed claptrap about sex and politics, right? And yet, here’s one I picked at random:

[when Mole is in high spirits out boating in Chapter 1 and “he was even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering …”, we get about 125 words on what a moorhen is and then:] A hen is also defined as a ‘fussy, middle-aged woman.’ Grahame’s use of a hen to make Mole feel out of place suggests that he himself felt at odds with women who gravitated to the boating and yacht clubs he frequented. … [The annotation quotes a letter where Grahame says that he doesn’t know the wife of a yachting friend, which they apparently feel really makes their argument, and then conclude:] To the riverbankers, Mole included, the female character is to be tolerated, at best. Real contentment on the river involves homo-social company.

Say what? The author of the annotations is a woman, and might feel keenly that the book could be improved by some female leading characters. But using that opinion to claim that Grahame was channeling misogyny through his animal friends who were craving, ahem, ‘homo-social company’ is just weird. But things get weirder than that. It’s one thing to read between the printed lines; it’s another thing to read between the unprinted ones and take big meaning out of what the author excised. In the chapter where Mole and Rat meet the god Pan (which is, admittedly, an odd chapter — more on that in a minute), Grahame apparently had written that they saw Pan’s shaggy flanks and limbs, and then changed his mind and crossed out “flanks and.” Does that sound fraught with repression to you? If not, apparently, you’re just not paying attention:

By crossing out ‘flanks,’ Grahame makes the setting a little bit less potent. Grahame’s Pan has a touch of the homo-erotic, something that Grahame shied away from elsewhere in the manuscript. … With the trials of [Oscar] Wilde fresh in the public memory in 1900, Grahame was discreet about supporting homo-erotic literature.

And by ‘discreet,’ she means, as near as I can tell, that he never put anything in writing to suggest that he did support it. A-HA! So not only does he cross out ‘flanks’ and NOT openly espouse overt homosexuality in his book of talking animals, but he goes on throughout the rest of his life to not endorse it any time. Well! Talk about a dead giveaway! It goes on this way all through. Thank goodness that we have giant-brained scholars to show us how Toad and Ratty are classists, sexists and are masking their true feelings for each other. 2. The times and the river. Kenneth Grahame was born in 1859 and wrote “Wind in the Willows (WiW for the sake of my tired fingers)” from about 1906-1908. He had seen the changes that industrialization had already made on the English villages, towns and cities. This is the same background that Tolkien had in writing The Lord of the Rings series (though he came a generation later). Both of them could see simple country folk and sweeping English countryside being disposed of for the sake of factories and plants that seemed to do away with centuries-old forests and timeworn traditions and give back only a meager paycheck. Tolkien’s answer to a world that only seemed to be getting darker and colder — on the eve of WWII, no less — was to remind everyone that “even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” Grahame’s was to show how the little people didn’t need to even do that. They could keep the world as it was just by being what they were. In the early 1900’s, England hadn’t gone through the shock to the system that came with WWI and all of its attendant despair. But life had already changed in a way that couldn’t be undone. The author of the annotations, Annie Gauger, notes that the attachment to the earth, to home, to simple pleasures like homespun poetry and homecooked meals form major themes in WiW. I agree with that. You can hardly read a chapter without one or the other of those things making an impact (often so forcefully that still, after all these years, I’m liable to get watery eyes). On the other hand, Gauger is frequently at odds with Grahame’s decision to make his main characters be animals, but I think that he did it because even by the early 1900’s, you couldn’t reasonably say that people would be so contented, innocent and in touch with nature without seeming ridiculous. I couldn’t help feeling that WiW was a product of the times in that way, even if the evidence of it is how little it resembled the times. I think it was a wistful work for Grahame, a way to catalogue a world that was already being swept down-river. 3. About Kenneth Grahame. When you really love a certain book, there’s a risk in looking deeper into the life of the author. It’s always foolish to feel a kinship with someone based on their creative output, but we do it all the same. I would have loved to find out that Grahame was a real kindred spirit on all the things I think are most important, but in a few particulars at least, it turns out not to be so. For one thing, he was an ardent fan of the neo-pagan movement that was going on, which is why the chapter where Mole and Rat meet the god Pan smacks of such unalloyed religious ecstasy. I can’t help feeling that the English needed then and need now to return to Orthodoxy. It sounds like he would’ve preferred for everyone to move in another direction. Doesn’t ruin WiW for me, but it does kind of take the glow off it a little. And then there’s the oddness of it being written for (and with the suggestions of) his son, Alastair. Grahame and his wife went away on summer trips, much to his son’s consternation, and left him with nannies, as the English were wont to do in those days. Alastair was handicapped with eye problems, and that may have contributed to his “difficult” behavior. He bit children and attacked them, took things he wanted, had tantrums — so he was either a sensitive genius or a spoiled brat, depending on whose account you read. Even given a strict Victorian view of things, there are some disturbing aspects to Alastair’s personality, like insisting that his parents call him Robinson, the name of a lunatic who had tried to shoot his father. Alastair lived into early adulthood, just barely, and then seems to have committed suicide. (It’s a little inconclusive, since he didn’t leave a note, but he died after having laid on train tracks, and since he wasn’t drunk or high at the time, it’s kind of hard to imagine how it wouldn‘t have been suicide.) I couldn’t help thinking of Alastair as I made my way through the exploits of outrageous Toad, the rich, conscience-challenged, unbelievably conceited adventurer, and suddenly, I have to admit, Toad’s funny ways didn’t seem so funny. Toad steals cars and crashes them, steals horses and sells them, takes charity from a bargewoman and runs her barge aground. And he brags and whines and fumes and is heedless of any feelings except his own. In short, he sounds a lot like a self-centered child that refused to grow up. At the end of it all, Toad is somehow Reformed and is a different Toad. But there’s no real intimation of what would have made him change, and that detail seems to have been thrown in out of a sense of duty. I wondered about all that. Does it ruin WiW for me? No … but I think it changes my admiration for it. Both in the times he lived and in what his life held, Grahame wasn’t just breezing through an easy existence. He had a complicated life, and yet he managed to spin a simple yarn for us. He reached into his own private reserve of the goodness of life to bring us this book. He wasn’t enjoying the benefits of Ratty’s life or Mole’s, and he didn’t live in a world where someone could rob and break out of jail and never have to pay the consequences for it. He was describing a landscape that only existed in his imagination. Is it just me? That gives me a wistful sense of what it probably took to get all this out in print. He was describing one world that was disappearing fast, and another one that had never been there in the first place.

I’m very late catching up on some old business that came my way before the trip. The one I really want to get to is a mistake I made back HERE when I was reviewing “The Boundless Garden” by Alexandros Papadiamandis (known as “The Greek Dostoyevsky.”) I said then that the book was out of print, but I was wrong. I got an email from Denise Harvey, a publisher and one of the editors of “The Boundless Garden.” She gave me THIS LINK to her site that allows you to buy it and have it shipped to the U.S. (Hardbound: 45 euros; Paperback: 22 euros; First class to send: 3.05 euros. Not sure how that converts to dollars, but some enterprising soul can figure it out.) She also gave me the link to Fr. Luke Hartung’s site that you can purchase it from - HERE - but I notice it’s listed as ‘out of stock or not yet available,’ so you may have to keep checking back there. The cost there is $32.95. Glad to correct the error. The book seems like a rare gem, and I felt almost guilty having a copy when others couldn’t buy it. So power up, get out your credit cards and check out the Greek Dostoyevsky. (Denise pointed out that both sites allow you to sample the book. They even give a whole story you can read.)

When I opined back here that I had been a little disappointed with “The Brothers Karamazov,” Father Luke Hartung commented that I might prefer the writings of Alexandros Papadiamandis, who has been called “The Greek Dostoyevsky.” Father Luke also volunteered to send me a collection of Papadiamandis’ short stories called “The Boundless Garden” if I wanted. Well, who could resist an offer like that? So I’ve just finished “The Boundless Garden,” and it was a veritable delight. And if Orthodox are looking for more fiction that speaks to their heart, this might be one to add to your library (if you can get it. I believe it’s out of print, but you might have some luck at alibris) Consider the following quote, describing the local situation around Holy Week:

We are in the little country church of the village of T., where the incense drifts in blue fragrant wreaths and forms a fleeting surround for the girls, in their embroidered aprons and white sleeveless jackets, come bearing armfuls of roses and violets and sheaves of rosemary and proceed to heap mountains of flowers on the humble Epitaphios, which needs no further embellishment. Into the church comes a whole squad of impromptu chanters, each of them holding a leaflet with the text of the Good Friday burial service, and who feel duty-bound to chant the Praises in ear-splitting discord, managing in the process to demolish, with their comical blunders, even the few words in the leaflets which are printed correctly.

Who doesn’t know what he means? The liturgical worship we have looks so serious to our Protestant friends that they never guess how very human it can be — laughter and tears and all the rest that are forever tinged in my memory with the most sacred and eternal aspects of worship. That’s what “The Boundless Garden” tells of. Writing about life in the little villages on the author’s Greek island home of Skiathos, he tells in a third person narrative style very similar to Dostoyevsky’s, so that you feel as if he’s a friend telling you about other friends. He tells about little triumphs with wagers or livestock, their daily battle against grinding poverty, their pervading superstitions, their occasional heroism in rebuffing Turkish attack, the daily negotiations with the hostile environment, difficult donkeys, rocky soil or even Church services in remote locations. Writing during a period of transition in Greece, when the Old Ways were on the wane, Papadiamandis writes:

For my part, as long as I live and breathe and am of sound mind, I will never cease, especially during these resplendent days, to praise and adore Christ, to depict nature lovingly, and to represent with affection those customs which are authentically Greek.

Honestly, what’s not to love? I’ll include one last quote from a story about a service that a few villagers requested .. I don’t really have any good reason to add it, other than that it was so lovely I wanted to share. The scene is the ruin of a cathedral where some of the villagers decide they want to celebrate Pascha. The structure has no roof and in places is missing walls, but the priest improvises and they start the Orthros service under a starry sky:

Everyone now lit their candles. The priest read the Resurrection Gospel, and after having glorified the Holy Trinity, he then began with thunderous voice to chant ‘Christ is risen from the dead’ antiphonally with his twelve-year-old son, who had come along on the outing to assist him. That was a beautiful and charming sight there in the impressive marble ruin, made all the more resplendent in the dancing light of fifty candles stirred by the breath of the nocturnal wind. It was a sight at once lambent and sombre, bright yet mysterious, amidst the giant oaks that proudly lifted up their mighty boughs to make tall crowns, their rustling leaves scintillating like flakes of gold in the torchlight gleam. And in the shadows and murky spaces amidst the branches, one might imagine unseen Dryads and slender Orestiads holding sway over the dense oak forests, and today metamorphosed into nocturnal spirits, afraid to emerge into the light of the paschal candles. For a time they had taken heart at the Christian God’s desertion of his fine marble sanctuary, but now with wonder they beheld the rekindling of the Easter torches and smelt the fragrance of the Christians’ incense, there in the depths of the oak wood.

I’ve had three books sitting on my desk for days, waiting patiently till I had time to do a quick review. They are: “The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983″*, “The Brothers Karamazov”** and a totally absurdist romp called “The Areas of My Expertise”*** by John Hodgman. The private thoughts and worries of an Orthodox luminary, a classic of Russian literature and a bit of ingenious silliness. Where to begin? Father Schmemann’s “Journals” Well, you really have to begin here, I think. And it’s fitting — I believe that today is the 25th anniversary of his repose. In that time, there has been ample time for those who loved him to love him even more, and those who were offended by him to become so offended they can hardly stand it. But there has also been time, it seems to me, for some of the sentiments of his private journals to have proved prescient. Fr. Alexander was incredibly active on behalf of the Orthodox Church, and going to the ends of the earth as he did, taking in all flavors of Orthodox and non-Orthodox churches, he had a vantage of both the tremendous benefits and the tremendous problems. Consider this passage, the first entry in the journal he started in January, 1973.

Yesterday, on the train coming back from Wilmington, Delaware, I thought, “Here I am, fifty-two years old, a priest and a theologian for more than a quarter of a century — what does it all mean? How can I put together, how can I explain to myself what it all implies, clearly and distinctly; and is such a clarification needed?” … What is there to ‘explain’? The surprising combination in me of a deep and ever-growing revulsion at endless discussions and debates about religion, at superficial affirmation, pious emotionalism and certainly against pseudo-church interest, petty and trifling, and at the same time an every-growing sense of reality. Just yesterday, I felt this reality while walking to church for the liturgy, in the early morning, through the emptiness of winter trees; and then this precious hour in the empty church, before the liturgy. Always the same feeling of time filled with eternity, with full and sacred joy. I have the feeling that church is needed so that this experience of reality would exist. Where the church ceases to be a symbol, a sacrament, it becomes a horrible caricature of itself.

These aren’t pretty thoughts, little Hallmark moments reflecting a bright but shallow level of thought. These are very deep and very honest reflections, anxieties, confessions of an active, intelligent mind, someone who had seen things inside and outside the church that challenged and occasionally disturbed him. Father Schmemann is incredibly forthright in his journals about the things in the Orthodox Church that he thinks are wrong, and for that reason, I wouldn’t recommend the book to new converts or anyone who is still in that beautiful ‘honeymoon’ phase where they think that admitting that the bride has freckles is the same as saying that she’s ugly. Personally, I didn’t find his honesty offensive; I found it liberating. It didn’t seem overly critical to me — Fr. Schmemann’s great love for the Church is much too obvious for that. But he was ever and always conscious of the need for all Christians always to live ‘eschatologically’ — to live for the age to come — and to the degree that anything, even the Orthodox Church as an organized religion, got in the way of that, he couldn’t hide his displeasure. And in any case, as you see from this excerpt, the final sounding note of such entries isn’t anger or sadness — it’s joy. Joy for Fr. Schmemann was not just a mood, it was a state of being with a life of its own, a life that could only really be experienced in the Church. For all of the ups and downs of this book, it was a joy to read and I’m going to miss these daily walks with Fr. Schmemann as if I had lost a friend. He ain’t heavy reading, he’s my “Brothers”

I remember reading the opinion of an Orthodox priest that the only problem with this book is that Orthodox people seemed sometimes to regard it as a sort of addition to Scriptures written just for them. So maybe I was going into it with my expectations too high. Or maybe it’s just the usual grim feeling I get when I know I’m about to read a book that first appeared in serialized form by an author that (a) was being paid by the word, and (b) really needed money. Those always seem like ingredients for uneven pacing and a LOT of words (see also, the works of Charles Dickens).

But in any case, I may have to turn in my Orthodox reading card, because I didn’t really like the good “Brothers.” Now, to be sure, I can certainly see why Orthodox clasp it to their heart. Where in Western literature would you encounter a young man with a monastic bent and not expect to read loving detail of his fall into apostasy? And if that young man — the youngest brother Alexey — was under the tutelage of an elder who was a holy man, wouldn’t you expect the entire action to hinge on Alexey finding out that the elder was a fake, an idiot or a pervert? But no. Dostoevsky manages to talk about something that Orthodox know exists — the occasional glimmers of purity and holiness we encounter in this sinful world — in ways that don’t seem to fall into excess on one side or the other. The problem for me was that Alexey and his relationship to the elder Fr. Zossima aren’t the central theme of the book. It is mostly a slow unveiling of circumstances leading up to a murder, and then the repercussions of that. For a book running over 700 pages, that just wasn’t doing it for me. All the same, there are gems. Consider this bit, a little pure wisdom given by a priest to Alexey:

“Remember, young man, unceasingly,” Father Paissy began, without preface, “that the science of this world, which has become a great power has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis, the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, [make that 20], is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has only been grotesque. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your departing elder…”

Inventing your own “Expertise”

I really don’t know how to describe this book. It’s written by John Hodgman, the boring PC guy in those “I’m a Mac” commercial. Who knew that the guy who was picked to personify drab, colorless un-hipness even had an area of expertise. But then, does he? It’s hard to say, exactly, because so much of the book is composed of wildly inventive reference material that exists only in his imagination. For example, consider this introduction to a section about states and state mottoes:

As many have forgotten, our nation is divided into states, numbering 51 (of which only 50 are commonly known). They are a remarkable natural occurrence of mysterious origin which when you fit them all together, perfectly cover the continental mass we call the U.S.A., leaving only the small hole or “district” of Columbia, where compasses spin wildly and magnets fail to function. In addition, the U.S. owns several territories and island protectorates, and twenty-five secret space colonies. That is all I can tell you about the space colonies.

And here is where I can point to the book itself as the best litmus test. If that paragraph is making you say things like “Fifty-one states? Space colonies? But that’s just wrong!” then you don’t want this book. People with a literal mind who expect the authoritative voice of a reference work to be serious and non-inventive will be really bothered, I think. They definitely wouldn’t want to go on and read this about the state of Alabama:

Alabama Nickname: State of the Golden Heads Motto: “We Dare to Sculpt Our Own Heads” Notes: In this state, the governor is paid in gold ingots. It is customary at the end of his/her term to melt some number of them and return them to the state as a bust of his/her head. Traditionally, the gold sculpting was done by the governor himself. Anti-child labor Gov. William D. Jelks was a particularly nimble sculptor, while George Wallace, for reasons unknown, gave himself a third eye in the middle of his forehead during his last term of office. Now the task is largely given over to professional sculptors and paid consultants, many from out of state, making this, for most Alabamans, a hollow exercise in professional politicking.

So let that tidbit be either your fair warning NOT to get this book, or your tipoff that it might just be your cup of tea. The world probably needs both kinds of people.

I finished reading “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett, and I was really conflicted about whether to say anything about it or not. It’s a hot-selling fictional treatment of how a 12th century English cathedral might have been built. That could have been a great book … heck, judging by the sales, a lot of people thought it was a great book. My problem is that it seemed like three books rolled into one — one of them was mechanical but fascinating, one of them was surprisingly inspirational for a non-Orthodox work … and the third one was so revolting to me that it may negate any good I’d derive from the other two. So what were those three books? 1. How to build a Gothic cathedral in only 974 pages This third of the book is fantastic. Ken Follett, who is known for thrillers, was someone who simply got the cathedral-visiting bug at some point and got curious to know why they were built. According to his preface, he’s not a spiritual person, just a storyteller who found something that so many others have missed. It is impossible to go inside these magnificent structures and not wonder at the cost in human capital — passion, labor, raw strength, love expressed in craftsmanship, not to mention money — that went into them. There have been books that explained the engineering behind a cathedral, and those are amazing enough. But by delving into people’s lives and taking the narrative over the course of 39 years, Follett is able to show the human side of the story — the politics, the courageous stands, the false starts, the unexpected triumphs, the catastrophic miscalculations and the devotion that provided the reason for everything. So far, so good. But then … . 2. Medieval times meets “Gone with the Wind” This third of the book I detested. This was the juicy part, the kind of stuff that gets a book about building cathedrals to the top of the bestseller list. It’s “The Young and the Restless” with plagues and castles, “Beverly Hills 90210″ with peasants and torture chambers. And rape … lots of rape. Let’s not spare any detail. This is the 21st century and this is a book from Oprah’s Book Club, so for goodness sake, let’s have some rape scenes in graphic detail. Oh, and let’s throw in some torture, mutilation and gratuitous cruelty to men, women, children and beasts. Unenlightened people would call that sadism, but today’s bookworm just considers it the hallmark of “serious” fiction. Now, I will admit two very relevant facts here. First, I don’t read much modern fiction — for some reason, I had gotten the impression it was all hog-swill (can’t think why). Second, it is absolutely historically accurate to include brutality in a book about the middle ages when most people’s lives were, as Hobbes said, nasty, brutish and short. I would say that it would possible to allude to that fact of medieval life without sliding so close to the realm of pornography. But maybe that’s just me. On a lighter note … . 3. A saint in the making Given my disgust with the “corset-ripper” third of this book, I was downright shocked to find that there was a character that I really liked — Prior Philip, the monk-priest of Knightsbridge Abbey who ends up commissioning the cathedral and negotiating his way through devious politics, civil wars and times of chaos. It’s so very, VERY common for non-Christians to write about these sorts of individuals as if they must be either repressed sickos, hypocritical control freaks or benign weirdos. If they are given credit for true Christian faith, it’s usually just a set-up to frame their obligatory crisis when they are either don’t get what they want or just come to their senses. But Follett’s Prior Philip didn’t behave according to any of the religion-challenged stereotypes, and for that, I am grateful to the author. I could’ve done without the flamboyantly atheistic witch-heroine-nymphomaniac that seems to appear lest we have too much sympathy for a devout clergyman, but I hate to nitpick. . So there you go. Three books in one. As with so much of what passes for literature these days, if someone would just separate the good from the bad, there might be something there a person could read.