The Four Loves - Book 50

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis was a reread for me.  I first read it about 10 years ago when using the Lightning Lit British Christian authors study guide with my oldest two teens.  I remember reading it and being amazed at all the new ideas it presented to me, having never really thought deeply about love!  But I didn't actually remember the content much, it turns out.  I started this book a few months ago when I believe it was Classical Carousel who hosted a group read.  I started it and then somehow it got swept up in a pile of papers I didn't get around to working through until months later (the curse of having TOO much counter space, I have found!!!).  So I unearthed again just in time for Non-fiction November. 

I enjoyed the first chapter which talks about love in a very philosophical manner as being of two varieties:  gift-love and need-love.  Lewis then proceeds to discuss the four types of love; these types are based on Ancient Greek categories:  affection, friendship, eros and charity.  Lewis then examines each type in light of gift-love and need-love.  While his analysis was thought-provoking and there is a lot of wisdom in his observations, I was put off quite a bit by his characterizations.  Maybe he went on as he did about the 'natural loves' (as opposed to supernatural love - God) in order to emphasize the last love of charity which is of divine origin.  First of all I think all love is from God.  The 'natural' as well as the supernatural.  God created nature and saw it was good.  I was not comfortable with Lewis talking trash about affection (which is something that arises from being in a family or just being near someone due to circumstances, say a neighbor or a co-worker), or friendship (which he gives the best characterization to I think because in his own life it had the deepest effect, what with being in World War I which must have been a huge bonding experience with the other soldiers and also being a bachelor for so long in academia.  We all know about his regular group of friends that met for years at the Eagle and the Child pub.)  With Eros, I just bristled a bit at his long lecture on why we should laugh more about sex.  Um, maybe this was an issue back in 1950s but it hardly is now.  And then his idea of sex being a pagan sacrament first with sort of a Christian overlay?  I honestly didn't understand that.  Didn't God create Adam and Eve before the fall?  Sex makes us co-creators with God of new children whom He sent his son to suffer and die for in order to redeem.  It is thoroughly Christian in my view from the get go, if it was always part of God's plan.

The best chapter was the final one on Charity.  It really packs a powerful emotional charge.  There are many passages that stand out.  I definitely had the least number of quibbles with it.  However, I think in many fundamental ways I simply have a different view and experience with love.  I would like to read more Catholic approaches to this topic, to see if I jive more with them or if maybe I'm just ignorant (probably!) and need some schooling in the subject! 

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Eden's Outcasts - Book 49

Eden's Outcasts; the Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson was an excellent biography of the author and her remarkable father.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I knew a bit about her life and a bit less about her father but this book remedied that lack; it is an in depth study of both.  This book was recommended as the first read in a year long readalong:  A Year with Louisa May.  I've been wanting to read more by Louisa May Alcott for a while so I am excited by the prospect of reading through much of her work in the course of a year (November 2019 through October 2020).  The first actual read by Alcott is in December with Little Women (appropriate for December since the famous first line is about Christmas). 

I was only vaguely aware that Bronson Alcott was one of the famous Transcendentalists of Concord, MA.  He was a long time friend of Emerson (who was really a good friend and a good man; this book made me want to read more of his work.  I only recall reading bits of Emerson in a survey of American Lit way back in high school).  He also was friends with Thoreau and Hawthorne.  Even though I am a nature lover, I never got on well with Thoreau that much, finding him a bit pompous.  But I have come to really love Hawthorne's works. 

This book begins with Bronson's youth, then his marriage to Abba May (Marmee!) and the birth of their four daughters.  Bronson was a philosopher who pretty much lived in the clouds.  He attempted to start a commune called Fruitlands which failed terribly.  He went through some really tough times mental health wise.  He never was able to earn enough to support his family  They lived in real poverty.  In fact Emerson helped him out on numerous occasions, financially.  Abba had to take in or go out to work and it was a never ending struggle to keep a roof over their heads.  They moved frequently. 

Alcott treated his kids like a social experiment.  He analyzed them continuously.  He was an unceasing moralizer.  He wanted so much to believe in the goodness and capacity for the divine in mankind that he was forever on the watch for moral failings.  Life was one long struggle to sanctify oneself.  He kind of was the opposite of some Protestants who think we are nonredeemable sinners who can only be saved by grace.  Whereas Alcott was about man constantly monitoring his (and his family's) every thought and emotion as he works to perfect himself.   Everyone kept journals as a matter of course which they were all allowed to read, so no privacy there.

While Alcott means well and has some really great points, it took me a long time to like him very much.  He did have sincere affection for his wife and daughter but he was always so caught up in his own mind that he couldn't really translate it into actually being much help or comfort.  He was a bundle of contradictions.  He was a great abolitionist who actually thought blacks were inferior.  He was a lifelong vegetarian (even vegan) who was fine with John Brown's murdering people in the name of abolition.  He hated commerce and money and yet he charged for his 'conversations;' really his own kind of lecture.  He did love children and loved to study and watch how they learned.  I do really like some of his educational philosophy.

Louisa May Alcott was the most difficult of his children and he really didn't appreciate her talents until after she came home from being a nurse in the Civil War.  She was only there for six weeks yet it really changed her life in an enduring way.  She'd finally earned her father's respect (at age 30) and she almost died of typhoid.  In fact she went insane for a while from the fever and possibly from the mercury poisoning the doctors gave her in an attempt to heal her.  She suffered from that mercury poisoning all her life and it eventually turned her into an invalid who died when she was 54. 

Louisa was indelibly tied to her father though.  They shared the same birthday and Louisa went into a coma before she could hear of her father's death, dying two days after him.    She admired him deeply and he came to really treasure her. 

There was a lot to love about the Alcott family.  And they were in the thick of a uniquely American blossoming of philosophy and literature.  I found it fascinating.   Matteson wrote an excellent, balanced and sympathetic biography. 

Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

De Profundis - Book 48

I actually read a free kindle version that only had De Profundis and not the other writings.

De Profundis is really a long letter written to Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Arthur Douglas.  Douglas was the one who precipitated Wilde's trial and imprisonment.  There is reason to think he, though 16 years younger than Wilde, influenced Wilde to do really degenerate things.  And he sponged off Wilde financially causing his bankruptcy.  And yet after Wilde's release from prison when he was living in poverty in exile in Paris, and Douglas came into his inheritance, Douglas would not help Wilde out at all.  He completely rejected him.  Poor Wilde, Douglas was a scumbag and Wilde's obsession with him is tragically pathetic.

The Latin phrase 'de profundis' means 'out of the depths' and refers to the divine office reading for the dead.  Wilde, during his two year imprisonment was full of self-pity even as he strove to overcome his bitterness and make his tragic fall about something higher.  It vacillates between noble ideas of art and faith and feeling sorry for himself for being so (in his eyes) unjustly condemned.  On the one hand some of his writing absolutely soars like a gorgeously sung aria, but on the other hand, his narcissism bleeds through, his tragic flaw that was Wilde's undoing is there on display quite poignantly.

The saddest thing is that the letter ends on a high note, with Wilde hoping his art will never abandon him and yet, he really was finished.  His last few years were spent in poverty and exile, drinking beyond his means, literally begging for money on the streets of Paris.  His wife had died.  His mother died while he was in prison, her death possibly hastened by his downfall.  He was never allowed to see his children again.  Though when he cries out about that in De Profundis, I felt angry at him!  Because he did not care enough about the children to be faithful to their mother or to even spend time with them.  He would go off for months and not bother to even spend Christmas with them some years.  He was too busy leading his double life and diddling with teenage prostitutes.  I think he liked the romantic idea of childhood, but his narcissism prevented him from any sort of healthy love.  He could be kind and charming when in the mood and his sons had that memory of him.  His oldest son was killed in World War 1.  His youngest though went on to live a long and successful life.

Just as I was reading this book, one of my sisters unearth old footage of my father's Navy squadron from World War II.  He was a fighter pilot and participated in both the Iwo Jima and Okinawa battles. He was shot down in one of them, though I don't know which.  Luckily he was only in the water a couple of hours before a ship saw him.  But when I think of all the sacrifice so many unknown men made, when I think of other prison accounts like St. Paul's or Nelson Mandela's, or someone like Father Walter Ciszek spending decades in a Soviet prison and gulag and how lacking in self pity they were and they were indeed, unjustly imprisoned, Wilde comes off as a real wimp.  Poor little rich boy.  Today is All Soul's Day though and I find myself praying for Oscar Wilde.  He could glimpse the beatific vision, but he was so lost in his own narcissism, he wasted so much.  On his death bed, he converted.  May he rest in peace!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Antigone, Oedipus the King and Electra - Book 47

I read this collection of plays by Sophocles.


Antigone is the first play in this book, though chronologically it takes place after the events of the 2nd play, Oedipus the King.  However, apparently Sophocles wrote it first so the Oxford World's Classics ordered them according when Sophocles wrote them and not when they occur in the time line of the trilogy.

Antigone to me is about the fact that natural law is higher in authority than man made law.  If the man made law jives with the natural law, that law written on the human heart that people naturally intuit, then the man made law is just.  If the man made law contradicts the natural law, then one's allegiance is to the natural law.

Backstory:  Oedipus Rex and his wife/mother Jocasta are now dead.  Their four adult children live, two men and two young women.  The brothers take different sides in a civil war and wind up killing each other on the battlefield.  The two sisters, Antigone and Ismene are now bereft of their brothers.  Creon their uncle has assumed the throne and he immediately promulgates a law that Polyneices the brother who fought against Thebes, should not be buried according to the rites deemed crucial to entering the underworld.  Antigone defies this proclamation and tries to bury her brother anyway.  Ismene makes a plea for the authority of Creon, whether right or wrong.  Antigone was engaged to be married to Haemon, Creon's son.  Creon is insecure in his power and leadership since he has just ascended to the throne so he is fairly paranoid that people will defy him.  He first hears Antigone's defiant statement of guilt for doing the forbidden act of burying her brother.  Then he hears his son, who starts off being obedient and respectful but gets so incensed at his father's pigheadedness, he winds up breaking with him.  Then the blind seer Tieresias comes in and also gives a pretty blunt warning.  Even though Creon doesn't want to lose face in front of the prophet, as soon as he is gone, he turns to the chorus and admits that now he's frightened and he better undo what he's done.  But alas too late.  He had sealed Antigone up in a cave to starve to death. When he hurries to release her after his change of heart, he finds a tragedy.  Antigone has hung herself.  And his son Haemon is weeping over her body.  In a rage at his father he lunges at him and then realizing what he's done, he turns his sword on himself and kills himself right in front of Creon.  Creon's wife Eurydice hears of the suicide and runs into her palace to kill herself.  Poor Creon.

Why did the translator sometimes use God with a capital G and sometimes use god?  I found that odd.

Oedipus the King

Problems I have with Oedipus.  First of all he shouldn't have murdered anyone on the road from road rage!  Doesn't this show a bad side to his character?  Why isn't this enlarged upon?  It's the idea that he accidentally killed his father, which he was actively trying to avoid doing, which seems to be a greater sin than just losing his temper and murdering 5 people on the road one day.  This strikes me as off!!!  Also, didn't he notice that Jocasta was old enough to be his mother?  I mean I think that if I had been warned that I might marry my mother, even if I assumed (from incomplete knowledge) that this wasn't my mother, I'd have sort of categorically refused to marry anyone who was that old!

I really think that what is missing here is the idea of sin.  Oedipus had no intent to do the things he was actually fated to do. So he is innocent in that 1) it was fate, not him 2) he tried avoid all this happening  But still even though he isn't at fault (except for killing the man on the road who turned out to be Lias his father) he is condemned and shamed, etc.  I get that the ironic twists and turns are what the play is about, but this lack of intent bugs me.

Electra

I had not read this play before so I didn't really know the plot.  However, I was a little bit familiar with the murder of Agamemnon when he returned from Troy by his wife and lover. I don't think I really knew about Orestes and Electra.

It's all about vengeance.  They kind of leave the sister of Electra hanging.  She serves as the same type of foil to Antigone's sister had served; the voice of prudence and conformity.   Also this features a sister's issue with a brother!   Electra wants her exiled brother Orestes to come back and kill their mother and lover who had murdered Agamemnon.  The irony that jumped out at me was Clytemnestra's excuse for killing Agamemnon was due to the fact that he was forced to sacrifice a daughter to the gods to save many.  But she doesn't care about any of her other children.  Another bit of irony was that Electra who has been obsessively holding on to the idea that Orestes will come back and avenge their father's murder, but then doesn't recognize him.  And she doesn't recognize the tutor she gave him to as a baby to smuggle out.

And again, the weird reference to God, ex.  'I pray to God', but then gods and names of specific gods.  Was this an example of the translator christianizing the text?

I am glad I read this!  This fulfilled my Classic Club spin.  Hooray!  Slowly working through that list of 50 classics!

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks. 

A Horse of a Different Color - Book 46

The final book in the Little Britches series, Ralph Moody continues his rags to riches (well solvency, not quite riches) ups and downs as he tries to gt himself out of debt while becoming a drover and meat processing business, first to the railroad work crews and then to local farmers.

This book really continues the story of The Dry Divide in that it takes place in the same area of Cedar Bluffs.  He wound up there after getting kicked off a train he was hitching a ride on completely broke but hoping to meet up with friends in Denver.  However, he was tossed off the train and soon became a farm hand.  I won't recount what happened in The Dry Divide except that he wound up going into business as a harvester and wheat hauler.  However, he was up to his ears in debt and dealing with the local bankers in mortgaged property and stock.  Ralph (called Bud) has an indefatigable entrepreneurial spirit.  He tries to go into business with Bob who is an irresponsible braggart.  This doesn't lead to good things.  Eventually he gets sued by the bank and must declare bankruptcy.  Then Ralph must come up with a way to start all over again.  And he does!

This book, as is typical in this series, is full of technical details of how Bud financed everything, how he set up his business, how the stock market in 1920 was doing in terms of livestock, how he dealt with the railroad and got the contract that pulled him out.  A lot of times the technical detail just went over my head, since these things are so unfamiliar to me.  I do think these books could have used some editing.  However, at the end of the book everything gets tied up neatly and it ends on a high and hopeful note.

Many of the books have a little romance thing going on between Bud and a girl.  These never move much and they don't continue from book to book.  His main helper from The Dry Divide simply disappears in this book.  I thought he was going to wind up marrying her.  Instead we suddenly hear about a sweetheart from back home in Medford MA.  So that aspect of this series was just a little odd for me.

This series is often compared to the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Little Britches in the masculine counterpart, except a couple decades later in time.  However, I think the Little House books are better written.  Little Britches though is a very interesting series and I'm glad I read it.  Even though all the technical details of everything from ranching, farming, wheat hauling, butchering, stock market and financing are out of my ken, I appreciated how much real history they conveyed.  I feel like I know a lot more about the nitty gritty details of managing life back in the day.  So that information is highly valuable stuff.

All in all, I really enjoyed this series of books.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.