My current reading: The Seven Storey Mountain

I’ve just completed the Thirty-Day Book Project, which for me turned into a sixty-two day book project.  Now the practice of blogging about books seems to have embedded itself in my bloodstream.  Hence a post about the most recent book I read: The Seven Storey Mountain, an autobiography by Thomas Merton.

Merton was born in France in 1915 and moved around throughout France, England, and the United States during his lifetime.  His mother died while he was a child and his father died of a brain tumor during his teenage years; after that, his closest family association was with his grandparents.  The start of Merton’s journey through adult life is one that’s remarkably common for young men of the twentieth century.  He attended university, first in England and later at Columbia University in New York.  At the start, he was a rebel, determined to thumb his nose at authority.  He flirted with atheism, with a communism, with all kinds of silly intellectual fads.  He entered a fraternity and spent years partying and drinking at various spots in New York City.

Then, as the end of his education approached, he began to notice how hollow and unsatisfying his life was.  He began searching farther afield and eventually explored works of Catholic philosophy and spirituality.  The more of these he read, the more he found his wisdom and understanding growing, along with his ability to cope with the modern world and all its violence, greed, and contradictions.  This lead him first to conversion and baptism and then, after much pain and many struggles, to enter a Cistercian monastery at Gethsemane in Kentucky.  Though he lived until 1968, The Seven Storey Mountain ends in 1946, concluding with the death of Merton’s brother Paul in WWII and some reflections on the growth of the Cistercian order in America.

(A more thorough timeline of Merton’s life can be found here.)

Because of his tremendous writing skill, his directness, his organization, and his keen insight into the nature of humanity and God, Merton became one of the most popular Christian writers of the twentieth century.  His books are often offered as good introductions to Christian life and thought for those not truly familiar with such things.  In contrast to other introductions such as Lewis’ Mere Christianity, Merton does not try to bend out of his way to make Christian belief fit a modern worldview.  Instead he simply writes with power and beauty from a Christian perspective, and lets that power and beauty carry the meaning across, even to readers who aren’t used to his type of thinking.  Here’s an excerpt from The Seven Storey Mountain.

The whole landscape, unified by the church and its heavenward spire, seemed to say: this is the meaning of all created things: we have been made for no other purpose than that men may use us in raising themselves to God, and in proclaiming the glory of God.  We have been fashioned, in all our perfection, each according to his own nature, and all our natures ordered and harmonized together, that man’s reason and his love might fit in this one last element, this God-given key to the meaning of the whole.

But if Merton is good for beginning Christians, he is good for veteran Christians as well.  While is description of life before entering the monastery is a fascinating picture of a lost soul, his description of life after entering it is an equally fascinating picture a found soul.  He choose the Cistercian Order (also known as Trappists) because of the strictness of their lifestyle.  Among the things that he mentions were the lack of heating and air conditions, the simple (and vegetarian) food, the fasting during Lent, constant prayer including ten recitations of the Psalter during September, and other devotional activity of that sort.  When we read this, most of us will realize how few steps we’ve taken on the path towards union with God, compared to the many that people like Merton and his fellow monks did.

Chesterton on the Bible

Before I post a wrap-up of the Thirty-Day Book Project–which, incidentally, took sixty-two days–I will offer this short but worthy paragraph from the end of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

– G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Day 30: Your favorite book of all time

When I was in college and graduate school I ploughed through many hundreds of books spanning fiction and non-fiction, and nearly any genre contained within either category.  I was certain that books were humanity’s greatest source of knowledge and that I could acquire that knowledge if I read the right ones.  I made my way through classics and moderns, science fiction and fantasy, history and philosophy, but for the first few years it would never have occurred to me to read the most popular book of all time.

At age 24, after I had started taking Christianity seriously, I did read it.  My life has never been the same.  Some people dislike the Bible intensely.  Others take the position, exemplified by what Queen Elizabeth II was told at here corronation, that it is “the most prescious thing that this world affords.”  As you might guess I fall into the later group.  I have found in this book wisdom beyond what I could find anywhere else.  Not only beautiful language, not only tremendous insight, not only phrases and images that are still referenced today by millions, sometimes without knowing it.  In this book is the wisdom that speaks to me about how life should be lead.

When I was young I believed that all books were in the same category.  Not all the same, obviously, but to be approached the same way.  It would not have occurred to me that there is one book that stands apart from all the rest: greater, better known, and more influential to the extent that it should be studied daily, every day of my life.  Now I have found such a book.

Day 25: A character who you can relate to

If you’ve been following my progress through the thirty-day book project, you may be asking an obvious question: what the &$%# happened to day 25?  Well, what happened to day 25 is this.  I typed up a nice post for day 25, then either I never hit the “publish button” or else some bug in the software stopped it from actually appearing on my blog.  So, in the ‘better late than never’ category, here is day 25.

My choice for this category is The Catcher in the Rye.  The character, of course, is Holden Caulfield.  Most people are required to read this book while in high school.  I was not.  I may be the only person who read The Catcher in the Rye voluntarily around age 18.  Holden Caulfield immediately got my attention and stuck with me.  He is one of only two characters who I could possibly put in this category.  (The other one would be Yossarian from Catch 22.)

When I say that I relate to Holden Caulfield, I don’t mean that I am like him or that I ever was.  I have never attended a fancy east-coast prep school.  I have never run away from such a school.  I have never spent several days wandering aimlessly around New York City on my own.  I’ve never suffered a total mental breakdown.  That is not the point, though.

We encounter Holden Caulfied as a teenager, in a place surrounded by other teenagers.  All are white, all from decently well-off families, all nearing the end of high school.  They are not stupid, but they’re completely unable to communicate with each other.  They have no sense of purpose.  They haven’t been given any vision by which to guide their lives.

Holden Caulfield runs away from school and lives on his own in New York City for several days.  While there, he wanders around and gets into various types of trouble.  He is badly confused: about himself, about his future, about love, about sex, about money and many other things.  He has various visions about what he might do to get away from the crazy society he lives in, but they shift rapidly and he doesn’t actually take action towards any of them.  He knows deep down that he needs real love and companionship but doesn’t have any clue where to look for it.

There’s a sharply divided reaction to this character.  Some people understand him immediately and view him as one of the great characters in American literature.  Others find him completely unlikable and off-putting.  I would venture that in some cases, at least, young readers find that this book hits a little bit too close for comfort.

Chesterton on What is Wrong with the World

I’ve been slacking off on posting Chesterton quotes over the past couple weeks, partially because I’m doing the thirty-day book project, but mostly because slacking off is what I do best.  To atone for it, I here offer the first paragraph of Chesterton’s Introduction to What is Wrong with the World, which was my entry in day 26 of the project.

To C. F G. Masterman, M. P.
My Dear Charles,
I originally called this book “What is Wrong,” and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, “I have been doing ‘What is Wrong’ all this morning.” And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what is  wrong and no mistake.

Day 29: A book that everyone hated but you liked.

For the first twenty-seven days of this project, I didn’t mention Philip K. Dick.  Now I’ve mentioned him twice in three days.  He is not my favorite author nor even my favorite science fiction author, but he comes close.  Besides which, Galactic Pot-Healer is the perfect entry in this category.  Dick is very much a cult author.  Even among cult members, this novel is not terribly popular, and even the author himself wasn’t too enthusiastic about it.  But I love it.

Members of my generation often say “that’s crazy” or “that was random” when reacting to some bit of nonsense.  Galactic Pot-Healer is certainly crazy and random, more so than even the author’s other science fiction novels.  However, craziness and randomness aren’t good things in themselves.  Anyone can throw together a lot of nonsense, but it takes a supreme talent to achieve the uplifting, forward-charging type of nonsense that we might call zaniness, the nonsense that is actually fun and entertaining and then makes you think when you’re least prepared for it.

The book is about Joe Fernwright, a mender of broken ceramics.  (Or pot-healer, if you will.)  Joe lives in the United States after it falls under communist rule, when unemployment is high, work is scarce, and the government pumps propagandist dreams into people’s heads while they sleep.  One day he gets a message in his toilet.  The Glimmung needs his help to raise a cathedral from the depths of the ocean on Plowman’s Planet.  What is a Glimmung?  Well, it is certainly not a giant, one-eyed squid like the one on the cover above.  I’ve no idea where they got that image from.  A Glimmung is more like an ocean, or little girl, or a couple of concentric hoops.  That sort of thing.  There’s lots more that takes place in this book, though I’m not quite sure what, exactly.

Day 28: Favorite Title

This one is kind of an oddball, since it’s not actually asking me to talk about what’s in a book.  I often see titles that I think are clever, usually on books that I haven’t read.  For some reason this one comes to mind:

The title is Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.  I like it because of the way that it combines a lot of the annoying trends in book titles to fire back at the exact type of mediocrity that creates those trends in the first place.  It’s got the very long title with a catchy first phrase and then an explanation, the words “positive thinking”, and the promise that the author will expose a nefarious trend that’s destroying America, all rolled into one.

The book itself is about the self-esteem movement, trends in medicine and business and education that try to paper over everything with uplifting terminology, and so-called prosperity theology.  It also looks at the philosophical roots of all this gibberish.  Perhaps I’ll read it someday, since I do feel that Ehrenreich is right to dislike all this stuff.

Day 27: The most surprising plot twist or ending

When I think about surprise endings, I usually think about short stories.  I’m willing to put up with ten or twenty pages of writing just to be delighted with a silly twist or surprise at the end.  Novels with twist endings are a lot harder to pull off, for several reasons.  First of all, few readers would put up with 200 pages just to get a clever ending.  The beginning and middle have to be clever too.  At the same time, the twist ending can’t contradict anything that happens earlier in the story, nor can it be a radical departure from the style and tone of the beginning and middle sections.  Few authors can accomplish so much.

Philip K. Dick is one author who could, and The Game Players of Titan is one novel in which he does.  The surprise ending is that…well, obviously I’m not going to tell you that, am I?  I can at least tell you the set-up for the ending.  It goes like this.

The Game Players of Titan is set on a future earth that’s been devastated by war and conquered by malicious aliens known as Vugs.  The Vugs have the ability to shape-shift, read minds, and tell the future.  At their command, earth is split into zones of property owned by a handful of human beings, who must compete for property and status in a game of Bluff.  (The game itself is quite hilarious and would be mroe than enough to fill a much larger novel by a less talented author.)  Mysterious goings-on are afoot, whilethe Vugs have an unknown agenda of their own.  In the grand finale, the fate of the entire world rests on a single game of Bluff between the Vugs and humans.  Now Bluff, as you would guess, is all about bluffing, so it might seem difficult for the humans to win when, as already mentioned, the Vugs can read minds and tell the future.  But, wonder of wonders, the humans do manage to compete, and it’s all done in a logical manner that’s entirely consistent with everything we’ve seen in this science fiction world.  And with that, I can say no more.

Day 24: A book that you wish more people would’ve read

I rant about the evils of economics often enough.  I won’t do it any more in this post.  One thing is obvious though.  We have an economic system because we need an economic system.  One can point out the flaws of our current economic system all day long, but there’s no hope of destroying it unless we have something to replace it with.  E. F. Schumacher’s Small if Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered offers that something.

This is a book of sound economic principles whose guiding theme is summed up in the title.  We should not try to change people to meet the needs of economic theory, but should instead change economic theory to meet the needs of people.  Based on that guideline, Schumacher considers all kinds of issues in economics, including production and consumption, economies of scale, organization, and government, as well as specific topics such as nuclear power and agricultural policy.

One of his best decisions in writing the book was to write each chapter as an essay which can be read separately.  This not only helps keep it organized and readable, but also allows the individual chapters to be taken and used as needed.  As with any good book, the best way to introduce Small if Beautiful is to present a sample.  Perhaps the most famous chapter is Buddhist Economics.  (Few people know that Schumacher originally called the chapter Catholic Economics, but his publisher rejected the idea of saying anything positive about Catholicism.  He changed the title but added a note that an economic philosophy based on any religion would look similar.)  The chapter compares assumptions made by all modern economists to assumptions that would be made by a Buddhist economist working from traditional religious principles.  Here’s an excerpt:

There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider “labour” or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a “disutility”; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.

The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice are, of course, extremely far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get rid of it, every method that “reduces the work load” is a good thing. The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called “division of labour” and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.  Here it is not a matter of ordinary specialisation, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that the final product can be produced at great speed without anyone having had to contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases, unskilled movement of his limbs.

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

Day 23: A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t

Five or six years ago, I read The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison and, like so many others, I was blown away by it.  Eddison, for the unenlightened, was among the first great fantasy authors.  He wrote a generation before Tolkien first produced The Hobbit, at a time when little epic fantasy existed and there were no rules for the genre.  And he wrote well.  The Worm Ouroboros is a triumph of action and adventure, larger-than-life personalities in equally large landscapes, magic, mystery, romance, and pure writing skill.  For his style and subject, Eddison looked back towards ancient epics and fairy tales, but blended them with a plot and characters worthy of a 500-page novel.

Given its greatness, you’d expect me to start immediately on Eddison’s other fantasy work: The Zimiamvia Trilogy, wouldn’t you?  I’d expect me to do so too.  Strange things happen in my reading career, however.  Since I first became a voracious science fiction and fantasy geek, I’ve discovered scores of excellent authors.  I don’t have time to finish the oeuvre of one before I discover the next.  In fact, I don’t think there’s a single author out there for whom I’ve read the complete published works.  I will, of course, pick up Eddison’s trilogy someday.  Just don’t ask me which day.