John Milton and Freedom of the Press
John Milton wrote the Areopagitica in 1644, in protest of a law passed in England which required all books and pamphlets to be OK’ed by a group of censors before being published. He believed that if England allowed licensing of books – who could be printed and who could not – it would be an attempt at controlling what the people were thinking. Milton is not easy reading, but I still get a thrill reading his defense of freedom of the press.
This comment on Milton is from the St. Lawrence Institute:
“While knowledge of this context is important to an understanding of the nature of Milton’s passion in writing this pamphlet, it is not essential to a modern appreciation of its contents. Milton’s words are just as powerful today in their call for freedom of thought as they were in his own. The issue he is addressing is still with us: the debate between legitimate societal control and freedom – whether of printing, speech, or thought – is on-going, and will continue to be of central importance in our media-dependent culture.”
This is John Milton’s most often quoted paragraph:
“And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I can not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
If you are looking for a challenge, you can read the whole Areopagitica here:
He had me from “hello”
I like James Lee Burke so much that when his newest book came out – Pegasus Descending – I went ahead and pre-ordered it in hardcover. We usually wait for books to come out in paperback; they don’t hurt so much when you accidentally fall asleep and the book falls on your face. 😉
My first James Lee Burke mystery was A Morning for Flamingos. Here is the opening paragraph:
“We parked the car in front of the parish jail and listened to the rain beat on the roof. The sky was black, the windows fogged with humidity, and white veins of lightening pulsated in the bank of thunderheads out on the Gulf.
‘Tante Lemon’s going to be waiting for you,’ Lester Benoit, the driver, said. He was, like me, a plainclothes detective with the sheriff’s department. He wore sideburns and a mustache, and had his hair curled and styled in Lafayette. Each year he arranged to take his vacation during the winter in Miami BEach so that he would have a year-round tan, and each year he bought whatever clothes people were wearing there. Even though he had spent his whole life in New Iberia, except for time in the service, he always looked as if he had just stepped off a plane from somewhere else.”
Holy Smokes! He had me from”hello!” This beautiful prose in a detective series?
The main character in the New Iberia (Louisiana) series is Dave Robicheaux, a deeply flawed sometimes-detective. A former drunk, he follows the 12 step programs, attends meetings, and introduces us to the complexities of crime and detective work in the arcane society of deep-South Louisiana. Occasionally, he will fall off the wagon, and you can feel it happening with anticipation and dread. You can hear the seductive siren of Jim Beam calling to him in his weakest moments. I’ve never been a drunk, and I’ve never lived in Louisiana, but thanks to James Lee Burke, I feel like I have. He puts us inside the skin of Dave Robicheaux, for better or worse.
He also takes us inside the social issues – race relations, big oil, organized crime, organized gambling, and all the other issues of louche Louisiana. Burke’s most deeply held convictions come through shining clearly – that crime not only damages the innocent, but damages those who choose the criminal track. His greatest scorn is for those who commit the crimes, and then crave social respectability.
Burke’s books are not only intensely visual, they are deeply sensual – you hear the sounds of the crickets, you taste the crawdads at the celebration on the village green, you suffer the beatings, and your skin crawls when you meet some of the nastiest-every day villains you will ever meet. They all seem to swarm to New Orleans and New Iberia.
This is from Pegasus Decending:
“It was hot and breathless outside, and the sound of dry thunder, like crackling cellophane, leaked from clouds that gave no rain. Through the back window I could see vapor lamps burning in City Park and a layer of dust floating on the bayou’s surface. I could see the shadows of the oaks moving in my yard when the wind puffed through the canopy. I could see beads of humidity, as bright as quicksilver, slipping down the giant serrated leaves of the philodendron, and the humped shape of a gator lumbering crookedly across the mudband, suddenly plunging nto water and disappearing inside the lily pads. I saw all these things just as I heard helicopter blades soaring by overhead, and for just a second, I saw Dallas Klein getting to his knees on a hot street swirling with yellow dust in Opa-Locka, Florida, just like a man preparing himself for his own decapitation.”
Wow. Doesn’t that just take your breath away?
James Lee Burke has won an astonishingly rare two Edgar Awards – Best Mystery of the year. His heros are gritty, there is violence and bloodshed – these are not feel-good stories. And yet, in small moments, there is redemption. His hero is both self-destructive and takes good care of his wild housecat, Snuggs, and his three legged racoon, Tripod. In this book he is on his third wife – I wonder if he kills off his current wife when the author is angry with his real-life wife? He wouldn’t be the first author to take his ire out on his characters!
If you like a good, can’t-put-it-down read, if you can handle the brutality of police work, and if you like a book that transports you to a new culture and new location and makes you feel like you have lived there, then James Lee Burke will delight you. I am so addicted, that I pre-order his books when I know a new one is coming out. He is that good.
Dave Robicheaux Novels:
The Neon Rain
Heaven’s Prisoners
Black Cherry Blues
A Morning for Flamingos
A stained White Radiance
In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead
Dixie City Jam
Burning Angel
Cadillac Jukebox
Sunset Limited
Purple Cane Road
Jolie Blon’s Bounce
Last Car to the Elysian Fields
Crusader’s Cross
Pegasus Descending
Billy Bob Holland Novels (Montana deeply flawed, former alcoholic detective a lot like Dave Robicheaux)
Cimmarron Rose
Heartwood
Bitterroot
In the Moon of Red Ponies
Other Fiction:
Half of Paradise
To the Bright and Shining Sun
Lay Down my Sword and Shield
Two for Texas
The Convict
The Lost Get-Back Boogie
White Doves at Morning
James Lee Burke(R) in New Iberia
We Need to Talk About Kevin
This morning on BBC, as part of the coverage on the horrorific murders in the peaceful Amish country of Pennsylvania, they interviewed Lionel Shriver, author of the award winning book “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”
This is not a recommendation. Shriver’s book, which has won several awards for literary excellence, is not for the faint-hearted. It is a tough, muscular, bleak examination of a similar, fictional incident, written after the Columbine High School massacres.
My best friend and I read this book at the same time – it was a book club selection, paired with another book on a similar theme, “Early Leaving.” We ended up exchanging horrified e-mails every morning, discussing events in the book as if they were a part of our daily life, and speculating on where this was all going.
It is from a mother’s point of view, written to her husband, from whom she is separated after . . . .something . . . We don’t know what that something is. The book unfolds steadily and relentlessly. You want to stop. Truly you do, I am not exaggerating. The book rolls on, so dark, so ominous, you know it is leading up to something truly horrible. You don’t want to look. And you can’t stop reading.
“Why are we reading this???” we asked each other in agony. And we didn’t stop.
“Why did you want me to read this?” your friends will say, as you pass this book along, and then, shell shocked, they will come to you to discuss it. Most often, I didn’t even recommend the book, but friends would overhear other friends talking about it in hushed, horrified voices, and would insist.
The book is the scariest, most real book I have ever read. It hits at the heart of every mother’s secret fears – what if we have done something wrong while raising our child? What if our child turns into a monster? Do we ever really know anyone – our children? Our husbands? Ourselves? We are all so vulnerable in our mothering skills, so quick to blame ourselves for our children’s failings, and this book bravely explores that fear, that vulnerability, without taking the easy way out and giving easy answers.
If you read this book you will find yourselves talking about it months – even years – after you read it. It is a terrifying book.
And after you read it you will understand why my heart is breaking for everyone involved in this unthinkable killing in Pennsylvania. Were I some superstitious person, it would be so easy – it is clearly the devil’s work. I can’t imagine what this man could have been thinking, but he chose his victims – young, innocent girls – with purpose. My heart aches for his wife and children, who will bear this shame for the rest of their lives, and for his parents, who will wonder where they went wrong. My heart breaks especially for the peaceable Amish, revered throughout America for their simplicity and commitment in living their faith, who must try to find a way to forgive the man who took their innocent daughters’ lives.
The World is Not Enough
Whew! I just got back from a week in 12th century France, courtesy of my friend Zoe Olderbourg. (slaps a flea biting her arm) I bought this book, The World is Not Enough, a while back, and have tried to read it several times, but couldn’t get into it. This time, man, I got into it and couldn’t put it down!
We enter at the wedding of Alis to Ansiau, she (slapping the flea on my neck) the 14 year old daughter of Joceran of Puiseaux, Ansiau the son of Ansiau the Elder, castellan of Linnieres, who knows he is dying and wants to see his line continue before he goes.
“The two of them, standing there, were moved, as two children must be who have just been washed, dressed, lectured and left at teh altar by their parents in front of all the guests, their brothers, their sisters, their uncles, their playmates. They were so little alike. He was a boy and she a girl.”
Alis and Ansiau marry and fall quickly in love. (checking the bedding for fleas) They hunt, they go to tournements, Ansiau goes off on Crusade to the Holy Land – twice. Alis runs the daily life of the castle, has twenty pregnancies, 12 children who live. Ansiau has a mid-life crisis. In their late 50’s, we leave them, scratching one another’s flea bites and looking off into the sunset.
Reading this book, you are totally immersed in the daily life of the nobility. The nobility, as it turns out, are the original credit-crazy spenders – they borrowed against their inheiritance, they borrowed against their lands, they borrowed against their doweries. They were constantly short funds, and constantly mortgaging their future for a few baubles today.
The “castle” had a great hall downstairs, where most of the men slept and where cows and horses and chickens and sheep were brought if it got too cold in the stables in the winter, and up a laddar, one great room where there was one big bed for the king and queen and whoever else they invited to sleep there, and a couple other beds, mostly shared by four or five people. This was where ladies slept, and hung out, and embroidered, and (scratching at a fleabite on the ankle) exchanged gossip.
It was a fascinating visit into a world with no running water, no heat, no air conditioning, where babies died at birth as often as not. It was a world where people caught smallpox, and the lucky ones, those who survived, lived the rest of their lives with pock marks like craters on their faces. It was a world where the nobility didn’t read, and there were no books except in the monasteries. Only priests were authorized to read and explain scripture. It was a world where wolves and bear still roamed the forests of France.
The book is set near Troyes and Langres, in the Champagne area of France. Zoe Oldenburg captures the poverty and brutality suffered by the majority of people, rich and poor alike, without sacrificing the human joys and kindnesses which brightened the world, and made life worth living. The book is so realistic and richly detailed that you will be looking for flea bites when you finish!
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and more
If you enjoyed the trip through Botswana and would like to read more about Botswana, if you think you might go there someday, or if you think you might never go there – you need to read a wonderful series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.
The first book is The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. You meet the main character, and heroine, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the founder and owner of the only women’s detective agency in Botswana, and her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi (who can’t resist a handsome pair of shoes), and the love of her Mma Ramotswe’s life, Mr. J. L. B. Matekone. Mma Ramotswe describes herself as “a woman of traditional build” and drives a very old, small white truck. She has a way of looking at things differently – and she solves her mysteries in ways you or I wouldn’t think of.
The books are short, and deceptively simple. They are “feel good” books, giving you smiles and warming your heart as you read. At the same time, you find yourself thinking back to these books, some of the issues, some of the characters, some of the plots – long after you have finished the book. That’s a sign of a good read!
As different as the thinking and culture is, the books are so full of grace and good humor and tolerance and forgiveness that when the book finishes, you can hardly wait to start the next one. You feel like Precious is your sister, a very smart sister, not without her flaws, but a woman to be respected, a woman of good character and who can make tough decisions.
She also makes mistakes, and has to live with the consequences. You will find the books addictive. The entire series is:
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
Jeffrey Deaver’s mysteries, on the other hand, are intricate and woven through with arcane information, but you always learn something. He has a series about a quadriplegic, Lincoln Rymes, a criminologist, who solves cases in a very Sherlock Holmes kind of way, by thinking about the evidence and the patterns that it presents. He has a girlfriend, Amelia, who is a policewoman, and works with him on many of the cases. The books that have these two characters are:
The Bone Collector
The Coffin Dancer
The Empty Chair
The Stone Monkey
The Vanished Man
The Twelfth Card
Last – and least, for The Devil Wears Prada crowd is Linda Fairstein, who almost always has a book on the New York Times best seller list. Her heroine is Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor (District Attorney) Alexandra Cooper, whose dad made a fortune on an artificial heart device, allowing her to work in the public service sector and still wear fabulous clothes, have weekly manicures and hair stylings at the best salons and eat at the coolest restaurants in town, and she tells you all about them.
They make great airplane reading for the trendy. The plots are formulaic – an astounding, mysterious crime is committed, Alexandra gets involved, along with her detective side-kicks, the criminal involved somehow focuses on Alexandra and she has to spend the night at her friends’ houses. You don’t read these mysteries for the astounding plots, you read them because they are funny and superficial and a quick read that doesn’t require much thinking.
Happy reading!
Chicken Nuggets and Big Macs
Brava, Chicken Nuggets, you have taken what was apparently meant to be an insult, and turned it into a badge of honor. And well you should.
Kuwaiti has been a major trading crossroad for centuries. It would follow that there has been a lot of mixing, as traders pass through, people travel to foreign lands, historically, as well as now. As genetic testing becomes more acceptable, we are all bound to discover that we are much more mixed, and much more alike, than we ever knew. And, there are bound to be surprises, as men and women don’t always fertilize within acceptable societal boundaries.
When you walk around, you see Kuwaitis with the faces of India, Iran, Iraq, Africa, even possibly faces from the earliest adventures of Alexander the Greek. This is a good thing, the intermingling of cultures and bloodlines build strength, resilience and flexibility.
There is a wonderful book you will enjoy reading –
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Third Culture Kids
by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken. While the focus is on young people raised outside their own culture – diplomat kids, oil kids, missionary kids, international business kids – the findings apply to all those who learn to function in more than one culture. You learn that feeling alien and weird is NORMAL for TCK’s during adolescence, and well into their 20’s and even their 30’s.
At some point, however, you realize that every culture you understand, every additional language you master, every new experience brings a whole new tool chest to your life, new perspectives and additional ways of thinking through life problems.
You, dear ones, are the hope of tomorrow. You are international citizens, having a larger world view because of your mixed upbringing. You have MORE THAN double the advantages (culture 1 + culture 2) you have the additional advantage of the (C1xC2) blend. (Hearing strains of “We are Nuggets; hear us roar in numbers too big to ignore . . !”)
. . . . So. . . if you are (golden, delicious, juicy) little chicken nuggets, what are the men of mixed Kuwaiti and western heritage – Big Macs?? Burger Kings?? (cracking myself up)
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