Robby Prenkert

A man, standing in front of classroom full of MBA students, rips pages from an economics textbook.

“Papa, what is Michael Scott doing?” (Sydney)

Beginning in 1959, Umberto Eco contributed a monthly column of wit and parody to an Italian literary journal. In the 1960’s the columns were collected and went through two editions. Some of them have now been translated by William Weaver and will be published in paperback in May by Harcourt Brace & Company as a Helen and Kurt Wolff Book under the title “Misreadings.” The excerpts below are taken from a piece titled “Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . .” – reports from professional readers of manuscripts submitted to publishers by agents or hopeful authors.

“The Bible.” Anonymous.

I must say that the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have everything today’s reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres and so on.

The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter, with the transvestites putting the make on the angels, is worthy of Rabelais; the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be turned into a major motion picture. In other words, a real blockbuster, very well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy.

But as I kept on reading, I realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with many – too many – stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish and boring, and jeremiads that make no sense.

The end result is a monster omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big headaches, unless the editor takes care of that himself. The editor’s name, by the way, doesn’t appear anywhere on the manuscript, not even in the table of contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret?

I’d suggest trying to get the rights only to the first five chapters. We’re on sure ground there. Also come up with a better title. How about “The Red Sea Desperadoes?”

“The Odyssey.” Homer.

Personally, I like this book. A good yarn, exciting, packed with adventure. Sufficient love interest, both marital fidelity and adulterous flings (Calypso is a great character, a real man-eater); there’s even a Lolita aspect, with the teen-ager Nausicaa, where the author doesn’t spell things out, but it’s a turn-on anyway. Great dramatic moments, a one-eyed giant, cannibals, even some drugs, but nothing illegal, because as far as I know the lotus isn’t on the Narcotics Bureau’s list. The final scene is in the best tradition of the Western: some heavy fist-swinging, and the business with the bow is a masterstroke of suspense.

What can I say? It’s a page turner, all right, not like the author’s first book, which was too static, all concerned with unity of place and tediously overplotted. By the time the reader reached the third battle and the 10th duel, he already got the idea. But this second book is a totally different thing: it reads as smooth as silk. The tone is calmer, pondered but not ponderous. And then the montage, the use of flashbacks, the stories within stories. . . . In a word, this Homer is the right stuff. He’s smart.

Too smart, maybe. I wonder if it’s all really his own work. I know, of course, a writer can improve with experience (his third book will probably be a sensation), but what makes me uncomfortable – and, finally, leads me to cast a negative vote – is the mess the question of rights will cause. In the first place, the author’s nowhere to be found. People who knew him say it was always hard to discuss any changes to be made in the text, because he was as blind as a bat, couldn’t follow the manuscript, and even gave the impression he wasn’t completely familiar with it. Did he really write the book or did he just sign it?

“The Divine Comedy.” Alighieri, Dante.

Alighieri is your typical Sunday writer. (In everyday life he’s an active member of the pharmacists' guild.) Still, his work shows an undeniable grasp of technique and considerable narrative flair. The book, in the Florentine dialect, consists of about a hundred rhymed chapters, and much of it is interesting and readable. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of astronomy and certain concise, provocative theological notions. The third part of the book is the best and will have the widest appeal; it involves subjects of general interest, concerns of the common reader – salvation, the Beatific Vision, prayers to the Virgin. But the first part is obscure and self-indulgent, with passages of cheap eroticism, violence and downright crudity. But the greatest drawback is the author’s choice of his local dialect (inspired no doubt by some crackpot avant-garde idea). We all know that today’s Latin needs a shot in the arm – it isn’t just the little literary cliques that insist on this. But there’s a limit, after all, if not in the rules of language then at least to the public’s ability to understand.

“Critique of Practical Reason.” Kant, Immanuel.

I asked Susan to take a look at this, and she tells me that after Barthes there’s no point translating this Kant. In any case, I glanced at it myself. A reasonably short book on morality could fit nicely into our philosophy series, and might even be adopted by some universities. But the German publisher says that if we take this one, we have to commit ourselves not only to the author’s previous book, which is an immense thing in at least two volumes, but also to the one he is working on now, about art or about judgment, I’m not sure which. All three books have more or less the same title, so they would have to be sold boxed (and at a price no reader could afford); otherwise bookshop browsers would mistake one for the other and think, “I’ve already read this."

There’s another problem. The German agent tells me that we would also have to publish the minor works of this Kant, a whole pile of stuff including something about astronomy. I would advise against getting involved with a man like this; we’ll end up with a mountain of his books in the warehouse.

“The Trial.” Kafka, Franz.

Nice little book. A thriller with some Hitchcock touches. The final murder, for example. It could have an audience.

But apparently the author wrote under a regime with heavy censorship. Otherwise, why all these vague references, this trick of not giving names to people or places? And why is the protagonist being put on trial? If we clarify these points and make the setting more concrete (facts are needed: facts, facts, facts), then the action will be easier to follow and suspense is assured. Genuine writing has to keep in mind the old newspaperman’s five questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If we can have a free hand with editing, I’d say buy it. If not, not.

“Finnegans Wake.” Joyce, James.

Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I’m the English-language reader, and you’ve sent me a book written in some other, Godforsaken language. I’m returning it under separate cover.

This week’s column is written by Alvera Mickelsen, a founding member of Christians for Biblical Equality.

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24, TNIV).

Genesis chapter 2 begins by telling how God created the garden of Eden; how God created man from the dust of the ground, giving him the work of caring for it and the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest he die; and how God brought the animals he created to Adam to be named. This is followed by the account of God creating Eve from the side of Adam and bringing her to Adam, who said, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man” (v. 23).

Then comes an astonishing statement that has been ignored from the beginning of time. Genesis 2:24 says “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (emphasis added). This seems to imply that the husband will become part of the family of his bride which, in the society of biblical times, probably meant joining her community.

Yet, beginning after the fall in Genesis, the woman was expected to leave her parents and become part of her husband’s family. In the story of Isaac and Rebekah, for example, Rebekah left her family to go to the land of Isaac. This pattern is repeated over and over in the Bible and carries on today. Consider our contemporary wedding ceremonies, which often include the line “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” The bride’s father then answers “I do” or “Her mother and I.” The implication is that the bride leaves her family and the protection of her father to go with her husband and become part of his family.

Most of the world follows a patriarchal social order—where a male is recognized as the head of the family and kinship is traced through the male line. Inheritance of material possessions usually follows the male line. The stronger this pattern is, the greater the prevalence of wife abuse and violence toward women. For evidence we need only examine strongly patriarchal societies such as those in India and in the Middle East.

But this is not what God designed. Suppose that our world practiced the command in Genesis 2:24—given even before sin entered the world. How would marriages look different? Wouldn’t a married couple who came under the care and supervision of the bride’s family be much less likely to experience wife abuse? Her family, including her father, would be nearby to protect her!

Interestingly, the command in Genesis 2:24 was important to the Apostle Paul, who quoted it in Ephesians 5:31 directly after his instructions to husbands to love and care for their wives as they do their own bodies (v. 29). Yet, this command in the creation story is rarely mentioned in our churches. In my scores of years going to church, I have never heard it discussed—even though it is repeated in the chapter of Ephesians that talks at length about submission. I have heard dozens of sermons on the importance of a wife submitting to her husband but never once about a husband leaving his parents to be united with his wife!

We all need to try to read the Bible with fresh eyes—not assuming that whatever interpretation we have heard in the past is the only valid one. Romans 12:2 reminds us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world [such as patriarchy?], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (emphasis added).

Alvera Mickelsen

…101st blog entry of 2009, and my 150th total entry on this blog.

Wow. Should this even count?

In my ENGL 101 class today I had my students do a writing warm-up exercise, something we do every day at the start of class. Usually I post a prompt of some sort up on the screen—a picture, a quote, a question—and invite them to write a response. There are not right or wrong answers to these prompts; the point of the exercise is to get in the habit of thinking on the page. It’s a ritual, a way of practicing the discipline of writing our way into our feelings and thoughts. Last class the prompt was this: “Writing is like…” I invited the class to think metaphorically, and then to elaborate on their comparison(s), encouraging the exploration of their analogy. Today’s prompt was this: “Writing is like praying.”

This sparked a good conversation about the ways in which writing is like prayer, its practice, its purpose, its effects. I would like to see us explore the connections between prayer and writing in the days ahead.

One of my course aims is this: "To write Christian-ly." I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that. I think I have tried to encourage my students to write ethically, to respect and empathize with the reader, to writing charitably, to examine their subjects through the lenses of their Christian faith. But what about an approach to the practice of composition that is prayerful? Might that not be an even better skill to foster and facilitate? Can I teach it unless I practice it myself?

Next class I'm going to show them the steps of St. Ignatius Loyola's "Examen"—a method of prayer that may have some connections to writing. Does writing well require us to begin from a position of hope and gratitude? In the epic tradition, the poet always invoked the gods—"Sing Muse, and through me tell the story…" That's how the Odyssey begins. Why not, even if I don't explicitly state it in the piece itself, begin my own essay (or blog entry) with that sort of invocation? Would I write more clearly if I began by asking God to make me aware of my writing "sins" and to cast them out? Does writing well involve and examination of my conscience? What would asking pardon for my "sins of composition" look like, and what effect would such confession have on a writer and his writing? Is revision like repentance? Would I write better if I entered the process trusting the Holy Spirit to guide me, and not merely leaning on my own understanding?

Anyhow, here's Ignatius's Examen. I see links; but I see through a glass darkly. I'm going to experiment with it for awhile, and be alert to its connections with and implications for the writing (and reading, too) process.

METHOD FOR MAKING THE GENERAL EXAMEN

It contains in it five Points.

First Point. The first Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received.

Second Point. The second, to ask grace to know our sins and cast them out.

Third Point. The third, to ask account of our soul from the hour that we rose up to the present Examen, hour by hour, or period by period: and first as to thoughts, and then as to words, and then as to acts, […]

Fourth Point. The fourth, to ask pardon of God our Lord for the faults.

Fifth Point. The fifth, to purpose amendment with His grace.

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW54W9y6-eU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1&w=425&h=344]

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you."

• Rita Mae Brown

“Fiction is history that might have happened. History is fiction that did happen."

- Andre Gide

MUTUAL SUBMISSION IN SELF-SACRIFICIAL LOVE

This week’s column is written by Allison Young, as part of the “Short Answers for Challenging Texts” series. Allison holds a BA in Biblical and Theological studies from Bethel University and an MDiv from Princeton Theological seminary. She served as a theological intern for Christians for Biblical Equality in the summer of 2007.

Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband (Eph. 5:18-33, TNIV).

With great gusto, and over, and over, and over, Sydney sings…

"Go Cubs go, Go Cubs go—

Hey Chicago whaddya say

The Cubs are gonna win today."

Maybe next year, Syd. Maybe next year.

Herta Mueller wins 2009 Nobel literature prize
(AP) – 10 hours ago

STOCKHOLM — Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller has the won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy, which has picked the winner annually since 1901, said Thursday that Mueller “who with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Americans Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth join Israel’s Amos Oz at the top of the buzz surrounding the Nobel Prize in literature, especially after the most prominent judge broke from his predecessor and said U.S. writers are worthy of the coveted award.

True to tradition, the secretive Swedish Academy won’t even reveal who has been nominated ahead of the announcement Thursday.

To avoid leaks academy members avoid discussing candidates in e-mails or in public. When they must — such as when they dine out together — they use quirky code names, like “Chateaubriand” for last year’s winner, Jean-Marie Le Clezio of France.

Britons Doris Lessing and Harold Pinter, winners in 2007 and 2005, were “Little Dorrit” and “Harry Potter,” while Orhan Pamuk — the 2006 winner — was simply dubbed “OP,” initials that Swedes associate with a domestic brand of liquor.

“It’s sometimes when we meet in public spaces and public environments and then we have to resort to code words but it isn’t that frequent,” Peter Englund, the academy’s permanent secretary, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Academy members have also been known to use fake covers to camouflage their books whenever reading in public.

Sometimes even those feints aren’t enough. The academy suspected a leak last year when Le Clezio surged to No. 1 in Nobel betting a day before the announcement.

“We have taken a number of measures to see that it isn’t repeated this year,” said Englund, who used to work in military intelligence. He declined to describe the measures.

This year British betting firm Ladbrokes is giving the lowest odds to Oz, German writer Herta Mueller and a trio of Americans: Oates, Roth and Thomas Pynchon.

The academy keeps nominations secret for 50 years but nominators — language professors, former Nobel laureates and members of literature academies worldwide — sometimes make their submissions public.

This year, Danish literature professor Anne-Marie Mai revealed she had nominated Bob Dylan because she was upset about Englund’s predecessor’s critical remarks about American literature.

Before last year’s prize announcement, outgoing permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said the U.S. was too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world.

Englund struck a different tone, telling AP Tuesday that in most language areas “there are authors that really deserve and could get the Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well."

On Thursday Englund will announce the winner at the academy’s headquarters in Stockholm’s Old Town.

The last American winner was Toni Morrison in 1993. No writer from South America has won since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982. The last North American writer was Canadian Saul Bellow, who won in 1976 and was a resident of the United States for much of his life.

Dylan is believed to have been nominated several times before, but doesn’t quite fit the profile of a Nobel literature laureate. Besides primarily being a songwriter, his mass following could also be considered a minus by the Swedish Academy, which often chooses writers who are unfamiliar to the everyday reader.

However, Dylan is considered by many prominent literary critics to be a major poet, his song lyrics worthy of serious study.

Dylan’s literary merits aside, Nobel watchers note that anyone can be nominated for the six Nobel awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics, but that doesn’t mean they have any chance of winning.

The list of unsuccessful peace prize nominees includes dictators Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

“There are some completely crazy nominations,” said Mans Ehrenberg, who sits on the chemistry prize committee. He said occasionally committee members get e-mails “from people who think they should get the prize."

That violates a key Nobel rule: you can’t nominate yourself. New Zealand literature professor J.M. Brown tried to get around that rule in 1905, when he nominated Godfrey Sweven, which turned out to be his own pseudonym.

British wartime leader Winston Churchill missed out on the peace prize despite two nominations, but his oratory and his works of historical scholarship earned him the literature prize in 1953.

Spanish poet Angel Guimera y Jorge was nominated for the literature prize 17 consecutive years, but never won.

The Swedish Academy receives hundreds of literature nominations every year, whittled down to a shortlist of five names by May. Those authors are studied carefully before a winner is selected in a majority vote.

Known in Swedish as “De Aderton” — the Eighteen — the academy members are Swedish writers, book critics, linguists and literature professors.

Right now there are only 15 active members. One seat is vacant and two members have boycotted meetings since the 1990s because of internal disputes, including over whether the academy should condemn death threats against British writer Salman Rushdie.

Englund said there usually is animated discussion between academy members before the vote, though they try to keep things civil.

“There are never sort of cutthroat debates and people getting really angry and storming out of the room,” he said.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair falls out and the teeth decay.

-Flannery O’Connor

How quickly they forget the lessons of Sunday school
LEONARD PITTS JR.
The Bellingham Herald 9-22-2009

“Thou shalt not bear false witness …” — Exodus 20:16

Jim Wallis wants to take Glenn Beck to Sunday school.

On occasion, the Fox News host has spoken of his daughter, who was born with cerebral palsy. According to Sojourners, a faith-based organization Wallis co-founded and leads, Beck recalled last month how doctors warned that the baby, if carried to term, might never walk, speak or feed herself. That was 21 years ago and she is now a miraculous young woman who defied the dire expectations.

Beck has suggested that under health-care reform, the government would be empowered to euthanize children like his. But who is Washington to decide whether a life is worth living? “That’s for God to decide,” he is quoted as saying. “Not the government."

From this, we learn two things. The first is that Glenn Beck believes in God. The second is that Glenn Beck lies. You’d hope those things would be mutually exclusive.

For the record and for the umpteenth time: no version of health-care reform being contemplated by Congress mandates death for the old, the disabled or the infirm. That’s a canard. It is mendacity, prevarication, bald-faced lie.

In other words, politics.

The art of the untruth is, after all, the life’s blood of governance. As a brief spin through PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact checking Web site will attest, no party, ideology or politician has a monopoly on lying. Lying is as bipartisan as it gets.

And yet, the lies that have characterized the debate over health care are in a class all their own — not simply because they are outrageous, but because they are designed specifically to enflame and terrorize. As such, those lies are deserving of special rebuke. Last week, they got it.

Sojourners, which calls itself the nation’s largest network of progressive Christians, says its members sent out thousands of e-mails to five of the biggest offenders: Beck, his fellow Fox personalities Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy and Bill O’Reilly, and radio host Rush Limbaugh. Each e-mail said the same thing in essence: stop lying. Wallis, a celebrated theologian and author of “The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post — Religious Right America,” says Sojourners is trying to redeem things people “really should’ve learned in Sunday school.”

“For example, Sean Hannity said we’re going to have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, ‘You’re dead. It’s a death sentence.’ That’s just not true. So instead, in our e-mail we told the story of a real person, a real woman who was denied her breast cancer surgery because of her health provider’s discovery of a pre-existing condition called acne.”

He adds, “A lot of the things the talk-show hosts say will happen are ‘already’ happening because of the behavior of the health-care providers. They’re not true because of health-care reform, they’re true because of the present system.”

It is not, says Wallis, his intention to accuse everyone who opposes health-care reform of lying. Nor, he says, is it his intention to promote a given proposal. All he’s trying to do is reframe health care as the moral issue it is, and restore verities we all learned in Sunday School. Or Hebrew School. Or Islamic School. Or, heck, kindergarten.

That it’s wrong to lie, wrong to pick on the vulnerable. And that we have a duty to care for those who cannot care for themselves, the ones Jesus called “the least of these.”

Those are simple, sacred and profound principles. But you wonder if the simple, sacred and profound still have power to sway us. Obviously, Jim Wallis has faith they do. I hope he’s right. Yet what a spectacular leap it takes to believe the tiny whisper of conscience might be heard over the shrill outcry of America screaming at its mirror.

That is in itself a sobering measure of how far we’ve wandered from the things we once knew as kids.

… and with enormous gusto, Syd sings:

“Don’t let Satan Whoof it out,
I’m gonna let it shine!
Don’t let Satan Whoof it out,
I’m gonna let it shine,
let it shine,
let it shine,
let it shine!!"

And ten thousand angels, and one grandpa, listen in. Laughing.

We get to carry each other…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgZ4ammawyI&hl=en&fs=1&hd=1&w=640&h=505]

I wanna tear down the walls / that hold me inside.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQxl9EI9YBg&hl=en&fs=1&&w=425&h=344]

It will be…

Magnificent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgj5_bNCpk

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEGOb48gIe4&hl=en&fs=1&&w=560&h=340]


Magnificent
Magnificent

I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven’t had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent

Three days on the “gold coast.”

Milton Bradley is 6 of his last 7.

As much as I hate to admit it…

the Cubs are lousy. Which makes September a considerably less interesting month for me.

I have no memory of my first day of college classes. I sort of remember my first day of freshman orientation. I think that’s because they made us play those goofy “get to know you” ice-breaker games in the gym, and I really hated games like that when I was eighteeen.

Tomorrow is the first official day of college classes for about 400 freshman at Bethel. Twenty-eight of those will be in a class I co-teach. If my experience is indicative of anything, twenty years from now they won’t remember anything about this day. Unless they save the journal I make them write.

Or,unless something horrible happens.

So I’ll try not to let something horrible happen.

State Champions
Michigan Men’s Fastpitch
2009

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHVpJGXZ21o&hl=en&fs=1&&w=425&h=344]

In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!

--Lucky Day, The Three Amigos (1986)