Literature in the News: Warning, The Old Man and the Sea Contains Fishing

Western Society has reached a level of absurdity.  A University in Scotland has put a warning label on Earnest Hemingway’s great short novel, The Old Man and theSea.  From the Daily Mail: “University warns woke students that Ernest Hemingway's classic novel Old Man and the Sea contains graphic scenes... of FISHING”  

 

It is a story of one man’s heroic struggle against the elements and often viewed as a metaphor for life itself. But Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Old Man And The Sea is the latest victim of today’s woke standards, with students warned that it contains ‘graphic fishing scenes’.

 

Successive TV and film adaptations of the 1952 classic have been awarded U and PG certificates, suitable for children, but a content warning has been issued to History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, an area renowned for its fishing industry.

 

Mary Dearborn, the author of Ernest Hemingway, A Biography, said: ‘This is nonsense. It blows my mind to think students might be encouraged to steer clear of the book.

Can I ask, what did you expect from a book titled, “The Old Man and the Sea”?  Second, what is wrong with fishing?  More from the article:

Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, added: ‘This is particularly stupid given the dependency of the economy of the Highlands and Islands on industries such as fishing and farming.

 

'Many great works of literature have included references to farming, fishing, whaling, or hunting. Is the university seriously suggesting all this literature is ringed with warnings?’

 

The content warning was revealed in documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday under Freedom of Information laws.

Do yourself a favor, and read Hemingway’s classic.  It’s one of Hemingway’s best and led to him winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Here's a wonderful animation of the novel's basic story.

What’s next?  Warnings on every book. 

Let’s have some fun and create some potential warnings for some great books.

1984 by George Orwell: Warning: There’s a mean Big Brother.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Warning: A young man goes beserk.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Warning: Adultery suggested.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Warning: Climate denier attacks wind mill.

Othello by William Shakespeare: Warning: Racist portrayal of mixed marriage.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: Warning: Passionate affair transcends death.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: Warning: Teenager in angst is anti social.

We have become a bunch of ninnies. 

My 2021 Reads, The Short Stories, Part 1

Following up on my 2021 Reads post, let me walk you through my short story reads for the year.  I didn’t realize just how good a year in short story reading it was until I put this together.  Of the nineteen stories, I ranked only one as a “Dud,” five ranked “Ordinary,” eight ranked “Good,” and four ranked “Excellent.”  That’s twelve stories that were good or excellent.  As you look through the list, you can see that most were well known authors.  Here’s how I ranked the stories.

Exceptional

“The Presence,” by Caroline Gordon. 

“Swept Away,” by T. Coraghessan Boyle. 

 “Gods,” by Vladimir Nabokov. 

“A Night in the Poorhouse,” a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Good

“Nimram,” by John Gardner. 

“Screwball,” by William Baer. 

“Wintry Peacock,” by D. H. Lawrence. 

“The Manager of ‘The Kremlin,’” by Evelyn Waugh. 

“A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street,” by Maeve Brennan.

“The Unrest-Cure,” by Saki (H.H. Munro). 

“The Curse,” by Andre Dubus.

“Shower of Gold,” a short story by Eudora Welty.

Ordinary

“Baptism,” a (Don Camillio) short story by Giovanni Guareschi.

“The Coffee-House of Surat,” a short story by Leo Tolstoy.

“Acts of God,” a short story by Ellen Gilchrist. 

“In the Walled City,” a short story by Sewart O’Nan.

“Dead Man’s Path,” a short story by Chinua Achebe. 

“The Sea Change,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway. 

Duds

“Granted Wishes: Unpopular Girl,” a short story by Thomas Berger. 

###

Let me provide you a one paragraph summary and comment on each of the stories.  First the one Dud and then the five Ordinary stories.  “D” stands for Dud, “O” for Ordinary, “G” for Good.

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“Granted Wishes: Unpopular Girl” by Thomas Berger.  (D)

Janice, an attractive but socially inept and dull young lady, tries to learn how to be more popular.  Through a scheme she gets rich and all of sudden is very popular.  That’s it!  Don’t bother.

⁂

“Baptism” by Giovanni Guareschi. (O)

The communist mayor, Don Camillio’s arch nemesis, brings his newly born infant to the church to be baptized.  And then the fun begins.  Charming as always but too quickly resolved.

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“The Coffee-House of Surat” by Leo Tolstoy. (O)

From Wikipedia: “The story takes place in Surat, India, where a single follower of Judaism, Hinduism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam argue with each other about the true path to salvation, while a quiet Chinese man looks on without saying anything, the piece concluding when the followers turn to him and ask his opinion.”  

The arguments center on which is the true religion and the nature of the sun as derived from their theologies.  The Chinese man, speaking for Tolstoy, argues that pride causes error and the sun lights up the whole world, which then is the natural religion.  You can read this story online here:

The story was overly didactic and the characters just stand-ins for their religions.

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“Acts of God” by Ellen Gilchrist.  (O)

An elderly married couple living in New Orleans, in love since grade school and still in their eighties, despite being warned of the oncoming hurricane Katrina, flee their house to get away from their sitter in a sort of mock elopement and have to face the consequences of the hurricane.  Interesting characters but too underdeveloped a story.  That “acts” in the title is plural carries significance.

⁂

“Dead Man’s Path,” Chinua Achebe.  (O)

Michael Obi is appointed headmaster of a school in a traditional African community.  Soon he and his wife intend to implement new, progressive approaches to schooling.  On his first attempt he gets a backlash.  I wish there was more to this story.  The material is greater than just a few pages of narrative.

You can read the story online here. 

And read a fairly detailed analysis of the story here

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“The Sea Change” by Ernest Hemingway.  (O)

A man and a woman, lovers, are at a café arguing over something the woman won’t do.  We learn that she will not break off a relationship with another woman.  Once the arguing is over and she leaves him, the sea change is as much about the man now as is about the woman.  Well written but not very deep and overly sensationalistic.  Critics seem to see more to it than I do, but I think it’s because its an early reference in literature to lesbianism.

You can read an analysis of the story here  and another analysis here.  

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Now here are the eight “Good” ranked stories.  I’ll give you the same summary and comment paragraph but for these stories I’m going to include a short snippet from the story.

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“Nimram” by John Gardner.  (G)

A famous, middle-aged classical music conductor who has enjoyed and is still enjoying a good life with hardly any misfortunes meets on an airplane a teenage girl with crutches.  Both are traveling to Chicago, he to conduct the symphony and she to attend.  On the flight he learns that she is terminally ill but has a profound belief in God.  It’s a well written story that falls just short of excellent.  There seemed to be a complexity missing that could have elevated the theme a bit more. 

You can read about John Gardner at his Wikipedia entry here.  

And there is a great article where Gardner is asked about his writing and other contemporary writers.  Gardner doesn’t pull punches.  Here. 

Here is an excerpt from the story, an exposition of Benjamin Nimram.

 

He was not a man who had ever given thought to whether or not his opinions of himself and his effect on the world were inflated. He was a musician simply, or not so simply; an interpreter of Mahler and Bruckner, Sibelius and Nielsen—much as his wife Arline, buying him clothes, transforming his Beethoven frown to his now just as famous bright smile, brushing her lips across his cheek as he plunged (always hurrying) toward sleep, was the dutiful and faithful interpreter of Benjamin Nimram. His life was sufficient, a joy to him, in fact. One might have thought of it—and so Nimram himself thought of it, in certain rare moods—as one resounding success after another. He had conducted every major symphony in the world, had been granted by Toscanini’s daughters the privilege of studying their father’s scores, treasure-horde of the old man’s secrets; he could count among his closest friends some of the greatest musicians of his time. He had so often been called a genius by critics everywhere that he had come to take it for granted that he was indeed just that—“just that” in both senses, exactly that and merely that: a fortunate accident, a man supremely lucky. Had he been born with an ear just a little less exact, a personality more easily ruffled, dexterity less precise, or some physical weakness—a heart too feeble for the demands he made of it, or arthritis, the plague of so many conductors—he would still, no doubt, have been a symphony man, but his ambition would have been checked a little, his ideas of self-fulfillment scaled down. Whatever fate had dealt him he would have learned, no doubt, to put up with, guarding his chips. But Nimram had been dealt all high cards, and he knew it. He revelled in his fortune, sprawling when he sat, his big-boned fingers splayed wide on his belly like a man who’s just had dinner, his spirit as playful as a child’s for all the gray at his temples, all his middle-aged bulk and weight—packed muscle, all of it—a man too much enjoying himself to have time for scorn or for fretting over whether or not he was getting his due, which, anyway, he was. He was one of the elect. He sailed through the world like a white yacht jubilant with flags.

I have always liked John Gardner’s writing.  Make sure you read his novel, Grendel some day.

⁂

“Screwball” by William Baer.  (G)

A young man who is a major league pitcher has an incredible, career year dominating the league and almost singlehandedly leading his team to winning the World Series.  And then in the off season he suddenly dies, and his best friend, a police detective, investigates the mystery of how he died and how his friend developed that screwball pitch that dominated the league. In the process he wins the heart of the deceased pitcher’s sister.  A really fine story but it missed the top mark because it was too formulaic of a detective novel. 

You can read about William Baer here.  And he had an “Exceptional” short story (“Times Square”) in my last year’s reads.  You can read about it here.  

Here are the wonderful opening paragraphs of “Screwball.”

It was the fourth and final game of the World Series: Ricky Kight, with the look of a hired 6’4” gunslinger, had walked in from the bullpen with a 1-0 lead in the eighth and struck out the side. Then he whiffed Gonzales to start off the bottom of the ninth, got Marshall on a broken-bat blooper to short left, and was now facing down Ramirez with a 2-2 count.

 

“Will he send,” one of the announcers wondered rhetorically, “the juice, the split curve, or his nasty screwgie?”

 

Every baseball fan in America, of course, was wondering exactly the same thing as Ricky took the sign, went into his windup, and then, with that peculiar, idiosyncratic, and inexplicably odd arm motion, threw what Mathewson used to call a “fadeaway,” and what Carl Hubbell later called a “screwball,” and what the umpire called a “strike!” It was over. The Yankees had swept the World Series for the ninth time. The stadium erupted, the players went nuts, and Keith hit the pause button on his laptop.

 

That was eight months ago, when Ricky Kight, who was Keith’s old high school friend and teammate, had capped off an absolutely unprecedented season (19-0, 1.34 ERA) with an absolutely unprecedented World Series: winning a first-game shutout and then closing down the last three games with an efficiency and intimidation that reminded everyone in America of Mariano Rivera at his best. Then, a month later, his career was suddenly over. He was helping a friend move a piano, smashed his right shoulder, and damaged his rotator cuff (not irreparably), his scapular, his tendons, his muscles, and, far more severely, his radial nerve. At first, given the “piano” aspect of the story, it almost seemed like a joke, or a hoax, and it got lots of clever headlines in the Post and all over the web, but it was definitely no joke, and even Ricky’s always-optimistic high-powered sports agent, Mike Rodgers, had eventually accepted and announced the terminality of the fact at a tumultuous press conference with a kind of stunned disbelieving bemusement.

 

But now, even that, even the shocking career-ending injury seemed like just another biographical quirk, just another strange baseball-history anecdote or footnote, because Ricky was dead, dying in a head-on just two months ago after a charity event in Atlantic City, having stopped off at Barnegat Light on the way home to Morristown, to stare at the ocean, which had always given him a sense of inexplicable serenity, before getting himself smacked by some forty-year-old unemployed drunk driver (0.33 blood/alcohol level) on Long Beach Boulevard.

And so we enter the mystery of Ricky’s career and death. 

⁂

“Wintry Peacock” by D. H. Lawrence.  (G)

While on a walk in the country, the male unnamed narrator is stopped by a farm woman who wants him to translate a letter written in French.  The letter is addressed to her husband who has been in France for the World War, is expected home that evening.  The narrator reads the letter and realizes it’s from a young Belgian woman who the husband got pregnant.  Meanwhile the woman‘s relationship to the farm peacock puts in perspective the triangular relationship the narrator is faced with.  The next day the narrator happens back on the farm and meets the husband.  It almost ranked excellent but the characters are all unlikable and it seems to end on a malicious note.  You can read the story online here: and listen to it being read here on YouTube:   

 

Here is an excerpt where the farm woman gives the passing narrator the letter to translate.

'It's a letter to my husband,' she said, still scrutinizing.

 

I looked at her, and didn't quite realize. She looked too far into me, my wits were gone. She glanced round. Then she looked at me shrewdly. She drew a letter from her pocket, and handed it to me. It was addressed from France to Lance-Corporal Goyte, at Tible. I took out the letter and began to read it, as mere words. 'Mon cher Alfred'--it might have been a bit of a torn newspaper. So I followed the script: the trite phrases of a letter from a French-speaking girl to an English soldier. 'I think of you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?' And then I vaguely realized that I was reading a man's private correspondence. And yet, how could one consider these trivial, facile French phrases private! Nothing more trite and vulgar in the world, than such a love-letter--no newspaper more obvious.

 

Therefore I read with a callous heart the effusions of the Belgian damsel. But then I gathered my attention. For the letter went on, 'Notre cher petit bebe--our dear little baby was born a week ago. Almost I died, knowing you were far away, and perhaps forgetting the fruit of our perfect love. But the child comforted me. He has the smiling eyes and virile air of his English father. I pray to the Mother of Jesus to send me the dear father of my child, that I may see him with my child in his arms, and that we may be united in holy family love. Ah, my Alfred, can I tell you how I miss you, how I weep for you. My thoughts are with you always, I think of nothing but you, I live for nothing but you and our dear baby. If you do not come back to me soon, I shall die, and our child will die. But no, you cannot come back to me. But I can come to you, come to England with our child. If you do not wish to present me to your good mother and father, you can meet me in some town, some city, for I shall be so frightened to be alone in England with my child, and no one to take care of us. Yet I must come to you, I must bring my child, my little Alfred to his father, the big, beautiful Alfred that I love so much. Oh, write and tell me where I shall come. I have some money, I am not a penniless creature. I have money for myself and my dear baby--'

 

I read to the end. It was signed: 'Your very happy and still more unhappy Elise.' I suppose I must have been smiling.

 

'I can see it makes you laugh,' said Mrs. Goyte, sardonically. I looked up at her.

 

'It's a love-letter, I know that,' she said. 'There's too many "Alfreds" in it.'

 

'One too many,' I said.

 

'Oh, yes--And what does she say--Eliza? We know her name's Eliza, that's another thing.' She grimaced a little, looking up at me with a mocking laugh.

 

The success of this story hinges on the psychological depth of the farm woman, Mrs. Goyte.  It’s symbolically drawn through her relationship with the peacock, 

⁂

“The Manager of ‘The Kremlin’” by Evelyn Waugh.  (G)

Boris, the manager of a Russian restaurant, tells the narrator his story of how he came to manage “The Kremlin,” a restaurant in Paris.  He had opposed the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, fighting alongside a Frenchman. Having made his way to America and then to Paris with almost no money, he decides to spend all that he had on one expensive lunch.  There he reconnects with the Frenchman who then gives him the opportunity to manage a restaurant.  But it is the loss of his country that so effects Boris.  Well written as everything by Waugh but seems to be missing more depth.

The English newspaper The Guardian ranked it as having one of the top ten memorable meal scenes in literature and they give it a one paragraph synopsis here.  

You can hear the story read here.  

Here is that memorable meal scene and the afterwards.

 

He ate fresh caviar and ortolansan porto and crepes suzettes; he drank a bottle of vintage claret and a glass of very fine champagne, and he examined several boxes of cigars before he found one in perfect condition. 

 

When he had finished, he asked for his bill.  It was 260 francs.  He gave the waiter a tip of 26 francs and 4 francs to the man at the door who had his hat and kitbag.  His taxi cost 7 francs. 

 

Half a minute later he stood on the kerb with exactly 3 francs in the world.  But it had been a magnificent lunch, and he did not regret it.

 

As he stood there, meditating what he could do, his arm was suddenly taken from behind, and turning he saw a smartly dressed Frenchman, who had evidently just left the restaurant.  It was his friend the military attaché. 

 

“I was sitting at the table behind you,” he said.  “You never noticed me, you were so intent on your food.”

 

“It is probably my last meal for some time,” Boris explained, and his friend laughed at what he took to be a joke.

 

They walked up the street together, talking rapidly.  The Frenchman described how he had left the army when his time of service was up, and was now a director of a prosperous motor business.

 

“And you, too,” he said.  “I am delighted to see that you also have been doing well.”

 

“Doing well?  At the moment I have exactly three francs in the world.”

 

“My dear fellow, people with three francs in the world do not eat caviare at Larne.”

 

Then for the first time he noticed Boris’s frayed clothes.  He had only known him in a war-worn uniform and it seemed natural at first to find him dressed as he was.

A story first and foremost has to be a story, not a hum drum recapitulation of mundane events.  A man spends everything he has on one meal and leaves the future to Providence.  Now that’s a story.

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“A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street” by Maeve Brennan. (G)

A woman, a stand-in for the author, sits at her usual restaurant in midtown Manhattan for dinner and comradery as shy typically does.  On this night there is a snow storm, so the attendance is less and those that are there have a particular isolation.  Through the woman’s point of view we dwell on the other character’s actions.  Of the characters, the most central are an elderly lady, Mrs. Dolan, who seems to have an attraction for a French business man named Michel, who doesn’t really return the interest.  The movement of the story is toward greater isolation despite the attempts to connect with others.  Though this story captures the scene and characters well, and has an evocative tone, it ends without any real conclusion.  But a good story.

If you have a subscription to the New Yorker you can read the short story online here. 

Since this story has a very biographical seed, you can read about Maeve Brennan here.  Brennan was a long time contributor to the New Yorker magazine, one of the most finely polished of literary magazines.  She was known there as “The Long-Winded Lady,” and you can read about her tenure and work, the seeds of this story, and her life in this essay, “New introduction to Maeve Brennan’s‘The Long-Winded Lady’. 

Here’s a snippet of Betty who is new to New York City and new to snow coming in to the restaurant later than the rest.

 

“Where’s everybody?” she cried.  “Where’s Mees Katie?”  She sat up at the bar and Leo poured a Perrier for her.

 

“I’m celebrating, Leo,: she said.  “This is my first snowstorm.  The office let us off at three o’clock, and I walked round and round and round, all by myself, celebrating all by myself, and then I went home and made dinner, but I got so excited thinking about the snow I just had to come out again and thought I come here and see Mees Katie.  I thought there’d be thousands of people here.  Oh, I wish it would snow for weeks and weeks.  I just can’t bare for it to end.  But after today I’m beginning to think New Yorkers never really enjoy themselves.  Nobody seemed to be enjoying the snow.  I never saw such people.  All they could think about was getting home.  Wouldn’t you think a storm like this would wake everybody up?  But all it does is put them to sleep.  Such people.”

 

“It does not put me to sleep, Betty,” Leo said in his deliberate way.

 

“I wish it would snow for a year,” Betty said.

 

It will take something warmer than a snowstorm to put me to sleep, Betty,” Leo said.

 

Betty laughed self-consciously and looked at Mrs. Dolan.

 

“Michel is a bad boy tonight, Betty,” Leo said, and he also looked at Mrs. Dolan.  “He told this lady he’d be back in ten minutes and it has been twenty.”

 

“Nearly half and hour,” Mrs. Dolan said disgustedly.  “Nearly half an hour.”

 

“He’ll be back,” Betty said.  “Michel always comes back, doesn’t he Leo?”

You get the sense.  It’s mostly a mood piece that captures a time and place.

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“The Unrest-Cure” by Saki (H.H. Munro).  (G)

J.P. Huddle, an aristocratic Edwardian man of such fixed routine, tells his friend while on a train that he has reached a point in his life that he gets immensely irritated when something doesn’t follow regularity.  His friend suggests that Huddle go on an “unrest-cure,” the opposite of a resting convalescence.  Over hearing is Clovis, an impish, reoccurring character in several of Saki’s stories, who then sets out to liven Huddle’s life by contriving a spoof plot to bring about a holocaust right in Huddle’s house.  Huddle is certainly shaken out of his daily practice.  He typifies the upper class of Edwardian times.  The story is great play but it seems to lose transcendence in the extended carrying out of the narrative.  Still a sharp and concise story as typical of Saki.

You can read the story here, read a short summary in Wikipedia under Saki’s entry here, and listen to it being read on YouTube.

Here is Huddle describing his rut and his friend proposing the “unrest-cure.”

 

"I don't know how it is," he told his friend, "I'm not much over forty, but I seem to have settled down into a deep groove of elderly middle-age. My sister shows the same tendency. We like everything to be exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly, punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute. It distresses and upsets us if it is not so. For instance, to take a very trifling matter, a thrush has built its nest year after year in the catkin-tree on the lawn; this year, for no obvious reason, it is building in the ivy on the garden wall. We have said very little about it, but I think we both feel that the change is unnecessary, and just a little irritating."

 

"Perhaps," said the friend, "it is a different thrush."

 

"We have suspected that," said J. P. Huddle, "and I think it gives us even more cause for annoyance. We don't feel that we want a change of thrush at our time of life; and yet, as I have said, we have scarcely reached an age when these things should make themselves seriously felt."

 

"What you want," said the friend, "is an Unrest-cure."

 

"An Unrest-cure? I've never heard of such a thing."

 

"You've heard of Rest-cures for people who've broken down under stress of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite kind of treatment."

Huddle is quite a character.  Saki is excellent at delineating idiosyncratic characters in the shortest space. 

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“The Curse” by Andre Dubus. (G)

Mitchell, a middle-aged bartender, witnesses the gang rape of a young lady by five drugged up bikers at his bar just before closing.  He had tried to call the police while it was happening but he was restrained.  That evening and into the next day he feels nothing but shame at his inability to stop the situation.  The curse he feels upon him is the memory of the young lady’s screams.  The story captures the situation and the working class characters well, but seems to lack anything transcendent beyond Mitch’s emotions.

Here is the aftermath of the rape, but first a flashback to just prior.

 

Then the door opened and the girl walked in from the night, a girl he had never seen, and she crossed the floor toward Mitchell. He stepped forward to tell her she had missed last call, but before he spoke she asked for change for the cigarette machine. She was young, he guessed nineteen to twenty-one, and deeply tanned and had dark hair. She was sober and wore jeans and a dark blue tee shirt. He gave her the quarters but she was standing between two of the men and she did not get to the machine.

 

When it was over and she lay crying on the cleared circle of floor, he left the bar and picked up the jeans and tee shirt beside her and crouched and handed them to her. She did not look at him. She lay the clothes across her breasts and what Mitchell thought of now as her wound. He left her and dialed 911, then Bob’s number. He woke up Bob. Then he picked up her sneakers from the floor and placed them beside her and squatted near her face, her crying. He wanted to speak to her and touch her, hold a hand or press her brow, but he could not.

 

The emotionless sentences fills the scene with tension. 

⁂

“Shower of Gold” by Eudora Welty. (G)

The story of Snowdie, an albino woman in a small town in Mississippi, first birthing and then raising a pair of twin boys alone because her wayward husband, King MacLain, has left her.  Then he returns to only abandon her again.  Her story is told through the gossipy, southern dialect of the narrator, Katie Rainy, Snowdie’s neighbor.  The key to this story is realizing it’s a gossip’s tale.  The story ends without a strong denouement, which unfortunately lowers its rating.  Perhaps that is unfair since this story is part of an interlocking series of stories about the fictional town of Morgana, Mississippi, collected as The Golden Apples. 

 

You can read about The Golden Apples collection in its Wikipedia entry here. You can also read summaries of Welty's collected stories here and about the various characters in the story collection here .

Here is Katie Rainy describing a pregnant Snowdie after her husband left her.

Snowdie kept just as bright and brave, she didn’t seem to give in.  She must have had her thoughts and they must have been one of two things.  One that he was dead—then why did her face have that glow?  It had a glow—and the other that he left her and meant it.  And like people said, if she smiled then, she was clear out of reach.  I didn’t know if I liked the glow.  Why didn’t she rage and storm a little—to me, anyway, just Mrs. Rainy?  The Hudsons all hold themselves in.  But it didn’t seem to me, running in and out the way I was, that Snowdie had ever got a real good look at life, maybe.  Maybe from the beginning.  Maybe she just doesn’t know the extent.  Not the kind of look I got, and away back when I was twelve year old or so.  Like something was put to my eye.

 

She just went on keeping house, and getting fairly big with what I told you already was twins, and she seemed to settle into her content.  Like a little white kitty in a basket, making you wonder if she just mightn’t put up her paw and scratch, if anything was, after all, to come near.  At her house it was like Sunday even in the mornings, every day, in that cleaned-up way.  She was taking a joy in her fresh untracked rooms and that dark, quiet, real quiet hall that runs through her house.  And I love Snowdie.  I love her.

 

Except none of us felt very close to her all the while.  I’ll tell you what it was, what made her different.  It was not waiting any more, except where the babies waited, and that’s not but one story.  We were mad at her and protecting her all at once, when we couldn’t be close to her.

 

Wow, that is a fantastic description and fantastic monologue.  Welty is an amazing story teller. 

 

The four “Excellent” rated stories will have their own post where I will disclose the winner for this year.  Stay tuned.

The Mystery of the Magi By Dwight Longenecker, Post #3

This is the third post of a series on Dwight Longenecker’s The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  You can read Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here. 

 

Summary

Chapter 3: “Fantastic Flights of Fantasy”

There is clearly a disconnect between the folk understanding of the Magi story and what is actually told in the Gospel of Matthew.  How did this come about?  Longenecker shows how the historical kernel found in the Gospel became legend and then myth through elaborations from (1) the Protoevangelium of James, (2) Clement of Alexandria’s linking the Magi to Persia, (3) the third century “The Legend of Aphroditianus,” (4) Gnostic writers associating the Magi as masters of hidden knowledge, (5) the stories and legends of the Magi created during the Middle Ages, and (6) the modern times iconic representations of Romanticized men of different races who came from the remote parts of the world.  And so we have the myth of three kings from different continents of various ages named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar who followed a magical star to bring gifts to the new born king of Israel.

Chapter 4: “Sages and Stargazers”

It was widely assumed that the Magi were from Persia.  What Matthew tells us is that they only came from the East.  Longenecker provides a history of the Middle Eastern civilizations to Christ and then also describes the evolution of a priest category of pagans that were called Magi within this Middle Eastern history.  Ultimately the Magi became part of the Zoroastrian culture and religion within Persia.  Steadily within the Persian royal court the Magi for various reasons declined in power and influence until Alexander the Great conquered Persia and the Magi were dispersed throughout the Middle East.  Eventually the Parthians took control of what was once Persia, which led to the dissolution of the Magi as having any power or wealth by the time of Christ.  And so Longenecker reaches the conclusion it is unlikely the Persian Magi were the visitors to Christ.

Chapter 5: “The Riddle of the Nabateans”

Longenecker gives a history of the Nabatean Kingdom and the nature of its people, fiercely independent and masters of trade on which they became extremely wealthy.  The Nabatean Kingdom ranged east of Israel on the Arabian Peninsula.  Originally nomadic traders in the sixth century BC, they settled around what is today city of Petra.  They had established trade routes across the Arabian Desert.  Longenecker identifies the pre-history of the Nabateans to the Edomites, an Arabean nomadic tribe that descended from the Biblical Abraham. 

When Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, Jews dispersed throughout the Arabian peninsula.  Because of the similarity between Judaism and the Nabatean religion, the two cultures intertwined and came to have mutual interests.

Chapter 6: “The Middle Eastern Melting Pot”

The gist of this chapter is in answering the question of why would the Magi, even if they had knowledge of a Jewish king being born in Bethlehem, why would they undergo a long journey to find him?  The answer is in that the Nabateans had cultural connections to Judaism.  Longenecker identifies King Nobonidus of the sixth century BC as having a special relationship with the Jews.  The Nabotean connection with Matthew’s Magi are important for several reasons.  (1) The Nabotean Kingdom and Judah were bordering nations.  (2) Large numbers of Jewish immigrants had integrated into the Nabotean Kingdom.  (3) The Nabotean Magi as religious figures had adopted religious elements from Judaism, and so had a religious motivation to knowing the divinely born king of the Jews. 

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My Comment:

Fascinating. I had no idea about some of these cultures east of Judea. My history of that time and place is very limited.

Joseph’s Reply:

When I went to the Holy Land we visited Petra and so I learned a little about the Nabateans that way, but the ins and outs of contemporary Parthian politics are something that I didn't have familiarity with. The most I remember learning directly was that the first triumvirate started to fall apart when Crassus lost a major battle to the Parthians somewhere in the Syrian desert, but that was a solid 50 years before the Magi.

Casey’s Comment:

I'm only through chapter 4 but what is striking to me, is how much information is encoded in our stories. In modernity, we dismiss a story as fiction because we are not well trained to decode.

 

Take a single word like Dog. A dog is made up of skeleton, muscle, fur, skin, teeth, eyes, etc. But an eye is also made up of composite parts... which are made up of composite parts... Now we don't say the idea of Dog is fiction. (Well some do, but not normal people) Dog is the reality - the meaning - of those assembled parts.

 

Stories, particularly fairy tales, folk tales, legends, are like that. Over time, thousands of bits of information get encoded and zipped into this story file that our brains can hold and process and transmit to others. It isn't whether the story is true or not but rather that the story is a container for truth. We all need to get better at being able to open that container and decode the contents, I think.

 

Although the book isn't presented as such, this is exactly what it is showing us.

My Reply to Joseph:

You know, I know the Crassus story very well but I never distinguished the civilization he was up against. I knew it was from East of the Arabian peninsula in what was in the lands of Persia. Even though I probably read Parthians, my mind conflated them with the Persians. I didn't realize until now they were two separate cultures, even though they came from the same territory.

My Reply to Casey:

I like the word encoded when it comes to the Bible, especially the New Testament. Because it comes after the Old Testament, the NT has so much integrated from its predecessor. In lterary terms, it would be called allusions. Certain words or phrases or actions allude to elsewhere so that one is reading with so much in mind simultaneously.

 

The perfect example are the Marian doctrines. I just finishing reading Brad Pitre's Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah. We all know the Marian doctrines but the rationale for them are difficult to see when just reading the NT in isolation. But they are all there, encoded, as you use the term, and perhaps I would say alluded to by careful word and phrase choice. What a great book that Pitre book is. I thought I knew all the rationales for the Marian doctrines, but I was shocked to see how much more there was. It would be wonderful and eye opening if we could read this book in the book club one day.

Casey’s Reply:

Think about when a grandfather tells his grandson a story and then many years later that grandson becomes a grandfather and tells that same story. Of course, he won't remember that childhood story word for word. Rather, he captures the essence of the story in the details he chooses. Some of those details would be the childhood impressions of the unspoken delivery of his own grandfather, which now become verbally expressed. This occurs generation after generation. Each generation recognizes it as the same story but the literal story itself keeps evolving until it is written and formalized.

 

To unpack every story would require a book like this one. But I believe if one learns to be tuned into a story, you can absorb the truth of it even if you can't articulate it. Something more obviously experienced when reading poetry for example.

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When driving home yesterday afternoon from shopping, I had Relevant Radio, a Catholic radio channel around the country, on my radio and on the Drew Moriani show he had Fr. Dwight Longenecker on to discuss his Magi book.  It was a twenty-ish minute conversation, and while he didn’t say anything that was not in the book, it was still a blessing to listen to it.  Now that all radio shows get turned into podcasts, you can access the show and listen for yourself.  So the Relevant Radio podcasts get broken into hour long units.  Fr. Longenecker’s portion was the first half of the hour.  The second half was a discussion about the guiding star with Fr. Chris Corbally, a priest astronomer.  That was interesting and is worth listening to.  Here is the link to the “Hour 3 of The Drew Mariani Show 12-22-21.”

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Summary

Chapter 7, “Prophesies or Predictions”

Here Longenecker explores whether the Magi visit to the Christ child are a fulfillment of an Ol Testament prophesy, as many events in Matthew’s Gospel.  First Longenecker provides distinguishing criteria between a prophesy—a supernatural glimpse into the future—and a prediction—a logical forecast based on common sense.  Longenecker address the prophesy and/or predictions of Balaam (Nu 24:17), the Wisdom tradition, the various chapters of the Book of Isaiah, and from texts from the Dead Sea scrolls.  Longenecker concludes that the Nabatean wise men must have been familiar with some of these prophesies.  

Chapter 8, “The Herod Connection”

Here Longenecker explores the context of Herod the Great to the Magi story.  First Longenecker provides the background as to how the Nabateans evolved from a nomadic culture to a settled civilization, tracing the melting pot of northern Arabian cultures in the sixth century BC.  By the first century BC, the Middle East was wrought with rival monarchies and civil wars.  The Hasmonean dynasty came to rule Judea as a sort of client king under the Rome.  Herod’s family traces roots to several of the northern Arabian cultures, and his mother was a Nabatean princess married to the neighboring ruler of Judea, Herod’s father Antipater.  Herod even spent a good deal of time raised at the Nabatean court when Antipater sent his wife and children to his wife’s family when a rival was looking to unseat Antipater.  Herod eventually took over as king of Judea through shrewd maneuverings between the Roman and Nabatean rivalry.  By the time of Jesus’ birth, the Nabateans were seeking the good graces of Herod and had every reason to send envoys to the King of Judea. 

Chapter 9, “The Three Treasures”

Here Longenecker provides the context and significance of the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh given to the Christ child.  First Longenecker de-mythicizes the theological significance of gold for Christ’s kingship, frankincense for Christ’s priesthood, and myrrh for Christ’s sacrificial death.  While the three gifts carry such symbolism, it is more likely that they were selected because they were precious commodities found mostly in the Nabatean kingdom.  Longenecker also spends some space explaining the use of camels and the significance of homage and worship the Magi gave to the new born king.

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My Comment:

I think Fr. Longenecker has done a great job in researching all this and drawing very logical conclusions.

Casey Replied:

I find the argument compelling. I would be very interested to read some friendly counter-arguments. I wonder why these ideas aren't more commonplace.

My Reply to Casey:

I agree Casey. I think what Longenecker proposes is very likely. If you find any counter arguments, please post them here.

Casey Replied:

Well I guess the thing is that everyone just sweeps it away so I don't see any counter-arguments. In this interview, Fr. Longnecker himself admits he was surprised to find nobody had written this story prior to him. "Who were the Three Wise Men? A priest’s quest for the truth – Catholic World Report" https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/11/20/who-were-the-three-wise-men-a-priests-quest-for-the-truth/ Seems like a very basic, obvious, literal interpretation and nobody seems to have looked into it at all. Odd for a story that is so prominent in our imaginations.

My Reply to Casey:

Yes, it’s strange. It does require quite a bit of knowledge about the ancient world outside the Roman Empire. It’s probably not something a western scholar would delve to deeply. I had never heard of the Nabateans before. I think most took the easy answer and decided the Magi were Persian. The countries and cultures east of the Roman Empire are all a blur to most. Let’s be grateful for Longenecker’s investigation and conclusions.

Kerstin Commented on My Summary:

Manny wrote: "Here Longenecker provides the context and significance of the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh given to the Christ child. First Longenecker de-mythicizes the theological significance of gold for Christ’s kingship, frankincense for Christ’s priesthood, and myrrh for Christ’s sacrificial death. While the three gifts carry such symbolism, it is more likely that they were selected because they were precious commodities found mostly in the Nabatean kingdom."

It is rather interesting. Though I would say we shouldn't overlook that this is one of these both/and situations. The commercial significance of the gifts became the theological and symbolic gifts once they came in contact with Christ.

My Reply to Kerstin:

I agree. The same thought came to me as I read it. I suspect Fr. Longenecker would agree too.