Rockaway Beach

This speaks (er, sings) for itself. Utterly faithful to the spirit of the original.

Pleased to meet Fulton J. Sheen

Janel Rodriguez has done Catholics under the age of 50 a huge favor with her biography Meet Fulton Sheen. She relies on Sheen's autobiography Treasure in Clay as the source for most of her work. Very readable and enjoyable, Rodriguez's book follows Sheen's life and development as both a canny media personality and, more importantly, as an extremely devout bishop who in some ways is a precursor to Pope John Paul II's communicative and telegenic piety. Rodriguez's prose is unobtrusive; she never gets in the way of what proves to be a fascinating story filled with colorful incident. If you are unfamiliar with Bishop Sheen, do yourself a favor and get this book.

My Scrofulous French novel

Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles is a French novel which features two burned out victims of sexual liberation in the 60's: Bruno, who suffers through a humilating youth mired in excrement and spends his life eternally pursuing his next orgasm through degrading sexual acts, and Michel, the detached scientist who has difficulty maintaining normal human contact or expressing any tenderness or love and who can only find some semblance of fulfillment in the elevated life of the mind. The main difficulty is that it's a bit repetitive and not as amusing as it would like to be. Although the vast bulk of the novel could be taken as a social conservative manifesto, the conclusion of the novel, involving a technological redemption of human nature, is difficult to know how to read. Is it a brief for transhumanism out of burned out Dionysian hippie excess, or is the resolution intended ironically? Most importantly, why should I care? If it's ironic, it's neither funny nor perceptive enough to retain my interest. The only motivation to read through to the end is to find out the promised resolution/breakthrough in both the plot and Michel's scientific endeavors. When it turns out to hinge on warmed over ideas from Ray Kurzweil, Julian Huxley, and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, I'm left cold.

Moby-Dick

This is one tough novel: big, confusing. It leaves you wanting to re-read it

If you wanted to know the difference in structure (as opposed to scale) between a short story and a novel, Moby-Dick (or, The Whale) is probably the as good an exemplar one would find of the novel form. Where a short story focuses on a single event, action, or mood, a novel tends to take the air a bit more -- perambulate, follow its own muse, wander. And wander Moby Dick does. It goes and goes and goes. Melville wrote that he had written a wicked novel. I wonder if that is perceptible to a 21st century sensibility. He strolls through various modernisms: Calvinism, pantheism, Kantianism, indifferentism, relativism, pessimism. Ahab -- what to make of him: sacrilegious, demonic, monomaniac, striving. A shadow of Christian belief, no longer sufficiently vital to bring salvation, but more than adequate to reinforce notions of depravity and condemnation, hangs over the novel.

Also, Moby-Dick will give you a new appreciation for Star Trek. The episodic nature of the novel makes possible a bunch of self-contained mini-plots, each of which could be spun into its own little story. There's the encounter with a ship that has been taken over by a charismatic preacher and his converted followers. There's a ship in search of an abandoned crew, and one that is filled with bon vivants, appropriately named The Bachelor.

There's undoubtedly a lot I've missed. Like a whale, this novel's soul is submerged most of the time, only occasionally spouting or breeching to reveal awesome and fearful sights.

From the guys who brought you "McCourt's in Session"

Not getting to De Botton of things

Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy is a chatty collection of six essays on selected thinkers from Socrates to Nietsche. Unfortunately, de Botton favors cartoons over examinations of text. His Socrates is reduced to simply a man who bucks conventional wisdom -- a kind of Athenian whistleblower. We could picture him arguing in the city council about heavy metals in the local water supply, whereas in reality he was much more radical. The actual ideas that he championed (e.g., the Good) languish unexamined. Similarly, Nietzsche becomes a kind of drill instructor or personal trainer, doggedly barking motivational truisms like "No pain, no gain."

De Botton's choices of philosophers (the others are Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, and Schopenhauer) indicates a preference for pessimism and materialism, a kind of flinty cynicism that sees itself as practical. Don't read this expecting even modest rigor or reflection. There's no dialectic here. His breezy style and penchant for cute illustration (yes, the chapter on Nietzsche does include an illustration of DC Comics's Superman) keep things moving, but at the end there's not much meat on these bones. De Botton is an affable, diverting, but ultimately unsatisfying conversationalist.

Hey Ya, Charlie Brown!

Connie Chung, chanteuse

Unreal. I assume that this was supposed to go through a bit of post-production surgery, but this is precious.

VOA News - US Military Statement on Zarqawi's Death

VOA News - US Military Statement on Zarqawi's Death: "'Coalition forces killed al-Qaida [in Iraq] terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual adviser Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7th, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house,' said U.S. General George Casey."

Where's Penn?

Reading Moby-Dick: or, The Whale. What a treat! Really. Discursive, rambling, and sprawling, yes, but still a treat. I'm only halfway through. Monomania, messianic fixations, philosophic ramblings, the thing-in-itself, despair, pedantic treatises and taxonomic catalogs of the natural and nautical worlds -- it's something to sink your teeth into.

Shatner, flying in his taxi, takin' tips, and gettin' stoned

More Shatner on a Saturday morning:

The DiCaprio Code

Sent to me by a friend, the first paragraph from Dan Brown's next novel:

Prologue

Planet Hollywood
Los Angeles, CA
11:49 PM

Award-winning restauranteur and entreprenurial franchise owner Franky Poisson stumbled over a cardboard cutout of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, posed under a title reading "Twins." He lunged for the nearest memoribilia-housing glass case he could find - a tall rectangular column showcasing the old woman's shawl from Titanic. Brandishing an elbow, the sixty-year old Frenchman shattered the glass and - being rather not un-sedentary - collapsed to the floor in gasping breaths.

I await the rest with bated breath.

Wrong Guy, just Being There at the Beeb

Too many Guys:

Instead of interviewing Guy Kewney, pundit of Newswireless.net, on the legal battle between Apple Corp. (of Beatles fame) and Apple Computer (of iPod and Mac fame) over the latter's use of the "Apple" mark in selling music through iTunes, the BBC managed to interview Guy Goma, a Congolese gentleman looking for a job at the BBC. Goma, thinking the media interview was somehow part of the job selection process, managed to pass himself off reasonably well as a pundit. He's really on top of his game with this quote: "Exactly. You can go everywhere in a cybercafe. It's going to be very easy for everyone to get something on the Internet." You'd think this only happened in Jerzy Kosinski novels.

Everything old is new again?

Where have we seen this before?

The Canadian and Australian prime ministers expressed concern at unconfirmed reports that said Iran may force non-Muslims to wear colored badges in public so they can be identified.

The National Post newspaper reported Friday, citing human rights groups, that Iran's parliament passed a law this week that sets a public dress code and requires non-Muslims to wear a special insignia.

"Don't be stupid, /
be a schmarty, /
come join the Islamist party!"

Update: Malkin asks, "Is this true?" Stay tuned.

Update 5/24/2006: National Post retracts the story.

Da Vinci, die Bombe

Submitted for your approval: the startling truth about the Da Vinci Code, and Hanks's hair. Seek the Truth.
Minor quibble -- the book did NOT rock. The preview actually looks faithful to it.

The philosophy of every Tom, Jacques, and Ari

Last November Sheed and Ward reprinted Jacques Maritain's An Introduction to Philosophy. This primer, which Maritain first published in 1931, is a bit different from standard introductions to philosophical thought such as Will Durant's Story of Philosophy, Bryan Magee's Story of Philosophy, or Frederick Coppleston's exhaustive multivolume History of Philosophy.

To start with, Maritain is a Thomist, following in the intellectual traditions of St. Thomas Aquinas, who in turn draws upon Aristotle. Maritain's approach in this book is to first trace this history of philosophy up to Aristotle. For this, he posits primitive traditions, discernable from both theology and a reasonable induction from historical evidence, which contain wisdom that is common to all mankind globally. He seeks remnants of these traditions in pre-Greek Indo-European civilizations: Persian, Indian, and Chinese. After surveying these, he proceeds to Greek thought: the pre-Socratics, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and finally Aristotle. Maritain sees the ancient Persian, Indian, Chinese, and pre-Socratic Greeks as derived from healthy primitive traditions (although in corrupted form). The work of philosophy, in part, is to recover the ancient wisdom and ground it in a system of reason and dialectic.

Upon stating in brief form what he sees as Aristotle's achievements are, Maritain changes his method. He does not follow, as most historical texts would, with a discussion of late antiquity and modern philosophers. For example, do not get a sketch of Descartes in historical context. Rather, Maritain discusses the structure of philosophy as a body of knowledge. That structure is itself determined by Thomist philosophy. Maritain discusses the boundaries of philosophy -- how it is distinct from the empirical sciences, for example, and how it relates to them. He contrasts the Thomist view on philosophy with alternatives in modernity. He then gives an account of the fields of philosophy:

1. Logic (a sort of preamble to philosophy proper)
2. Theoretical philosophy (speculative, related to understanding of the world)
   
1. Philosophy of mathematics and nature
2. Epistemology
3. Ontology and metaphysics
4. Natural theology
3. Practical philosophy (related to human action)
1. Philosophy of art and technology
2. Ethics

Walking through these fields (philosophical categories which themselves follow from his Thomism), Maritain points out both the Thomist and Aristotelian positions, and the modernist positions, which are usually contradictory extremes which the Aristotelian mean reconciles.

It's a very rigorous and systematic book with a good deal of common sense. It explains a lot of Thomism in a very detailed way and makes an excellent reference for those looking to understand this point of view. Thomism can be a bit dry. Maritain goes a long way to guiding the reader to see motivations and connections. For example, one can struggle Aristotle for years and not find as clear an explication of metaphysical terms such as essence (being inasmuch as it can be understood), substance (being inasmuch as it primarily is), and act and potentiality (being inasmuch as it is the subject of change and motion). For anyone interested in Thomism, this book is a find.

Making Sense Out of Suffering

Peter Kreeft wrote a book twenty years ago that I've just gotten around to reading. I wish I had read it twenty years ago.

Kreeft is a philosophy professor at Boston College, and his book Making Sense Out of Suffering is a look at the implications of suffering in philosophy and theology. His audience is the skeptic, the person of uncertain beliefs and convictions who is tossed about in this world of sorrow and pain and is struggling to find some way to understand existence in light of that raw fact.

One thing that I really enjoyed about his book was his attention to various traditions and schools of thought. He starts with this observation:

By the time you finish reading this book, ten thousand children will starve, four thousand will be brutally beaten by their parents, and one thousand will be raped.

If you took a poll asking who the profoundest thinker of all time was, the man who would probably come out second, after Jesus, is Buddha. Buddha's entire philosophy centers around his answer to the problem of suffering. How can we not hear him out?

Gotama Buddha's voice is only the first of many which we must hear out. If we follow Kant's suggestion that the great questions revolve around God, the world, and the soul, then the question of suffering becomes a question of the existence of a supreme being and its relationship to the human world. The difficulty of suffering, for belief is that we are asked to accept the following:

1. God exists.
2. God is all-powerful.
3. God is all-good.
4. Evil exists.
   

How can this be?

Kreeft summarizes the possible alternate theologies, which differ on these points, either bluntly or subtly. For examine, the atheist may deny that God exists. Or one may more subtly say that God exists, but only as a psychological concept, thereby draining Him of real force and existence. All of these alternate answers have implications for the meaning of human suffering.

Kreeft's goal on the other hand, is to affirm Christian belief and answer a resounding "yes" to all these questions. The task then becomes making Christian belief intellectually credible and defensible. His technique is interesting -- rather than argue from cohesive deductive principles, Kreeft takes successive passes at the problem and allows answers and ideas to emerge suggestively, tentatively, rather than authoritatively and dogmatically.

MySpace for Catholics

BusinessWeek profiles a nun who is launching a second Web site for Vatican, in addition to http://www.vatican.va.

It will be interesting to see how this works. One concern is possible attacks and attempts to deface the site, but at this point a lot of the techniques for dealing with that seem to be in place to mitigate the possible damage (cf., Wikipedia).

History of Catholic Oppression, Headbanger Edition

A friend sends along this article on the tritone, the flatted fifth or augmented fourth in musical intervals. Fun piece, but has the usual historical ignorance about things medieval in the summary:

A new film about the history of heavy metal highlights the so-called Devil's Interval, a musical phenomenon suppressed by the Church in the Middle Ages.

No reference is provided, so it's impossible to tell what is being referred to. Color me skeptical about this. It's unlikely that people were tortured for compositions that used tritones.

I recall studying rules for voicing four part harmonies, and parallel fifths and octaves were "against the rules." It would be disingenuous to write that "music theory teachers suppressed parallel fifths in the twentieth century." In fact, the article itself notes that this interval (which is quite dissonant) was used "in presenting the devil [o]r . . . to portray the crucifixion."

But, for the record, I dig tritones. "Purple Haze" may be the definitive rock tritone intro. King Crimson also made a career out of the tritone. And you have to dig the name "Professor John Deathridge." Makes you want to be in a metal band with him (he has to skip the first name).

Passion is no ordinary word

David Scott is interested in Catholicism as made vividly manifest by artists, poets, and saints. In The Catholic Passion, he seeks to get to the romantic, dramatic, visionary, vibrant core of Catholicism, in all its cultural manifestations. It's a rewarding and rewarded effort.

This book takes as its starting point Chesterton's assertion that the most perilous and exciting path is not heresy but Christian orthodoxy. Scott is not interested in detailing doctrine and dogma, but in dramatizing and fleshing out the faith as it is embodied and lived out in the Church. Scott tells stories of people such as Blessed Charles de Foucauld, Dorothy Day, Francis Thompson, Eugene O'Neill, and St. Catherine of Genoa. Certainly not all are saints -- some are not even believers. But all stories lead the reader to an intimation of what it is that draws so many of us to the Church.

The "passion" of the title is a word that evokes romance, suffering, and engagement. Scott shows us how this passion is a part of life as lived, with a voice that is committed and honest. His words give us not a set of catechetical propositions, but a body, a corpus of Catholicism that is set before the eye of the reader. If you get a chance, pick it up -- it's an excellent, enjoyable, nourishing read.