Long awaited, first impressions: The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman

First, a few notes from the open Yale course on Milton: Anglican church politics and Protestant work ethic, contractual and economic language in the light of Milton’s poetics of power, his reception and critical prominence in the canon a tool of repression and of liberation (Woolf) -

Then, How much of this, how closely does this bear on  Pullman’s treatment of the great writer, his (Pullman's) conception of himself as a story-teller rather than a poet, a workman rather than divinely-inspired maker?

The whole topic of free speech and prophecy - can prophecy be free speech? - authority based on sentiment, on experience, rather than on coercive power. The infant (lit. 'not-speaking') depending on others, the nuns and the inn mirroring one another across the river--the flood foretold and prepared for which blurs the distinctions and suddenly pushes the plot into precipitate action. Profanity and corruption walking on three legs, but otherwise appearing friendly. The acorn with Bible-thin paper wrapped inside, the aura or aurora associate with Lyra’s name, the clockwise/ counter- imagery connected with problem-solving and seeing the world in a new way. The wretched league dedicated to betrayal of friends and family and subversion of the educational purpose of school. These characters who disappear - Mr Boatwright from the inn, Mr W the headmaster, Mr Taphouse the carpenter, and the curiously muted role of Malcolm’s real parents beside the allure of these other father-figures. The mysterious status of parents overall in the tale: Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, the one kept away from his daughter by force, the other seemingly unwilling to care for her but curious about her significance once it becomes mythic, intertwined with her passion, which is power, and her chosen avenue the church. National names, Brytain, Swiss War, mentioned for the first time (her hair color changed from black to gold? Any other changes, questions of temporality and causality here?)

The primacy of the Oxford tutorial system recast as conversations with Dr Hannah Relf, even with or superseding the importance of their spying, the reading they do and discuss together. The metaphor of reading the alethiometer, the books of research, the literal reading of real books: Agatha Christie, Stephen Hawking, but not so far poetry--though they quote a hymn and call out the allusion to Noah. (Faerie Queene at the end).

Now, to eagerly await the next book, meanwhile reading all those this one mentions and re-reading this one!

Revisiting Coates and Copperman: open letter to Tony

Hey Anthony,

I had not seen this article, so I'm glad you sent it! I should probably read the news more...but there's so much to read.

I confess I skimmed a lot of the dense sections marshaling evidence. These were my favorite lines, towards the end:

It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man—no matter how fallen—can be president.” And in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled.

The American tragedy now being wrought is larger than most imagine and will not end with Trump.

Prophetic mode, critique of journalism, reprise of history and politics--a tour de force. Thinking of Trump in terms of Jefferson and Jackson and tragic hubris, mingling democratic demonstration with a kind of collective playwrighting we are all engaged in without a care for the scapegoats, this is deep jeonk. And I think it even begins to suggest a way towards the mending of the ills Coates is mainly at pains to highlight: namely, more writing and thinking informed by all these sources, nourished by these experiences both intellectual and practical. And beyond the writing is the confrontation with history, politics, race and economics that it points toward. But also and especially, I think,  squarely questioning those overtones of the word "fallen", and prodding at the white conservative Christians who believe their fall can be redeemed, yet live and act as though that redemption depended, like everything else, on the color of the soul concerned. Trenchantly calling out major white liberals for blindness or cowardice, too, in their attempts to name the problem, Coates is even-handed in his diagnosis. I hope at least one of them replies publicly.

But maybe the most interesting thing for me would be also to try to get those people who voted for Trump to actually read this article, to think through the argument and feel the force of these allusions. That would always be one of my big questions when we came to the Civil War and Reconstruction, trying to get the kids to think about how to even start to change someone's mind-and-heart who is raised to be a racist. I think we all understand on some level that when we go into that thought experiment, the someone is also us, at this moment of history, and not just a white Southerner post-bellum. On this topic, some of Studs Terkel's interviews with such recovering racists are illuminating. People are capable of reflecting, changing, healing in this way, and they are more than willing to bear witness to it if the right person asks the right question...

Honestly, it seems like part of what Coates might be confronting, as struck me in his Between the World and Me, is that the temptation to draw on religious language to identify problems must also remind us that religions have traditionally also claimed to provide people with answers to them, and may possibly suggest that they still actually provide the answer to many people. The Fall is bigger than politics, just as the American tragedy is part of a general human story. To deal with it, we need to turn not just to history and journalism, but to the Bible, to the poets, Blake, Milton, Dante... If people claim to believe in the Bible, for instance, we should read it with them and see what it says, and what they actually think about it; we should point them towards those poets and philosophers down through the ages who have been such subtle readers of it, and found in it things we can only wonder at. The same goes for the traditional beliefs of all the world's cultures, naturally, which we can't really start to understand without teaching foreign languages in a serious way. If public schools never read good books or take languages seriously, we can't really do that there, so in what space can that discussion take place? I wonder about this as I've started exploring online teaching and tutoring. Nothing really has come of it yet, but it's all potential.

I wonder, too, what Mr Copperman is up to in Teacher: Two Years. I take a lot of it to be him processing what he actually was doing there, and I'm intrigued by how little in the way of sweeping statements he comes out of it with, how much more modest his accounting turns out to be than the likes of Geoffrey Canada or the Freedom Writers or any of those charismatics. I agree that he slips in some generic Delta color; I think the chapter about the blues concert is the biggest let-down of the book. Elsewhere his writing is pretty powerful, but there, and when he quotes the kids' dialect, it is a little cringe-worthy. But I have tried a couple of times to say something about teaching in Phoenix, and so far I don't have much to show for it, so I respect and admire him for seeing his book through! He might let himself off a little easy in the end, softening the critique of his objective failure and trying to make up for it by attesting to his love for the kids--attempting to forgive himself. I think that's understandable, but I like that it's counterbalanced by the harsh statistics and hard-headedness of the scholar whose lecture he goes to there towards the end, who shoots him down and calls him hopelessly biased. Of course, this only helps confirm his point: Love is blind! It may be the only thing capable of redeeming guilt, this side of theophany.

Reading with Patrick should be something I can track down and read before too long. I'm glad you got to meet Stephanie, too! It was great seeing you. Until the next wedding, or whenever, let's keep reading, then, and keep in touch!

Unreal Beowulf

Spurred to write by news, but not about the news:

In the slaughter at the country music concert in Las Vegas or the school shooting down the road in Freeman, detecting echoes of Grendel's atrocities in Heorot. In the places supposed to be for joy and peace, the incursions of pain and hatred mark and mar. And soon enough, all will be forgotten, and in the case of the old poem even the language it is written in, unless people take the time to remember.

In some throwaway comments from the Tolkien Professor on the affinities between Germanic heroic verse and American hip hop, catching a glimpse of the relevance and red herrings of race as a focus for social justice. The celebratory focus on greatness in the midst of pain, the exultation in being awesome, as James likes to say it makes you feel awesome to listen to it, and this is universal. After all most of the music is bought by the white kids, and the poets and skalds were making it a thousand years ago in the cold North after their own fashion. So that would be something to share, together with the family histories, the migrations, poverty and richness that are more than skin deep.

In the No Fault Zone posited by the Nonviolent Communication Trainer, considering whether this means a No Story Zone, too. She had us tell stories of giving, times we were given something or gave something with no expectation of being able to repay. She had us sit in a circle and tell why we were there, then she told us her reasons: for her assumption was that we are all interconnected, meaning that we win or lose together. But all the tragic and comic stories from which our cultures derive their values run counter to that assumption. Heroes win or lose, representing us as ideals but not absolving us from making the same movement for ourselves. Our interconnections run only so far before attenuating or breaking down, so that what looks like winning in one country, or on one block, means losing over in the next. The same story being told in both places would have totally different meanings, supposing it could even be told, would even be listened to. Still, perhaps the story of the nonviolent communicator's ideals could be a story precisely about this movement between zones, a creation myth of the No Fault Zone, or a pilgrimage of getting out of one zone and into another, making it to the No Fault Zone--but perhaps as an infiltrator, a ravager, a stepper of the borderlands.

Smaller fish, too

In the past few months a handful of projects proceeded while others ground to a halt.

This blog, for example. Though Spef took the occasion to make a pdf of all of it so far on some magic website, for anyone who might like to get the full of the notes for a new school experience, I stopped posting on it. I just saw I had a draft for a post called Unreal Beowulf sitting here from sometime in the summer. Just that title, nothing else written. I think I will come back to it before too long with matter from my notes and be able to post it, words, absence thereof, and all.

I did write more, however, more on the memoir, more essay notes, and theorized a podcast with Pat for awhile there, writing three pages a day like I'm supposed to. Need to get back to letter-writing to people, before it's too late, meaning I forget again.

The Signum University work has been going well. Beowulf translation has been taking most of my time for writing since that course began. I had put in some kind of order the notes for an essay on Tolkien's translations, but that will have to wait again for now. But most exciting is the new partnership with Outschool, who wanted to provide homeschool parents with a Lord of the Rings class and reached out to the Tolkien Professor to get one. And here one is! And another on (or in preparation for) Pullman's Book of Dust, finally about to be released!

And then teaching Spanish long-term again for a teacher on maternity leave, so I get to see another public school quite different from the ones where I was posted most of last year. More on that later.

A couple of interesting places for Spokane to have: the whole neck of the woods around church, which includes a Montessori school or two and this campus of a Japanese university; and the Spanish conversation club that meets at Lindaman's, by Manito Park, where a lady from Andalucia who had recently gone back on a three-week vacation there was showing everyone postcards and reminiscing about eating boquerones on the beach. Something that I liked about these two sites is the second-language feel of some of the English. I admire whoever wrote them.

So, between the bigger fish and the small fry, life's good I have to say.

Spocurious

As a raspberry bush producing its berries, I wonder my words:

 

If there is a path to the rock pool, and if so who made it, and if not, how did they get there to make the rock pool.

If anyone breaks the no camping sign rules, and if not why they have so many signs posted, or for what radius around the sign its rule is valid.

If anyone follows the walk your bike sign rules.

Who goes to Kendo, that they have such a big building there by the river.

Tucked in a book, the receipt from someone else who read it, and movies at the library--who is that person who read it, and who is it watching them all. What did they think?

When everything has stories to it, how do you decide which ones to read, or to tell? For yourself, hopefully. Do you get to say some are better than others? Maybe so long as you give evidence. Do you have to always worry you haven't found the best ones? Maybe not if you have all the time in the world.

Do they always have to translate into words? Maybe pictures and music are ways to tell them, too.

Experiments outside Laboratory

So the housekeeping continues: I sat in church today, maybe in the same seat from the first time I ever went at the end of last summer, feeling the newness wearing off and not minding, since it meant I liked it there enough to keep coming back, and borrowing books from Rev. Todd, and talking to Aria and them about reading and talking about Harry Potter, and Hobbit Camp, and running into Taylor from Spark up there to give a White Privilege/Supremacy workshop, and writing memoirs with people.

These books generated further reading, of course; these meetings further talking; and all of it might or might not turn into writing, in the llama book if nowhere else. From Romero's language about building the kingdom I thought, of course, about Pullman's about building a republic. Despite all the stuff about whiteness, or because of it, that I hear at church here and at the philosopher's talk downtown, I am reminded how little I care about politics, but how much I appreciate free speech and a free press--as long as it includes free silence, to read and write in. Or to walk down to the river the steps of the park built above the power plant, built by white people or at any rate owned by some, I figure.

If I affect a laconic, western style in these first-person paragraphs, put it down to reading Doig, The Last Bus to Wisdom, with the Literary Freedom book group at Auntie's. This might be their website? But to find them, you almost have to look at the paper calendar they give out by the register, which I love. A good question about love knowledge: do you only truly get to know people who care about you, and whom you care about? Are kind people the only people you can know authentically? If so, what a problematically circumscribed authenticity! But without pretentious preening, the book does fit into that classic American literary conversation with the likes of Huck and Antonia, sort of.

Still, I'd like to make it possible to find information about things like that book group more readily. Or Laboratory, which I heard about by word of mouth twice in one day, and had never heard of before--or at least, it didn't register. Their event last night wasn't starting till 9, though, way too late for the likes of me; besides, I had to help Steph with Mario, holding this or that tool, looking for a dropped bolt, while she fixed her car. Sounds like Spark will host some writing on local authors and such like goings on on their website. And I still aim to write for Love and Outrage a poem or two about the rainbows down there, or by Corbin Park, or above Kendall Yards, or in that image I just posted from Shell. Here's hoping.

It's weird. The library is still my ideal for this work of connecting people to books, to art, to culture, but as long as there is material somewhere along the line, there has to remain room for the serendipitous, too. Looking for a copy of Totoro that has gone missing, I found Pom Poko instead!

Tolkien's minor poems "and the happy summer days" THE END

(From some ideas pointed out in our Preceptorial for Beyond Middle Earth)

‘What do you know about this business?’ the King said to Alice.

‘Nothing,’ said Alice.

‘Nothing whatever?’ persisted the King.

‘Nothing whatever,’ said Alice.

‘That’s very important,’ the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: ‘Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,’ he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

‘Unimportant, of course, I meant,’ the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone,

‘important—unimportant—unimportant—important—’ as if he were trying which word sounded best.

Some of the jury wrote it down ‘important,’ and some ‘unimportant.’ Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; ‘but it doesn’t matter a bit,’ she thought to herself.

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out ‘Silence!’ and read out from his book, ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.’

Everybody looked at Alice.

‘I’m not a mile high,’ said Alice.

‘You are,’ said the King.

‘Nearly two miles high,’ added the Queen.

‘Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,’ said Alice: ‘besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.’

‘It’s the oldest rule in the book,’ said the King.

‘Then it ought to be Number One,’ said Alice.

The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. ‘Consider your verdict,’ he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.

‘There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,’ said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; ‘this paper has just been picked up.’

‘What’s in it?’ said the Queen.

‘I haven’t opened it yet,’ said the White Rabbit, ‘but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to—to somebody.’

‘It must have been that,’ said the King, ‘unless it was written to nobody, which isn’t usual, you know.’

‘Who is it directed to?’ said one of the jurymen.

‘It isn’t directed at all,’ said the White Rabbit; ‘in fact, there’s nothing written on the outside.’ He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added ‘It isn’t a letter, after all: it’s a set of verses.’

‘Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?’ asked another of the jurymen.

‘No, they’re not,’ said the White Rabbit, ‘and that’s the queerest thing about it.’ (The jury all looked puzzled.)

‘He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,’ said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)

‘Please your Majesty,’ said the Knave, ‘I didn’t write it, and they can’t prove I did: there’s no name signed at the end.’

‘If you didn’t sign it,’ said the King, ‘that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.’

There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.

‘That proves his guilt,’ said the Queen.

‘It proves nothing of the sort!’ said Alice. ‘Why, you don’t even know what they’re about!’

‘Read them,’ said the King.

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

These were the verses the White Rabbit read:—

   ‘They told me you had been to her,
    And mentioned me to him:
   She gave me a good character,
    But said I could not swim.

   He sent them word I had not gone
    (We know it to be true):
   If she should push the matter on,
    What would become of you?

   I gave her one, they gave him two,
    You gave us three or more;
   They all returned from him to you,
    Though they were mine before.

   If I or she should chance to be
    Involved in this affair,
   He trusts to you to set them free,
    Exactly as we were.

   My notion was that you had been
    (Before she had this fit)
   An obstacle that came between
    Him, and ourselves, and it.

   Don’t let him know she liked them best,
    For this must ever be
   A secret, kept from all the rest,
    Between yourself and me.’ 

‘That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,’ said the King, rubbing his hands; ‘so now let the jury—’

‘If any one of them can explain it,’ said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of interrupting him,) ‘I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.’

The jury all wrote down on their slates, ‘She doesn’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it,’ but none of them attempted to explain the paper.

‘If there’s no meaning in it,’ said the King, ‘that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know,’ he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; ‘I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. “—said I could not swim—” you can’t swim, can you?’ he added, turning to the Knave.

The Knave shook his head sadly. ‘Do I look like it?’ he said. (Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.)

‘All right, so far,’ said the King, and he went on muttering over the verses to himself: ‘“We know it to be true—” that’s the jury, of course—“I gave her one, they gave him two—” why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you know—’

‘But, it goes on “they all returned from him to you,”’ said Alice.

‘Why, there they are!’ said the King triumphantly, pointing to the tarts on the table. ‘Nothing can be clearer than that. Then again—“before she had this fit—” you never had fits, my dear, I think?’ he said to the Queen.

‘Never!’ said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.)

‘Then the words don’t fit you,’ said the King, looking round the court with a smile. There was a dead silence.

‘It’s a pun!’ the King added in an offended tone, and everybody laughed, ‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.

‘Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister; ‘Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’

‘Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!’ said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, ‘It was a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it’s getting late.’ So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.

...

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm#link2HCH0012

Liam posted this as a counterpart to the poems we've been discussing from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the Annotated Hobbit, and the Book of Lost Tales--all fairly minor poems, though it would be extreme to say, like Alice of the White Rabbit's evidence, that they were totally worthless. He liked my suggestion about the theme of words' power in the different spheres of Bimble Town: how it functions as advertisement, with the biting satire of the See Britain First campaign

(and he noted that Tom Shippey worked in the ad business once!) and then again as beautiful, potentially dangerous, enchantment--and to my reference to Prufrock he added one more by Atwood:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/44212 and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/32778

And perhaps--probably--even to take the little time to copy this out and bring it to some slight order is to make too much of it, when you think of the real, effective power of words in, say, political speech or in academia, which I only scratch the surface (or is it the ears?) of here, but I like to, once in a while. The gusty bus no es discapacitated.