Weekly Links: ISIS, Austen, and more

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith

-"No Matter How Many  Priests ISIS Kills, They Can't Win":

When a faithful pastor baptizes, he is telling those clothed in the waters of regeneration, “You are no longer under the power of the devil, his murderers, or his terrorists. You are now under the protection of Christ, and no one can take you away from him.” When a pastor faithfully administers Holy Communion, he says to those who gather at the altar, “Here with his body and blood, Christ covers you in his righteousness, and no knife or bullet can pierce through that armor.”

-"A Good Man Justifies a Wicked Deed: Grudem on Trump":

We must vote for flawed men, but not for men who glory in their flaws.

-"Bats in the Attic":

The thing is, the Devil and all his evil cohorts really don’t want us, or anybody else, to go to church. If there is any reason at all, however small, to persuade you not to go, that reason will be gathered up and hurled at you, along with your own natural inclinations to take it easy and stay home. If you arrive on a Sunday morning, exhausted, totally unable to conceive of hauling yourself out of bed and going to sit in a hard pew with a lot of annoying people, well, you are not alone.

Family

-"Uncannily Youthful At 67, He Embodies Antidote To Bummer 'Biggest Loser' Study": apparently, it's all about building muscle mass.

Fiction

-"Austen Upside Down": Can you be an Austen fan without really understanding her? This article makes me think the answer is "yes".

-"Ten Thoughts About the Business Side of Writing": so very many good thoughts here.

May your week be a gracious rhythm of meaningful work and peaceful rest.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Review of "Pride and Prejudice: the Musical"

Adam and I are lucky to live in a city that has a good local theatre. A few years ago, we got to go see a production of a musical of "Daddy Long Legs" (my favorite epistolatory novel).

This year, we got to go see the primiere of a musical of "Pride and Prejudice".

The novel "Pride and Prejudice" is justly famous. It's beloved, and it's no wonder. The picture it presents not just of romance, but of family life and of friendship, is unparalleled.

I was so excited to go see it in musical form.

And mostly? I was not disappointed.

This was a really fun play. It started with a clever framing device: Jane Austen talking with her sister as she works on developing the novel we now know as "Pride and Prejudice". It's a novel she first wrote as a very young woman, and after having success with "Sense and Sensibility" she reworked it into a proper book.

Austen watching and interacting with her characters is a conceit that plays out well on stage.

So in the musical, Austen and her sister are the narrators of the story, and Elizabeth and Darcy and the rest come in as the characters they're imagining.  Occasionally, it goes meta, and Elizabeth and Austen argue together, and it's pretty funny.

Some of it works, and some of it doesn't. I kind of hated how the musical had Austen framing the novel as a matter of believing in love or not. That's not what "Pride and Prejudice" is about. 

Everyone in the novel believes in love. The problem is that some of them are wrong about what love is.

The most interesting part of the novel is the balance between reason and passion. Wickham and Lydia?  All passion.  Collins and Charlotte?  All reason.

Darcy and Elizabeth? They manage to be reason and passion, both together, all at once, nothing separate.

It's wonderful. THAT is love.

So, I kind of hated how the play had Austen characterize the book's theme: as a choice to believe in love. That's not the point of the novel. Not at all.

BUT, that said, there was still so much to love about the musical.

For instance? There was Mr. Collins' solo.

Oh my goodness. It brought down the house. It was HILARIOUS.

The refrain was:

 "Let us all now thank the Lord/
For Lady Catherine DeBourgh."

And I started cracking up the instant he's sung the first musical phrase, because I recognized the progression: it was exactly the notes we use to sing the Psalms in our church.

And it only got better from there. I was gasping for breath before the end, I was laughing so hard.

And so was the rest of the audience.

Mr. Collins leading the reluctant Bennett family along in his psalm of praise to his patroness? The clear indication that he'd forsaken the service of his Lord for the service of his patroness? 

I don't know if I've ever seen a better parody. It was AMAZING.

And they did other really clever things, especially in the stage craft. 

For instance: they had Austen's sister arguing Charlotte's part. She insists that it make sense for a woman to marry for position and security, and why wouldn't you do that yourself, Jane? and why can't you understand why this is attractive? and even as she's arguing it, Austen's sister walks into the scene in progress and becomes Charlotte, accepting Collins' proposal of marriage.

It's very well-done. I loved it.

Sometimes it seems like musicals I love never make it.  

But I really hope this one does.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Weekend Links: Austen, Autism, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Simple Girl: The Improbable Solace of 'Mansfield Park'":

Usually, though, the most arresting scenes in Austen are revelatory, when, for instance, the elegant Mr. Elliot is shown to be cold and self-interested, or Mr. Darcy is exposed as the mysterious savior of the Bennet family. Mansfield Park is weirder. Its best moments are not thunderclaps of discovered malfeasance or heroism, but subtle thickenings in the dynamics of the story, small shifts which are easy to overlook, but in fact are such carefully layered moments as to be eerie, even sublime. One doesn’t often turn to Austen for a chill up the spine, but in Mansfield Park, her Georgian clarity is commingled with dread. In a number of these key moments, particularly those in the three scenes I think of as “the theatricals,” something repellent, even demonic, distends the novel’s porcelain skin.

"Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain":

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions.

"I love you, California!":

I like living in a place that is bigger than me. Obviously most places other than a broom closet fit that qualification, but California is so much bigger than me: I will never master it. I will never visit everywhere I want to go. I will never know it by heart or discover all its secrets. It will always be wild and mysterious and grand, and somehow just out of my reach.

"Royals Round-Up, August 22, 2014: I have an unreasonable love for the Fug Girls' regular round-up of royals. Especially when they do Prince George's dialogue. Like so: "Give me that butterfly now, Daddy, please, it's time for me TO EAT IT. THANK YOU."


Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "For Darkness Shows the Stars", by Diana Peterfreund

The reason I read this book is that it was described to me as "a YA/sci-fi version of Jane Austen's Persuasion".  And I? Love both Jane Austen and science fiction.

"For Darkness Shows the Stars" didn't disappoint me.

Now, to be clear, I read this on vacation, when I was disposed to like everything I read just because I was so happy. (Being up in the Sierra Nevada will do that to me.)  But I don't think I was too prejudiced.

Peterfreund did a good job of lifting the main interpersonal plot points of "Persuasion" and transporting them into a new world, all of her own building. (Though, I think I recognize New Zealand as the geographical basis for the post-apocalyptic landscape?) I did think it was a little odd that, even with the new belief system she develops for the denizens of her new world, that there is little trace of Christianity or any other major world religions post-disaster. I think beliefs are more persistent than that, so my credulity was strained at that point.

But I enjoyed reading about how she envisioned society re-stratifying itself after a disaster, and the way those who weren't satisfied with the new order subtly rebelled. And the way she named her characters was so fun. :)

My one last quibble was that I felt a bit cheated on the world-building. It's not that the world-building wasn't good - it was; in fact, it was fascinating. But I'm used to sci-fi or fantasy books where the authors explain it all by the end, and at the end of this book, the nature of the apocalypse was left unexplained.

That might be realistic - how often in real life to we get complete explanations for world events? - but as a reader, it left me unsatisfied.

However, two mitigating factors:
1) The romantic thread came full circle, and I found it satisfying.
2) Apparently, there's a sequel.

So, I'm hopeful that more of the nature of the apocalypse that caused the situation will be explained in the sequel. It's on my reading list, and I'm looking forward to getting it.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Links! - Tiaras, Screen Rules, Reality TV, and Jane Austen's prayer

A Tiara a Day - fun fashion (tiara fashion!) blog with cool historical details about each piece.

"Screen Rules" - my kids aren't quite old enough to need social media rules, but they're old enough I'm beginning to ponder the subject. This post by Elizabeth Foss seems like a great jumping-off point for making our own house rules for screen time.

"What It's Like To Be on Reality TV":

Their day usually begins around 5 or 6am, when they chug down a yogurt smoothie from the hotel fridge and stumble down to the lobby to get on board a chilly van to head to the set for a day that alternates between excruciating boredom (ie, waiting 4 hours in a holding area in forced silence before filming begins) and intense stress (cooking challenges, then more waiting for hours, regretting mistakes and choices from the challenge). Then an elimination. Which, despite what you might think from the editing, is very depressing and deeply unsettling for EVERYONE. But it’s not over. More waiting, and then 2 hours worth of interviewing about everything that happened that day. And it’s not a “Tell me how you feel” interview. It’s an invasive interview with questions drafted by a psychologist who watches your every move all day on camera, delivered by an expert story producer to raise within you the same emotions you’ve been experiencing all day.

"A Prayer for Sunday (Jane Austen)":

We thank thee with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the blessings that have attended our lives, for every hour of safety, health and peace, of domestic comfort and innocent enjoyment. We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved; and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them and implore thee to pardon the presumption of our desires.

Book Notes: "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The thing that surprised me most about this book was what a fast read it was.

I've known the basic plot points of "Persuasion" for awhile now (my first introduction to the story was a truly horrible dramatization of it, watched about two decades ago), but it's only recently I had the urge to pick it up.

It was wonderful. I gobbled the story up, and it was easy to do so because this is such a lovely, light, compact little story. And I don't mean "little" in any slighting way. It's small and perfect, the way miniature models are small and perfect.

Our heroine was persuaded, years before the start of the story, to reject the man who loves her. Her friends explained that he's not good enough for her, and even compelled our kind-hearted heroine to believe that saying "no" to him is the kindest thing she can do . . . for *him*.

She spends years regretting this.

Near the beginning of our story, the hero comes back into her social circle, and the whole first 9/10ths of the book is spent exploring the simple question, "is it too late for us to be happy together?"

If you know romances at all, you'll know the answer, but Austen gets us there masterfully, introducing us to some of her best satirical characters along the way (the heroine's father and sisters! *shudder*). "Persuasion" doesn't have the yawningly slow pace of "Emma" (don't kill me, I still love it!) nor the giddy society whirl of "Pride and Prejudice", but it has a lovely heroine, a compelling question to answer, and a very well-earned happy ending.

View all my reviews

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Austen, English and Amish Vampires

Bethany writes about how the Keira Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice differed from the book, taking Austen's plot and infusing it with the Romantic sentiments of Bronte. Interesting (and, I think, correct!) assessment.
James writes about bachelor cooking. He writes:
The main goal of the bachelor cook is to get filling food on the table quickly and in a way that elevates him above the mere ramen-and-t-bell-forever caveman . . . 
His list of the basic dishes that can be achieved with a few varieties of canned food plus - of course - cheese is hilarious and (from what I remember of the time when my husband and I were dating) quite true-to-life.

Oooh. I like this description of what good English is. It reminds me of Coleridge's description of Donne's poetry:
Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots
Wreathes iron pokers into true-love knots.
Although I think Coleridge was talking about the metaphysical nature of Donne's poetry, his description can stand as a picture of what the English language looks like at its best: knotty and strong, like an unbreakable plank of pine.
Oooh, and I might like even better the article MMV links to, this one that explains the heritage of English (Latin and Anglo-Saxon), and how to use it well. Try this paragraph on for size:
How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”
His point is well-taken, although I think the true strength of English comes from judiciously combining those Latin and Saxon words, breeding a vigorous hybrid in your speech.
The linked article also has descriptions of the strengths of several other languages, which I found interesting.
Melissa Wiley's description of the Shakespeare Club her children take part in is so winsome - I especially love their reaction to Banquo's ghost!

Tim Challies says:
I think I have done it. I’ve come up with the ultimate idea for the ultimate Christian novel. This novel seamlessly blends today’s most popular genres into one beautiful, compelling, cohesive whole. I thought you would want to know all about it. So I give to you…
Cassidy: Amish Vampiress of the Tribulation


That’s right. It’s an Amish novel; it’s a vampire novel; it’s an end-times novel. It’s the best of all worlds.
But you have to go over to his blog to read the (made-up) back-cover copy. It's an awesome send-up of current literary trends.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell