I have long struggled with my addiction to Twitter. I gave it up for Lent, then was right back on the thing as soon as it was "allowed" again. I spend approximately two minutes (not exaggerating) a day on Facebook and multiple hours--spread throughout the day--on the bird-platform. I've talked about it before, so I don't need to rehash old statements. The long and the short of it (#shakespeareiseverywhere) is that I prefer that social media to the Book of Faces.
One of the reasons that I like Twitter so much is that it gives me a chance to read from a lot of unexpected sources and get insights into what a lot of people are talking about. I've purged my follow list a couple of times, trying each time to focus more on what I really want out of the platform: Information regarding agents, writers, and goings-on in the world of my interests (teaching and publication and comic books and video games and Shakespeare and…and…). I do a poor- to fair job parsing down the accounts, then tend to accumulate more and more until I need to winnow again. It seems that time is upon me again. What's happening is kind of inside baseball (to use a phrase I know exists but doesn't make any sense to me), but the basic thrust is this: Comic book and book publishing are getting their turns in the sunlight, and it isn't a pretty sight. I don't buy a lot of comics these days--I don't buy a lot of anything, thanks to Ms. Rona--so I don't know exactly who's doing what and how they're abusing their power. However, this site helps put a finger on the reckoning that's going on. It isn't just comic books, either: The reason that I even found the aforelinked website is because a writer named Myke Cole and his friend (and fellow writer) Sam Sykes both are dealing with allegations of misconduct and abuse. I say allegations, but Myke Cole, during the heat of the #MeToo movement, wrote about it in February 2018--and it seems like he hadn't changed his attitudes or behaviors. I don't know the details of the newest stuff, but both he and Sam Sykes have been called out as perpetrators of sexual harassment. I own one book each from the two men, though I've never read them. (I'm a fan of ebooks in principle, though I tend to prefer non-fiction on my ereader, and since both of the purchases were electronic, well…) Their main interest to me was watching them banter across the internet in some decidedly hilarious interactions. Cole had a lot of worthwhile things to say about the recent protests, about how white supremacy usurps and twists historical concepts to serve their purposes, and the need for police defunding and abolition. Sykes had a number of insightful threads about the creative and writing process, and he was a great amplifier for artists whose work he liked. As far as I knew, they were just normal creatives on Twitter with books for sale. I guess I was right: They were "normal". And that's the problem. It's not hard (like, really not hard at all) to recognize that all people deserve to be treated as human, that their consent and preferences be taken into account when interacting with them, and that they should never be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Women in particular (and by that, of course, I include transwomen--because they're women, obvs--and non-binary people who rely on female designations for whatever reason) are human beings with equal rights, boundaries, and personal agency. Yet women in particular end up becoming targets of sexual harassment (and worse) far too often. Men, too, are put into compromised positions by others in power. It is an abhorrent reality that too many people face. The #MeToo movement helped show us how pervasive sexual misconduct (to put a too-polite word on the behavior) is within American society. Misogyny in any form ought to be anathema to, well, everyone. It has no place in our world. …except that it's here. It doesn't deserve to be here. It's like the divine right of kings: At best a relic of an antiquated age that needs no renaissance, at worst a tool that some may seek to remain in power for whatever personal gain they hope to achieve. (And lest you think that there aren't a lot of people who wish for a king in America, you perhaps haven't been paying attention to the loudest and most ardent followers of President Trump.) Misogyny (and its less-frequently seen sibling, misandry) shouldn't be in the world, yet it is. And we have to do something about it. No cancer is cured without intervention; no malady of humankind will go away without confrontation. There are lots of complexities in this issue, but the part that is most salient, I think, is a recognition of power. As cis-het White males who've been published, both Cole and Sykes are in positions that create a power imbalance. Power imbalances are inherent in our system--parent/child, teacher/student, politician/voter (in theory), employer/employee--and the differences in power positions is the area in which abuses are most likely to occur. The idea that an abuser can do heinous things and get away with it is one of the ways that these power imbalances become more and more entrenched. In the case of two published and visible (comparatively) writers, there's an additional power dynamic that a non-writer may not immediately see: Envy. I can't speak for other creative enterprises (though I imagine it's pretty similar), but in the writing community, aspiring writers are the most vocal and eager component of a fanbase. Book signings are often scenes of long lines of would-be writers hoping to get a bit of the signee's luck to rub off on them. The reason is pretty simple: It is extremely hard to break into writing. It's even harder to make a career out of it. And it's next to impossible to gain a wide readership. The competition is omnipresent and fierce. Going to a writer's conference is going into a place where the air has been replaced with desperation. Aspirants are desperate to learn something that will get them on the other side of the panel--to have "made it" and to be the one dispensing advice rather than writing it down. Published authors are desperate to keep their success going--to shill their books to the attendees and hope that the can earn out sometime in the near future. Editors are desperate to find someone whose work will provide a stable residual income for them; agents are desperate to strike a partnership with someone whose writing they love. Despite the fact that everyone is desperate, there are different degrees here. Power is strongest in the editors. They tend to be the ones acquiring the new talent, going to bat for the new books and new authors. This means that the editors have additional leverage over people who are desperate, and that increased power can far too often translate into heinous abuses. (A non-writing example would have to be Harvey Weinstein, who doesn't need any more thought spared to him.) Though neither Cole nor Sykes is an editor, they're both guys who "made it". They're one step closer to the dream. That means that people who might not normally accept an off-color or sexually suggestive remark will give a partial laugh and half-smile when it comes from an author that they like, or an agent they're thinking of querying. Richard Paul Evens learned the hard way that giving an unsolicited hug to fans can cross a line he didn't realize was there--and he did it, as the article says, probably "thousands of times". Were there thousands of victims? No. But there were some, and they were victimized because of the power imbalance. (Another example of this, though its effects are more diffuse: J.K. Rowling, despite having a lot of progressive concepts and values in her books, is a TERF, and she's recently come under fire for comments that dismiss transwomen. In this case, her power is less personal--she has an immense influence in the writing world, despite the fact that she isn't writing nearly as much as she has in the past--and it has turned into a flashpoint for a number of fans. So while you couldn't say that a specific person is harmed by Rowling's statements in the same way that the victims of Cole's or Sykes' behavior have been, there's still a kind of abuse that's happening here.) The results of these allegations have come rapidly. Cole has removed himself from Twitter for the foreseeable future; Sykes is insisting that victims continue to speak out. Everyone responds to this situation in slightly different ways. In my case, I remain in an uncomfortable crux that I've been in for many years now: What to do with the fact that human beings are behind so many of the things that I love. This isn't to dismiss the negative things that come from the embedded misogyny and racism that has built the world I live in. Being human means making mistakes, of course, but that doesn't mean that success should be deprived you because of those mistakes--but neither does it mean that second (or third or tenth) chances should be afforded, either. In some cases, it's a matter of reception. Milton and Shakespeare are near and dear to my heart and they're also emblematic of the Dead White Male that dominates the English departments. Eve in Paradise Lost moves between shockingly original and disappointingly dismissed. Kate in The Taming of the Shrew is a portrait of Stockholm Syndrome and one of the great tragedies in the canon, despite being a comedy. How can I maintain my feminist credentials, as it were, when embracing these two anti-women writers? Neither Milton nor Shakespeare can be "cancelled"--their presence in the world of letters is settled, at least during my lifetime. Their works are crucial to our modern identities, regardless of whether or not we recognize it. And I can't very well stop buying Milton or Shakespeare--they aren't getting royalties, and voting with my wallet will do nothing to their reputation. If economics is the barometer, the Bard and the prophet-bard are safe from reprisal. But what about Rowling, Cole, Sykes, or any other number of "problematic" authors who've done/said something that shows a sinister side to them that I can't agree with? My dollars will support Orson Scott Card if I buy his book, which means that I continue to empower a known- and proud homophobe. Is buying another round of butterbeer at Universal Studios only prolonging how long Rowling will be visible, pertinent, and capable of spreading her misconceptions about women? Now that I've purchased their books, is my continued non-reading of Cole and Sykes a way of boycotting them? And how is that different than the fact that I haven't gotten around to reading their books in the first place? These kinds of questions have been on my mind, as I said before, for years. And while I may have given examples that don't resonate with you. Maybe there are other views that these people espouse that you fundamentally disagree with--like Cole's calls to abolish the police. So you're okay with seeing his career end (will it, though?) or go on an unexpected and prolonged hiatus. You now will no longer buy books from a guy you weren't planning on buying from anyway. Have you done something to him? A creative's life is one of perpetual rejection (most of it's hidden, as authors don't stalk bookstores and feel personally offended when every patron who walked past her book on the aisle leaves without even picking up the book), so are you doing anything by boycotting his books? People talk about voting with their wallets all of the time--I used the phrase myself in the course of this essay--but I don't think it's quite as clear cut as we'd like to assume. After all, you may be able to buy a book from Rowling or Card or Sykes or Cole, but you could just as easily buy a book from Okorafor or Kuang or Chu or Kowal. All of these authors write in the same science fiction/fantasy genre, so why not pick one of these "less problematic" writers? Except you can't go to Hogwarts with Kuang and Okorfor's version of Ender is a Black girl named Binti, and does Kowal have as much fantasy violence in her books? In other words, you normally can't read one person's book and get the same story from a different author. So if Hogwarts means something important to me, something crucial, then I can't just go anywhere else. See? It's complicated… Or maybe it isn't. What's the difference between writers anyway? If you don't like one person's story, buy someone else's. Write your own books (which only makes sense to anyone who's never tried to write a book before). Don't do research into the humans who make your art. Don't expect them to abide by your own morals. Only buy from those who share your morals. Only retread what you've seen before, keeping your diet safe and vanilla, hypoallergenic and without surprises. Refrain from interpreting, interpolating, or interrogating the books you read--it's just fiction, it's just a story. No need to put anything else into it. I don't know how to square this circle. I bring it up from time to time in an attempt to get my feelings figured out, but it always slips free. I don't want to support people who've done harmful things. I don't want to give a pass to creators whose content I like simply because I like what they've made. I also have to acknowledge that someone has a problem with everything that I like for a whole host of reasons, so I have to understand what my own lines in the sand are…and what that says about me. Lastly, what this whole sordid tale exposes to me is the reality that I, too, have made mistakes. Never have I knowingly acted in a way that was intended to be inappropriate or harassing, sexually or otherwise. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been the reason someone felt unsafe or that I had ulterior motives in what I said or did. I know that there have been times--I can think of a couple--where brave women told me that what I was doing was making them uncomfortable. I immediately apologized and changed my behavior and that was the end of it. How many times have I inadvertently "shot mine arrow o'er the house, / And hurt my brother" (Hamlet 5.2) or sister? Lots of questions, I fear. And, as it happens so often for me, precious few answers. When it comes to streaming TV, I'm perpetually behind the curve. I watched season 1 of Stranger Things only after everyone was done talking about it, I've finally caught The Dark Crystal (I only saw it once as a teenager, and it was after a school dance and I basically fell asleep, remembering almost none of it) so that I can chip away at the new series based in that world, and since I try to limit how violent, swear-prone, or nudity laced the TV I watch is, I've completely avoided The Boys (I'm not even a fan of Amazon's version of The Tick, having watched a couple of episodes and feeling like the point of the character has been misinterpreted).
Good Omens, on the other hand, has been on my radar since it first was announced. I'm a mild fan of both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; of the two, the latter, I think, is a better sentence-level writer, while the former is always ready to lean heavily into the soft magic fantastical. Due to my personal preference for harder magic systems, Gaiman's oeuvre doesn't get a lot of my attention, though I always enjoy what I read from him. The late-Terry Pratchett, as everyone knows, was one of the absolute best writers in the modern era and his death has diminished literature. Feeling this way, it's no wonder that I was excited for the show, though it may come as a surprise that I haven't read the book yet. It's one of those things where I just didn't ever find it in my To Be Read pile and so it has, so far, gone unread. (Don't worry: I plan on fixing that just as soon as I can.) So this review of the Amazon Original TV Series Good Omens is only looking at the six-part mini-series and isn't even bothering to juxtapose it to its source material, since of that I'm ignorant. The Amazon Original TV Series Good Omens is exactly half of what its title implies: It is good. It is very good. Indeed, for the majority of the series, I was giggling at the droll narration of God (which, I realize, is a tricky convention to incorporate into film--I think of how clumsy the narration of Spider-Man 3 is, for example--but is absolutely necessary in a series that derives much of its humor in the way the story is told; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also has this issue, but, fortunately, Stephen Fry exists, so the film didn't lose much of Adams' dry humor), or the madcap plotting, or the hilarious situations. My wife especially has much to do in the evenings, yet she postponed almost all of her costuming work throughout this weekend (we started it on Halloween and finished it last night) so that we could watch a couple of hours of it. There are a lot of things to commend it: The main characters are a delight. Aziraphale makes just enough mistakes and carefully bends the truth to be an imperfect angel, and Crowley was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when Satan's Fall happened--not his fault, really--so he's interested in helping out and only causing a really lazy, surface-level mischief to keep up his credentials as a demon. The taking of the two archetypes and melding and melting them into something unique and memorable is one of the great accomplishments of this story. I did find the reliance on prophecy and destiny a bit incredulous, but that's just a personal taste in why and how characters behave the way they do. The conceit of both Heaven and Hell vying for the end of the world and actively straining to let/make (respectively) it happen was an interesting wrinkle in the context of the world that I really liked, too. But that's the story, which is close to the book, from what I understand. (The series was written by Neil Gaiman, so I'm assuming there's a high level of fidelity.) The advantages of seeing it are, of course, the perks that always come along with watching over reading. Seeing the British countryside that I miss so much was a painful delight, and I pretty much just want to live in Aziraphale's bookshop for the rest of eternity. The acting by the leads, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, is top notch. Both decidedly British, but evoking different moods. Their costuming was always enjoyable--particularly during the '60s and '70s--and the chemistry between the two characters, Aziraphale and Crowley, is perfect. Another thing done particularly well is pacing. A six-hour investment into a story is quite a bit, but the episodes rarely lagged. It wasn't breakneck, but steady, with enjoyable quirks and mysteries that would crop up--mostly in the form of prophecies--and then unexpectedly resolve. Each episode felt like a lot had been accomplished with plenty left to do, all the way up to the end, which took care of each plot point well enough that very little of it felt rushed. The visual effects were never stunning--far better than TV shows had any right to be back in the early aughts, clearly--but they served the story well enough. The camera work was well done, and the editing clean and only occasionally tipping into the showing-off side of things. So, from a guy-sitting-on-his-couch perspective, I felt like it was really well put together. The three F-bombs were a touch much, I felt, mostly because the first one came with such great comedic delivery that it made every other use gratuitous by comparison. There's some naked butt-cheeks at the beginning of the story, which commences in the Garden of Eden--so no surprise there--but as far as streaming TV "adult content", there isn't very much. Oh, and speaking of the Garden of Eden, I loved the idea that Adam and Eve were Black. I thought that was cool. Having just come off a pretty in-depth reread of much of Paradise Lost, this story's use of angels, demons, and the bureaucracification of both Heaven and Hell--essentially turning Milton's vision into the mundane of corporate England--was perfect timing. It may, in fact, turn into an annual tradition for me to revisit Good Omens as I finish up Paradise Lost. At this juncture, it's as close as I can get to a good retelling of Milton's biblical fanfic on screen. And that's pretty good praise. Okay, so I'm kind of conflicted here. It's Day 2 of NaNoWriMo and I'm well ahead of where I've been in the past. I have reasons--explained below, for those who wish to know--that it's that way, and I'm really glad about it. The story is also coming out better than I expected--though not as well as I would wish--with relative ease. Yet I've now set my expectations and baseline so high that I know I won't be able to maintain it. Here's what I mean:
My first three chapters are written (that's about ten percent of the story in terms of chapter length, but my word count is at 8,300, which means that it's about twenty percent to the NaNoWriMo goal). I took a day off from school yesterday and wrote through the morning and into the afternoon. It was by no means a high watermark day of writing output--during my retreats, I see 8,300 by two o'clock, with hours left to crank out more text--but as far as a NaNoWriMo experience, it's more than amazing. In fact, I'm essentially done with the first five days of the project. That's really encouraging. I owe a lot of this to having spent three or so hours--maybe even more--in outlining what was going to happen. And though there are tricky decisions about how to make the story behave, particularly in the later chapters, I feel like I wrote pretty much what I was expecting to write for these first three. It also has helped a great deal that I'm intimately familiar with the story of Hamlet, so as I'm writing the chapters (they roughly match with each scene from the play), I can reflect on what I know each character is supposed to be thinking or feeling--inasmuch as it's known through the play. It's been kind of fun to reinterpret, for example, Hamlet's first soliloquy in the play as an older millennial sitting in an LDS chapel and trying to sort out his feelings. I've relocated some of the parts and ideas from one scene to another, as needed by how I'm telling my version of the story, and I keep finding myself throwing in small quotes from the play because it's both an homage and an inevitable output from my familiarity with the source material. It's just…what it is, I guess. And that actually leads to where I'm most disappointed in my writing. Because I'm trying to keep the story moving along, I'm not spending much time wordsmithing. This is always a tension between my desires: I want to write a lot, and I want to write beautifully. They are not--for me, at least--compatible desires. I can only have one at a time, and as far as NaNoWriMo is concerned, that means I have to write a lot. The solution to getting both of what I want is to rewrite--a lot--to get the prose to really sparkle. And that's the thing that I struggle to do more than anything else. It isn't that I haven't tried. I can't tell you how many times I've printed out another copy of a story, or hummed up the computer with the manuscript on the screen, only to feel a crush of despair that keeps me from moving on beyond the first paragraph. I legitimately try…and I seriously fail almost every time. So, while I'm enjoying what I've written for NaNoWriMo thus far (it being the second day, of course), it's not exactly good writing. It's not, at least, the kind of prose that I wish I could spontaneously create. It reminds me of John Milton's description of Shakespeare's writings: "They easy numbers flow…" And that's the thing--we don't know how much editing Shakespeare put into his work (the whole "never blotted a line" praise is rubbish, and we know this because there are vestigial pieces of Shakespearean process within the plays), but his end effect is one of effortless writing. Even Milton, whose poetry transcends so much of what's available in English, visibly strains to make the poetry work in some places. Shakespeare is graceful, like a Michael Jordan on the page. It just…comes to him. It is, of course, foolish (and wrong) of me to try to compare to Shakespeare, for lots of different reasons. But I'm dissatisfied with how well I do things on my first try. Maybe that's why I write so many rough drafts: I'm trying to write better the first time so that I don't have to rewrite more often. This seems like a plan that could maybe work, but it's likely the longest way around possible. At any rate, my quick update for the beginning of NaNoWriMo is a positive one: I'm off to a good start. Here's hoping that I can start merging my two desires together and getting a good start into a good rough draft, one that I'm not sick of by the end of the month and one that I'm actually proud to share. If you wish to read the book as it comes out, I'll be updating it (as much as I can) daily here. This is the link to chapter 1. I hope you enjoy it. One of the things that surprises me as a teacher of Paradise Lost? Students would not want to live in the Garden of Eden, according to how John Milton presents it, because "it would be boring."
I know that they're fifteen years old ("I'm sixteen!" That One Kid™ is always quick to irrelevantly point out) and still getting a grip on the world, but it really is shocking to me. Here's the deal with Milton's Eden, in case you've forgotten since the last time you read the poem: The Garden is filled with every conceivable fruit and vegetable--indeed, inconceivable fruits and vegetables are also available. There are bounteous rivers, crystal clear, that are healthful and delicious. Animals live there with no danger, including lions that play with lambs, snakes that coil around harmlessly, and tigers prowl through herds without the latter getting freaked out. It's not unusual to see an elephant writhing his "lithe proboscis" to entertain Adam and Eve. The days are warm enough that a constant cool breeze is needed--and provided--and beautiful scents fill the air around flowery bowers. At one point, the amiable angel Raphael says that Eden is patterned after Heaven, which, he tells us, has variety and change because it's nice. I take that to mean that something approaching seasons is possible there--though Adam and Eve don't stay in Eden long enough for us to see for certain. Additionally--and this is crucial for me to explain to my predominantly LDS students--Eve and Adam are fully expecting and waiting for "additional hands" to come to them. That is, Milton doesn't conceive of a sexless or childless Eden*. And, since there's no pain in Eden, childbirth is (we can assume) essentially painless. Death, of course, is completely foreign there ("Whate'er Death is," says Adam when the topic comes up (425)), and wickedness is likewise unavailable. In short, the Garden of Pleasure** is truly a paradise: All of the things that make life beautiful, none of the weaknesses that make it miserable. Milton, I think, does this on purpose: If we as readers are to feel like we've truly lost something, it can't be a conditional paradise. Eden must be a place that we long to be in, so that when it's lost (the spoiler is in the title, people), we care. So when I ask the kids if they'd want to be Eden, their number one critique is that it would be boring--and I don't get it. A lot of kids argue that without opposition, there's no growth. No growth is, essentially, uninteresting (or, rather, boring). And while I understand that from a postlapsarian point of view, Milton goes to show that there's plenty to do in the Garden--gardening, as a matter of fact, to say nothing of exploring all of the cool and beautiful things in Eden--because, again, Eden has to be a place that we'd unreservedly want to go to. "But you wouldn't have anything to do after a while," the children groused. "Eventually, you would waft yourself heavenward," I rejoined, "refilling the celestial halls with humans-turned-angels to refill those numbers lost by the fall of Satan and his Atheist crew!" "What would you do, though? Just, like, tend a garden?" "Yeah." "Nothing else?" "There's an elephant who writhes his lithe proboscis…" And what they're saying--or, rather, what I'm hearing--is that they don't realize just how monotonous life really is. You'd think they would: They are, after all, students. There is a constant grind of schedules, bells, expectations, and repetitions. But they have summer to look forward to, or graduation, or a job… …but that's where I am, and I have to say, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of growth here. There are small lessons here or there, but life has hit the this-is-life-for-the-foreseeable-future-and/or-until-you-die plateau. I've been teaching the same curricula (with some noteworthy exceptions) for over a decade, going through the same jokes, asking the same questions, pointing out the same cool things. I get quite a bit of satisfaction from that, but when I zoom out, the monotony of day-in-day-out living is grinding. Living becomes habitual. Mountain peaks of the past fade into rolling hills of the present and it gets to the point where speedbumps give me nosebleeds. Part of the reason that I can see so far into the future is because there's nothing to climb between here and death. In other words, this brave new world that is filled with so many possibilities--more possibilities than I can ever hope to touch--will collapse until there's variety in the names I memorize and that's about it. Oh, sure, there are changes. My children are still at home and in school, so watching them grow and learn and burst out into the world will be moments to look for and savor. I don't deny that there will be changes, of course, and new joys--and also new sorrows. A life in Milton's Eden would omit that last part, which is why I'm still baffled by my students' responses to the question "Would you want to live there?" When they answer, in effect, "I wouldn't want to live a boring life that's the same every day," I realize that I need to refrain from telling them that I ask myself almost daily: Is this all there is? --- * In LDS doctrine, our First Parents were told that they had to "multiply and replenish the earth"--which is interpreted to mean that this "commandment" was in effect at the same time as the prohibition on the fruit. Where Mormonism and Milton differ is that LDS doctrine claims that childbearing was impossible whilst Eve was in Eden. Until she and her husband departed from the Garden, they couldn't have kids. Milton just assumes that, had Eve not partaken of the fruit, all of humankind would still be in the Garden all the way up to present day. ** Eden in Hebrew means "Pleasure". Today at school saw me talking. A lot.
This isn't in-and-of itself too unusual, as I often look for things for students to talk about and, as a result, join in on the conversations. Today, however, was a bit ridiculous. In my Socratic Seminar classes, we're studying an abridged version of Paradise Lost, and it requires a lot of heavy lifting on my part. The poem's complexities and nuances need attention, and the tenth graders I teach don't have the wherewithal to pick out much of those. Sure, there are a rare few who manage to gain a lot by virtue of reading carefully, but the majority don't. I feel as though my job, then, is to make the opaque moments clearer. In my Concurrent Enrollment class, we're starting a new style of paper (sadly, we're leaving Milton's Areopagitica behind, which gives me all sorts of sads; since I'm teaching Paradise Lost, however, the pain doesn't linger). To get the seniors ready to write the paper--and to give them greater guidance than what I gave them for the last paper--I had to talk. A lot. In fact, I even broke out my Wooden O Symposium talk and showed them some of what I talked about in that as an example of a (more granular) rhetorical analysis paper. All of that meant that I was using words, words, words all day long, and while that is my job--to an extent--it's given me pause. How can I change that? How can I still get them the information I want them to have without talking myself hoarse? On one hand, I don't know what else to do; lecture-style learning works well for me. I, of my own volition, will listen to lecture series or podcasts. It clicks inside of my head. But my students aren't me (thankfully). Not only do they not necessarily learn well that way, but their attention spans don't allow for even fifty minutes of direct instruction. Three of my seniors, despite my teasing of them, fell asleep whilst I tried to talk to them about their new paper. Here's the irony: I teach Socratic Seminar, which utilizes a different style of Socratic teaching than ye olde Socrates would do, but still operates on the principles of discussion and questioning. Yet I can't seem to get myself out of these situations. When it's something that we all understand--something that I've explained and the students can grasp the topic--then I can turn over the class, as it were, to the students. But when it's all new information? All new ideas? How else do I get them to understand at the same time? I do use Chromebooks in my classroom on a pretty regular basis. Could I send them on a websearch for information? Yeah, but then they're all looking at different areas. Should I use the time straightening out misperceptions and errors that they find on their own? We know that false ideas have a tendency to stick in minds; do I want to run the risk of misinformation and then correction? And what if I miss someone? Not only that, but I personally get frustrated repeating myself (I only teach one section two times a day--my other sections are different than the others) and I lose patience more easily when I have to say to the fifth group what I've already said to groups one through four. This has been something that's been plaguing me for a good six or seven years. My wife has a very different instructional style, one where she tries not to talk for more than ten minutes per class period. I…don't know how to get to that level. Yes, there are different activities that we can do--I'm stewing on some right now, as a matter of fact--that will provide some variety to the day's work, but "different activities" isn't the same as figuring out how to shut my fat face long enough for them to assert themselves more fully. Maybe I've encountered an insoluble problem. Maybe it's not possible to teach Paradise Lost without something as didactic as a quasi-lecture for fifty minutes. But I don't really think that's right; I'm just blind to what the answer is. Over the many hundreds of essays I've vomited out and then published to my website without even running over it again for editing purposes, I have written about Harold Bloom, in one mode or another, quite a bit. On the whole, I've long liked his work (with qualifications intact), but haven't put a lot of effort into reviewing his works lately. Now, however, with the cantankerous old scholar passing away this week, I thought it might be fitting to throw my own two cents into the well of well-wishers and detractors who are commemorating and excoriating the legacy he's left behind.
What put me onto this dichotomous thinking was a tweet (not worth dredging up right now) about how all of the laudatory essays about Bloom were written by males. And, to be certain, my quick search for a news report (as opposed to an op-ed) for Dr. Bloom's death proved to be rather tricky, as everyone had a take to give--and almost all of them were, indeed, by men. (This one from the Mary Sue has some nuance, as well as treading over familiar critical ground.) And, being as I am a guy-fellow, another think-piece about Dr. Bloom really would be one snowflake among a blizzard. But I'm going to do it anyway. And here's why: Harold Bloom was one of the best professors I never had. It's difficult to reconcile the impact of a person's work when so much of (in this case) his work is tied up in something that I also love. He gave me the vocabulary of a Bardolator, with a concept of how to read Shakespeare that provided a pathway into the Bard that I may not have otherwise found. He was the anathema that we all spoke of during the Wooden O Symposium 2018 where I presented. I've heard him quoted (and, more often, misunderstood) in casual conversations about Shakespeare. His polemical, belligerent, curmudgeonly character (or, perhaps, caricature) gave me a sense of validation in loving unabashedly what I love. This is a mighty gift: Aside from salvation, I can think of no thing that will better a human's soul than being able to hear Shakespeare's multitudinous voices. These are difficult voices to hear, in part because of the four hundred years of static that makes some of his nuances garbled or missing. But Bloom's ear was attuned to Shakespeare's levels in a solid, committed way, and his ability to express that was masterful. And though he may have missed the mark occasionally (how occasionally depends on how much you've read of him and how much you agree with his fundamental positions), his unabashed love for richness in literature is inspirational, powerful, and worthwhile. Yet he's accused of having sexually harassed one of his students*. This is not something that ought to be swept under the rug or dismissed as a "those times were different"--no, it's still wrong, regardless of timing. The tension of what to do about this--the tangled knot of separating the art from the artist is a Gordian one that I've yet to undo--makes accolades conditional at best and ill-distributed at worst. How much poor behavior is excusable? Ideally, none at all, but in a real world that isn't divided into Death Eaters and everyone else, there has to be some level of forgiveness? "Treat every man after his dessert," asks Hamlet, "and who shall 'scape whipping?" Does the art that's created likewise generate exculpation? It's easier for me to pass off poor behavior as a quirk of personality in someone like John Milton or William Shakespeare--men whose art is, undoubtedly, more impressive than Bloom's--in part because they're far removed from me and my time. Any direct victims of them are no longer hurting; so is that long enough? Oh, sure, I definitely acknowledge the misogyny or racism that their particular works endorse or operate with--I don't pretend their violations aren't there. It isn't a really satisfying answer, but it's the best I can come up with for my centuries-dead idols. Modern artists, however, are in a different situation. Those they harm in their ascent are still living, too, and dealing with the consequences of their crimes. (And a few months away from the comedy circuit doesn't count as penitence or "being cancelled", Louis C.K., no matter how much you may think otherwise!) How long does pain preclude progression? This is not an easy question, and it spirals into larger and more important dialogues than the death of an august literary critic. And that, I think, is part of what makes hard writing any sort of eulogy for the man so difficult. He contributed mightily to the English language, and was as staunch a defender for aesthetic beauty and humanistic value as you could find--provided the aesthetic beauty was one that he likewise recognized. Part of his charm was his belief in his own correctness--it also, paradoxically, was one of his great detriments. His unflappable assurance allowed him to make assertions that people still grapple with--that Shakespeare "invented the human" is perhaps his most visible one--and his sense of unassailable interpretation gave us a great deal to think about. That is a valuable thing. It is no easy thing to do, what Harold Bloom did. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with him, he made you think and stretch. It isn't like the nonsense of other poor polemicals such as Ben Shapiro where two seconds' thought lets you know the guy's an idiot and should be dismissed**. Bloom may not have hit the level of his idol Shakespeare in being a writer who can be embraced or rejected but never ignored, but he still managed to make a large impact. To paraphrase and invert Othello, Harold Bloom wrote wisely, but perhaps not too well. Still, as far as writerly goals go, he will be someone continually debated for at least a generation--far longer than the half a year a good man may be remembered, according to Hamlet. Harold Bloom probably would smile at that. --- * As a matter of principle, I believe Naomi Wolf--and, let's be honest: A crusty old white guy who believes in the unfailing superiority of the white West as a cultural zenith not thinking women are objects for his use? Yeah, not very likely. ** Easiest example: Benny boy argued (with a straight face no less) that people on the coast shouldn't worry about climate change and rising sea levels because they can "just sell their houses" and move elsewhere. Sell them, I suppose, to Aquaman, right Ben? I haven't seen the new Joker movie--in part because, as I'm writing this, it's not yet released, but more than that is it doesn't interest me. Not only is it rated R (not a deal breaker for me, but certainly an indication that I need to make a more educated decision if I were to want to see it), but the story of the Joker from which, I take it, much of the film derives its inspiration is a graphic novel that has heavy emphasis on the graphic part. I've flipped through it and…yeah, it's not for me, I think. (I mean, seriously: Who wants to read a hyperviolent story about a killer clown?) And though the early reviews are definitely mixed--well-made movie that ultimately says nothing is what one chap on the radio said this morning--there's no doubt that the film has caused some reflection and conversation. Much like Game of Thrones, I can appreciate how these quasi-polemic texts--even if it's full of content that I don't want to see--can generate debate and worthwhile considerations. That, I think, is really worthwhile. To go along with this, I saw an article that deserves a read. It's a bit long, but Wilkinson's analysis is really thought-provoking. She doesn't spend a lot of time calling out the bed-wetters whose lives are so devoid of purpose that threatening critics of a movie they haven't been able to see seems to be the best use of their time, though she certainly would be justified in making an article exclusively like that. Fandoms are a peculiar thing; belonging (in the unofficial way in which anyone belongs to a fandom) to a handful of eclectic pieces, I can assert that being able to enjoy a thing on its own levels and for what it is can be enjoyable. So, too, can the feeling of belonging that a mutually shared interest provides. That is to say, I get where fans are coming from when they want to defend the art with which they've cultivated their identities. But Wilkinson's piece is about more than that, including the tricky balance of how art is massively influential yet somehow held guiltless for crimes done in its name. Neither violent movies nor violent video games cause real-life violence, but that doesn't mean that art is amoral. It does affect people--otherwise, we probably wouldn't worry about it. I think to my own feelings about Hamlet (and Hamlet) and I know that the art of Shakespeare can definitely make a difference in how a person feels. Wilkinson brings up a number of good points throughout her essay, but there are two that I'd like to focus on. First: [I]f Joker engenders sympathy for the devil, so to speak, then it’s well within critics’ and audience’s rights to call it out and decry its moral bankruptcy if they think that’s bad. This made me sit up a bit straighter. I've been reading Areopagitica with my CE class students this term, and it's put me on a months-long Milton buzz (though I feel like we didn't wrestle with the text nearly enough). Not only is Areopagitica pertinent to what we're looking at here (licensing, not censorship, is Milton's bugbear, but the idea of stifling content is significant in our day just as it was when he wrote the pamphlet), but so is Paradise Lost. When Wilkinson writes about a right to call out the "moral bankruptcy" of a piece of text that "engenders sympathy for the devil", then there's a major question about what to do about Paradise Lost. I think of Blake's comment about how "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it" and how charismatic, charming, convincing, and conniving Milton's Satan is. I've had plenty of students admit that they really like him as a character--and, stripped of the religious context that Milton was expecting his readers to bring with them (indeed, could not, I think, imagine a world without, despite his prodigious powers of imagination), Satan is the most interesting and sympathetic character of the whole poem. The life that infuses Paradise Lost's first ten books peters out in the final two books, in no small part because Satan has finished his part of the story. Should there be a moral outcry over Paradise Lost on the same grounds as the valorization of violence that Joker purportedly generates? Clearly, Paradise Lost is old news: The poem was published in the mid-1600s, and though it has always been significant and in print, it's a stretch to call it fresh. (At least, in terms of its longevity. The ideas, I would argue, are perennial.) Joker is so new that we're buzzing about it before the general public could see it. But the fact is that if there's something pernicious in the art, it ought to be opposed…right? And that's where the second part of Wilkinson's piece, a thought found in the final paragraph, comes in: Safe art is usually bad art; then again, not all unsafe art is good art.
It reminds me of a tweet I saw somewhere in passing that was grousing about the "clean" comedy of BYUTV's comedy troupe, Studio C. The tweet said, in essence, "Just because something is 'clean' doesn't mean it's inoffensive." I think they were talking about a skit that relied on fat-shaming for its laughs. That's "safe" in the sense that, content-wise, it isn't edging into profanity or sexuality or even politics for its presentation. And though I've enjoyed bits from Studio C in the past, their comedy isn't really one that I follow. (I think I may not like skit-comedy, now that I think about it, since I don't find SNL funny either.) Anyway, the point I'm going for here is the idea that Wilkinson is bringing up: "Not all unsafe art is good art". We don't get absolutes in this part of life--we struggle to even define art in the first place, to say nothing of the modifiers good or bad. Earlier in her piece, Wilkinson mentions that she used to do film reviews for conservative Christian audiences. Being in that demographic (kind of), I knew exactly what she meant when she said that her audience cared more about the explicit content sections of the film than the overall point that the movie was trying to make. I think this is some of what I struggle with when I bring up (in a tired way) how It changed me for the better, despite the bad things inside of it. What I really like about Wilkinson's observations is that she's teasing out important nuances: The Passion of the Christ did quite well at the box office because of church groups going to see the film en masse, despite it being rated R for intense violence. And, as many people have mentioned within my hearing, a faithful adaptation of the Book of Mormon would also be rated R for violence, what with the decapitations and dismemberments that pepper the text. Oh, and the cannibalism, too. That's…gross. Yet I'm certain many members of the Church would not let that rating interfere with their participation in the art because it is doing something within it. Or maybe I'm wrong. That's what's been difficult for me to parse out lately: Perhaps we're just sublimating our desires for extreme content by justifying post hoc benefits. It almost feels the same to me as when I figure out why I should, say, buy a Moleskine Pen + Ellipse digital notebook: I could benefit from being able to digitize and store my hand-written notes. I would be able to produce a lot more content for my website and there's a lot of stuff that I write but don't share simply because I don't want to type up the same thoughts again. See? I really should buy this $200 pen! It's actually beneficial! Do we do that with the harsher, more titillating parts of art? Do we say that vicarious violence lets us indulge in the baser impulses without it damaging an actual person, so it's really okay? Are we unimpressed with the hypocrisy of decrying violence in our media yet saying that films like Saving Private Ryan are acceptable because it's historical violence--as if that film isn't a fantasy of its own, or that the on-screen violence somehow not violent because of its historical nature? Should we be carving out such exceptions? Part of me wants to say no, as then we have an actual standard of behavior that isn't bending to whims and changes of culture. But part of me thinks that suppression of feelings isn't wise and that we have to acknowledge the parts of our humanity that are just as much integral to us as loving and eating and breathing, but are much less flattering. How much of our darkness do we need to look at? Are we less moral because we've sheltered ourselves too much from the harshness of our natures? Maybe someday I'll be able to find answers to these questions…or, even better, answers that I can believe in. A month or so ago, I was teaching my annual pass through John Milton's Paradise Lost. I don't have the time to teach the entire poem, so we do a highlights version that I cobbled together, spending a lot of my time helping them to understand the notoriously tricky poetry so that they can see the underlying beauty and power of the epic masterpiece. The omissions harm their understanding of the poem--that's the nature of abridgments, sadly--but I think the overall process is exciting and, for a few students anyway, worth their time and effort. One of the things that startled me this year, though, was during our conversation about Eden. In Book IV of the poem, Milton describes a place unlike any fabled paradise. Here's an example of what Eden is not: […] Not that faire field Notice how it's not "that fair field/Of Enna," nor "that Nyseian Isle", nor "where Abassin Kings their issue guard". Milton's trying to invoke the supernal superlatives of Eden, a place so magnificent that it defies all of the old tales that have likewise tried to paint a paradisiacal world. The one time that Milton concedes that maybe the Ancients' version of a utopia is in line 249-251, where he says, Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde If true, only "here" in Eden would the stories of the Hesperian fruit--the golden apples that Jason and his Argonauts sought--have any accuracy*. Milton goes through intense descriptions of what Eden is, too, citing beautiful beaches, enormous rivers, and trees overladen with ripe-and-ready fruit to eat. The animals are all peaceful and labor to entertain the two humans who live there, with even (my personal favorite) "th' unwieldy Elephant/To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd/His Lithe Proboscis" (4.345-347). The place has entertainment, free and abundant and flavorful food, and no danger, fear, or worry. It is, indeed, a paradise. It is not static, either: The Garden of Eden grows and swells, with the verdure growing faster than Adam and Eve can tend to it, making their eternal task one to tame the Garden. It is for this reason that Eve looks forward to bearing children, as the additional hands will soon help to take care of the Garden. Later, Raphael (the affable angel sent by God to instruct Adam and Eve in the many areas of their ignorance) says, albeit with some conditionality, that the pair might be able to live until the […] time may come when men The concept is clear: Eden is the home of Mankind where, through the process of time, "men/With Angels may participate" and will, as it were, be wafted heavenward, made fit for the exquisite diet of the Heavenly Hosts. There is work, progress, entertainment, security, food, comfort, and companionship in the Garden of Eden. The Garden grows and changes, necessitating the efforts of the only humans in it until such time as greater numbers can tend to the place fully.
The place, frankly, sounds absolutely amazing. So you can imagine my surprise, then, when I asked the students about their feelings toward Eden and whether or not they wanted to live there, and the popular response--widely popular, if I remember correctly--was that "It would be too boring." "What?" I have to admit, I was caught flatfooted at this point. "You…you wouldn't want to live in Paradise?" "Well, what would we do?" "Watch the elephant writhe his proboscis, for one," I snapped back. "But we wouldn't grow or progress." "Yes! The Garden needs tending; you'd grow in your knowledge of husbandry." "Meh." I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, so I may be distorting some of what they wanted, but I walked away with the clear sense that they wouldn't want to live in Paradise because they wouldn't have enough things to do. (Others said they'd pass because they don't want to walk around naked all day, which I guess kind of makes sense, assuming we were dumped in there immediately, rather than having been born in the Garden and never knowing anything different.) They seemed pretty happy with the cost of this, too: In our lives we have disease, death, injustice, despair, sadness, famine, disparity, and an entire Pandora's box of woes--all of which are, apparently, preferable to the, I guess, greatest trial of all time: Being bored. I'd like to say that it's the "kids these days" who are so focused on the hedonistic pleasure of the digital age that makes them feel this way, but I'm not so certain. I've been teaching for eleven years now, and this is the first time I've seen such a commitment to, in Miltonic scholarship's parlance, postlapsarian reality. A lot of them, I feel, were operating on the Is/Ought fallacy, which would certainly explain their complacency. The thing that really gets me, though, is I know a great many of them--perhaps as much as 80-90% of the class--are Latter-day Saints, and a couple here or there are Christians. What, then, do they think heaven will be like? I mean, I know that my understanding of eschatology is pretty low, but isn't that, like, the whole point? An afterlife in which there's no disease, death, injustice, despair, sadness, famine, disparity…a paradise? Don't they want to go to heaven? "Heaven promises eternal progression**," I can hear someone saying (probably condescendingly, but that's because I'm feeling antagonized right now). Yeah. So does Milton's Paradise. The angels in Milton's heaven are some of the coolest creatures in all of literature. I'll have to talk about them some time. Becoming one of those--through an eternal process--would be amazing. Not only that, but there's a lot of other things to experience and explore inside the Garden. Once that were finished--a process that would take years, I daresay--then you could start over again. It would have grown and changed…there would always be something new to do and discover. And did I mention you're safe, fed, and free of death or disease? But, hey…there's no Netflix or even Wi-Fi. No wonder they'd rather live in this version of reality. --- * This actually kind of makes me laugh. Milton couldn't sneeze without it being a classical allusion of some sort, and he has such a soft spot in his heart that he can't fully-throatedly disavow the classics. Of all the allusions I've quoted, the one where the Ancients maybe got it right was in Ovid and it wasn't really Hesperia where the apples were, but instead Eden; Ovid, being pagan, failed to realize the Christian source of his own stories. ** I can also hear someone insisting that Adam and Eve couldn't have kids, so the whole thing is moot anyway. That point doesn't stand: I'm talking about Milton and his ideas in the poem: In it, not only is it abundantly clear that Adam and Eve aren't "living in a sin of omission" by not having children, they fully knew and understood that Eve was the vessel through which their children would come. Going against generations of theologians, Milton (and he wasn't alone in doing this) asserted that Original Sin was not one of sexual encounters. I think Milton was baffled that a married couple could be sinful by having sex. For him, there may be a bit of the concept of digestion--that consuming the fruit--was the capital-s Sin, but his primary interpretation is disobedience. It was less the act (eating) and more the violation (there's one rule to follow) that seems to fuel Milton's view. That the Book of Mormon lays out the double-bind shifts theological gears in all sorts of ways--ways that a footnote can't really tackle--and, I think for Milton at least, in a way that inherently undoes the point of the Garden of Eden. That isn't to say that Milton wasn't in favor of the Fortunate Fall interpretation: You can see some brief words to that effect coming from Eve at the end of Book XII. I believe that he'd have reservations about the Mormonic interpretation is what I'm trying to say. Today's lesson in Elders' Quorum was about reconcilement, which we treated as a matter between people. That is, how do we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints react to offenses and mitigate the effects of when we inadvertently offend. It's a not infrequent topic, especially in a Church concerned with membership retention. Still, I ended up listening with less than half an ear as the word reconcile is one that does something different to me than, I'd guess, most people. See, back when I was a teenager, I had two musical interests: Third wave ska (with some punk thrown in for fun) and Dave Matthews Band. The two aren't particularly comparable, but hey…who can ever really justify the ways of their music tastes to men? And, in my defense, I liked the energy of the former and the technical abilities of the latter. (If you ever hear me play the guitar, you'll hear both influences heavily in the way that I approach music.) Anyway, one of the things about the Dave Matthews Band back in the nineties is that they encouraged their fans to record the live shows, to share and collect the unique versions that came out of each of their concerts, as it were. (I don't know if they still do that nowadays, as I've stopped listening to their stuff after the early aughts.) It wasn't as easy to swap that information back then as it is now. After all, high speed internet was for schools, colleges, and businesses that could afford it. I was still on a slow dial-up connection (56k baby!), so I couldn't really download those songs in any real quantity. Fortunately for me, one of the guys in my home ward was also a DMB fan, so he had a small collection of these "bootleg" songs. He burned me a CD so that I could enjoy the alternative versions. One of them, which later became the song "Bartender" on the Busted Stuff album, was called "Reconcile Our Differences"*. You can see the lyrics here, which are important for this particular post because they differ so much from the eventual "official" version of the song.** "Bartender" has some similar themes that clearly started in "Reconcile Our Differences", but since I listened to the bootleg version long before I saw the fully produced album, I often think of "Reconcile" as the superior version to "Bartender". In the song, Matthews sings about what remains of a person when life runs out. Though he drifts over a number of different possibilities, the section that always stood out to me was this part: We reconcile, our differences Matthews is a fairly irreverent person--I remember reading an interview back in '02 or thereabouts where he said he believed in God, but not that He had a plan or anything--so the particular image of a heavenly swimming pool isn't too far afield for the man. Nevertheless, I'm struck by its mundanity, especially as I consider the idea by Montesquieu: "If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides." Whatever the eternal nature of the attributes of God, there's always a contemporary insistence on how He thinks and behaves, one that shifts as time and cultures march forward. I once asked if God wears a tie; why would I not also be curious if He has a swimming pool? But it isn't the swimming pool that really gets to me: It's the whole verse. If we can reconcile our differences, could God and the devil? Today is John Milton's 410th birthday, and in honor of that--and because these types of questions push me in this direction…and because it's actually an accident I did this--I looked up the beginning of Book IV in Paradise Lost. This, you'll remember, is the moment when Satan arrives on Earth and has a deep, honest conversation with himself about what he's about to do. He asks some questions that…well, you should read it for yourself (starting on line 32). It's powerful stuff. So, instead of paying attention to my peers as they discussed not being offended when other people are jerks, I went through a close reading of Milton's masterpiece. It raises all sorts ideas in my mind, but the one that I'm always most struck by whenever I read that part is whether or not God would forgive Satan. Or, maybe, could. Both possibilities are fascinating, as I think both provide different ways of reading both Satan and God. If He would forgive Satan, I think it would be along lines like those that Satan outlines in the poem: […] is there no place In this sense, the price to get back into God's good graces are too high for Satan to countenance. God would; Satan wouldn't. This becomes less about God and more about Satan, as the metaphorical ball is in Satan's court. By the end of the Satanic soliloquy, we get this bit: "For never can true reconcilement grow/Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep" (4.98-99).
And that's one of the saddest parts, in my mind, about what's going on with Satan in Paradise Lost. He has come to a conclusion that "all his good prov'd ill in me" (4.48) and, in the case of God's grace, "Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,/To me alike, it deals eternal woe" (4.69-70). Regardless of God's love or hatred, Satan feels the same pierced wounds. If love feels like hatred, then how does one feel love? But what about the could part of the supposition? Could God reconcile His differences with Satan? Can He walk "on and on" with the devil, let His fallen angel Lucifer into his swimming pool? There's a bit of a double bind here, because if we argue God can't do that, then He isn't the omnipotent being He's supposed to be. Some might argue a won't that's strong enough to be a can't, though that might only be a semantic pivot. Here's some set up to the question that I ended my own exploration with during quorum meeting, and I'll admit that it comes from a uniquely Mormonic point of view: In Mormonism***, there's an understanding that before birth, all current humans had a soul residing in Heaven with God. Therefore, the human family antedates our current world. The extension of that is everyone--all of the angels, all of us, and even Christ Himself--are connected in a familial bond. Lucifer, then, is also part of the celestial family before he was evicted. In that sense, Lucifer is a spiritual sibling to everyone on Earth. And that leads to my question: Does God miss His son Lucifer? For some reason, I'd like to think that He does. --- * Despite my tepid efforts, I couldn't find a version of the song with the lyrics I've linked above. The song's tune is, as I said, on the Busted Stuff album. It's a good one, and the new lyrics in "Bartender" are also thought-provoking. I'd recommend checking it out if you like his style of music. ** At the time, Busted Stuff wasn't even produced--there was, as I seem to recall, a bit of a falling out with the band's producer that led to a bunch of the songs being scrapped--so I listened to the in-the-works music (called, alternatively, The Summer So Far and The Lillywhite Sessions), which had "Bartender" in basically its final form. *** I think there's a difference between teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormonism; hence my usage of the word. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Earlier, I wrote about how I don't talk about Milton enough. The problems of teaching a topic--so much so that it's heavy on my mind even well after school is out--and then coming home and trying to say something new is also familiar to frequent readers. Today, however, a feeling that has been crystalizing in my mind over the past week or two has finally come to the fore and I wanted to explore it before it slips away from me.
I think that John Milton and I are cut from the same cloth. Okay, that sounds immensely arrogant, so hear me out before you decide I'm suffering from delusions of grandeur. Tracing Milton's life here, some four hundred years plus down the line from where we live, it's hard to believe there was ever a doubt of Milton's greatness. His power, authority, poetry, and presence are continually felt. He made an impact on the English language itself, to say nothing of almost single-handedly shaping the way that we in the West view Satan--in a similar way to how Dante has shaped the way we view Hell. There are vestiges of Milton in Mormonism (which I do view as different from the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), even, and--for me and many like me--an endless source of insight, questions, and treasures embedded within Paradise Lost most pointedly, but all of his work in a broad sense. So to think that, in the mid-1630s, this buttoned-up Puritan was crippled with self-doubt and concern about his resolution to be, not just a poet, but the poet of the people of England…well, I guess it's hard to believe that he could ever doubt his future fame. But in 1637, when he had finally published his one piece of drama, a masque performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634--a piece we now colloquially call Comus--Milton was still preoccupied with the embarrassing goal of his life: To make something worth remembering. Charles Diodati, a friend to the young Milton and, in some ways (I would argue), a man whose premature death helped to form John Milton into the poet-prophet he would eventually become, received a letter from Milton in that selfsame year, 1637. In it, Milton writes this: Listen, Diodati, but in secret, lest I blush; and let me talk to you grandiloquently for a while. You ask what I am thinking? So help me God, an immortality of fame!" Even to his dear, close friend, Milton struggled to give voice to the calling he felt certain he had received--his vocation (in its more original sense of the word)--to become a poetic voice of such power that his country would never "knowingly let [it] die". He says "in secret, lest [he] blush" about the audacity of his desires: To be famous and, thereby, be immortal. I don't feel I have the same vocation as Milton. I certainly am far too simple a mind to even think about dreaming to follow in Milton's footsteps--aside from the fact that there's really just no market for epic poetry, I don't think my poetic chops would ever be able to approach the worst line that Milton ever blotted--so the scale is smaller in my case. But Milton's conviction--wavering though it may have been, particularly when the needs of his country interjected themselves into his life, diverting him from his poetic path in order to answer a patriotic call--was that he had a grand purpose, a vision that only he could share. And despite that particular conviction, he still doubted, still wondered, still proclaimed his unreadiness and unworthiness to tackle such a large task. In this Milton and I differ quite a bit, though: His ambition kept him motivated. And maybe I have some, too, but I'm also ready to settle and slow down, to be content with what I have. For example, if I were to become blind, I feel like I would probably spiral into a deep depression from which I would never be able to fully leave. I don't know if I would be able to convince myself to continue to write, to create my own version of worlds and stories--and I have twenty-first century tools with which I could accommodate myself. In order to write his later works, most notably Paradise Lost, Milton had an amanuensis (someone who would take dictation and act as a personal aide) to relieve his poetic (prophetic?) lines, a man who would "milk" (Milton's phrase) the blind poet of the lines he'd composed to himself at night. I don't know if I have that much passion inside of me, nor do I have the confidence that anyone would be interested in reading what I had to say if I did push through that difficulty. And that kind of makes me wonder what kind of passion I truly have. There are armless artists, deaf musicians, and blind writers. But I doubt that I would be able to put myself into that category, were my life not so blessed and privileged. So what I identify with is the yearning, the worrying, the desire that Milton harbored throughout almost all of his life. He finished Paradise Lost and its less famous sequel, Paradise Regain'd, in the last few years of his life. He wasn't quite at the level of Dante, who died shortly after finishing The Comedy (which only later generations would call Divine), so Milton was able to enjoy some of the reception of what turned out to be the literal culmination of a life of work, study, prayer, and expectation. Am I charting through waters already sounded by Milton? Am I spending my "early" life in a constant state of preparation and bated breath, hoping that something will germinate and then bloom in a way that future generations--or, perhaps, even this generation--might find worthy of keeping and remembering? Or do I have to wait until my twilight years and the dimming of my faculties before I can approach something that looks like success? And do I have the patience for that? |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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