Reviews and News:
A flawed but fascinating history of the modern world.
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Michael Dirda on Victorian ghost stories: “Anthologies of English ghost stories frequently begin with Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ (1852), in part because it provides a particularly apt example of what the Victorians liked in a tale of specters and revenants.”
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Walden, the video game: “Instead of offering the thrills of stealing, violence and copious cursing, the new video game, based on Thoreau’s 19th-century retreat in Massachusetts, will urge players to collect arrowheads, cast their fishing poles into a tranquil pond, buy penny candies and perhaps even jot notes in a journal — all while listening to music, nature sounds and excerpts from the author’s meditations.”
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An alternatingly “bleak” and “hilarious” adaptation of Candide: “Equal parts light opera and brutal savaging thereof, Candide—with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics primarily by Richard Wilbur (other contributors include Stephen Sondheim and Dorothy Parker)—derives most of its bitter humor from the juxtaposition of its painfully idealistic characters and the increasingly horrifying nature of their situations. Instead of love triangles, devious servants, and comic misunderstandings—classic staples of the genre—we have war, slavery, genocide, and (plenty of) rape. And Candide and his plucky compatriots sing hopeful ditties through it all. Voltaire would have been proud.”
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Mark Mason reviews Chris Paling’s Reading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library.
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Were the early Christian fathers all pacifists? No: “Nowhere in the writings of the fathers…do we find an aversion to the use of military force as such. Indeed, Tertullian (c. 155–240), ultimately one of the staunchest opponents of Christian military service, actually began his public life celebrating such service.”
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Essay of the Day:
In The Atlantic, Matteo Fagotto tells the story of Father Columba Stewart, an American monk who “has spent the past 13 years roaming from the Balkans to the Middle East in an effort to save Christian and Islamic manuscripts threatened by wars, theft, weather—and, lately, the Islamic State”:
“‘Given what’s happened in the last years since the rise of ISIS, it’s very clear that things are really endangered,’ Stewart said. ‘It’s imperative to make sure that these manuscripts are safe, because we don’t know what will happen to them.’
“As ISIS militants have destroyed countless artifacts, Stewart has attempted to counter them by working with Christian and Muslim communities in hotspots such as Iraq and Syria. He has trained local teams to photograph centuries-old books with the help of the non-profit organization he directs, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML). Based out of Saint John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota, HMML is dedicated to preserving endangered manuscripts on microfilm and in digital format. So far, it has managed to photograph more than 140,000 complete manuscripts, for a total of more than 50,000,000 handwritten pages, according to the organization’s website.
“But digitization is only the last stage in a slow and sometimes frustrating process. Getting in touch with the various religious orders, cultural organizations, and families that hold manuscript collections can require years of traveling and a lot of diplomacy aimed at gaining trust—with no guarantee of a positive outcome.
“Many of the communities Stewart approaches have been scarred by years of war, persecution or displacement, and are wary of outsiders. Some are especially skeptical about granting Westerners access to cultural treasures, given the tens of thousands of manuscripts looted during the colonial period and now housed in various museums and libraries around Europe. This is where Stewart’s reputation as a monk comes into play.
“‘Everybody knows about the Benedictines—manuscripts and learning, this is part of our identity, a brand which is somehow universal,’ he said. Indeed, his involvement with manuscripts began almost accidentally when, in 2003, he was asked to join an HMML preparatory field trip to Lebanon due to his monastic connections. ‘Being a monk puts me in a very different category. People understand I am not representing a big business or an imperialist cultural agency.'”
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Image: Alsace
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Poem: Simon Armitage, “Privet”
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