hallow's weaning
I. How to Think
Ah, yes. You, rational animal, you and your thinking conundrums. You, in this unthinking age. Us, and our Twittered-consciousness. There's a writer who wants to help. His newest book is called How to Think, which is a silly title, but Alan Jacobs is a consistently sane voice in a time of insanity. A professor at Baylor University, he's a public intellectual's intellectual - more influential with influencers than the wide public, perhaps. Here's a really good interview he did with Emma Green at The Atlantic this last week. Come for this quote:
I think the primary moral fault of the left is a kind of smug contemptuousness toward people who don’t agree. And I think that’s a bad fault. But the primary fault of the right at this moment in America is wrath. I worry about the consequences of wrath more than I worry about the consequences of contemptuous smugness.
Stay for this quote:
I also want to be aware of the ways in which a plea for civility can be a way of consolidating power.. . . I want to remember that and not chastise people for being uncivil when they have what Martin Luther King Jr. called “legitimate and unavoidable impatience.” I do want to promote civility, but I want to promote it more by example than by lecturing people on how they can be more civil.
Bonus: A piece in the WSJ about being Christian (and an Evangelical at that, egads!) as well as an academic: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-evangelicals-and-academics-talk-to-each-other-1508510502
II. Oh, Ship
Ship routes are a beautiful thing, and this map plays in real time.
(via The New Atlantis)
III. John McPhee...
...has a lot of good things to say on writing in his breezy, brilliant new book, Draft No. 4, none better than this:
"The lead - like the title - should be a flashlight that shines down into the story." Openings in fiction surely have a similar function, only the way I've heard it said is, "The work teaches you how to read it."
Where I find myself wondering about McPhee is in the difference between fiction and nonfiction; namely, the question of style as substance. His advice continues: "A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons, or whistles like a train but because it is absolute to what follows." This is probably advice best headed by young/new writers of any variety. Perhaps especially fiction writers, except the very best of fiction always seems to depend on voice almost as much as content. Even the fuddy-duddy-favorites of my youth, Tolkien and Lewis - who decried the modernist flair for how over what - wrote pretty great prose, and with a distinctness not unlike McPhee's. Seeing clearly, their brilliance was a matter of selection; they choose what to highlight perfectly (and differently, of course). A faun with parcels. A hobbit who's salient worry is his forgotten handkerchief.
IV. Things You Know Without Reading
Some book titled Against Empathy that's been getting press is not actually a book against empathy, which shouldn't be surprising. This is the misdirection of marketing, including social media self-marketing; also, however, a problem in academic scholarship, where the burden of "original contribution" drives people to minor, unimpressive deviations that are often repackaging known realities. Anyway, this article against Against Empathy, is worth your time:
"[This] is simply a book about why moral decisions should be based on reason rather than emotion...a far less controversial position than 'empathy is bad.'" https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/empathy-probably-a-good-thing
V. Opinion
None. Have a good weekend!