Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Poetic Shutdown
As lonely iambs roam cold, empty streets,
The sky is red with burning anapests,
And fluttering sonnets bewail their fate,
Adrift past barricades of turgid prose.
Raise high the Red Editorial Pen!
Lift up your tattered hypermonosyllables!
Let slip the hamsters of metaphorical war,
And upon this overdue library charge slip
Cry "God! for Canada, coffee, and blank verse!"
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
A man may think himself a king, a god,
The master of his mind, if not his soul,
But bacteria know he’s a mess of sod,
Often enthroned on The Sacred White Bowl.
mhall46184@aol.com
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
A man may think himself a king, a god,
The master of his mind, if not his soul,
But bacteria know he’s a mess of sod,
Often enthroned on The Sacred White Bowl.
Autumn - a Variant
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Autumn – a variant
In some confusion, laughing through the leaves,
Wild, giddy Autumn, her hair disheveled,
Happily dances sweet October in,
Unsure if the morning calls for a frost
Or should stray sunbeams whisper through the clouds.
Autumn is the golden antiphon to Spring;
She vests herself among the morning mists;
Her favorite flowers are her coronet,
Wild, wanton flowers, yellow and white and gold,
To celebrate the liturgies of time.
The seasons-turning coverts sigh in the breeze
As Autumn teaches each leaf how to fly:
A delicate descent, and then a brief repose
Until a giggling little breeze skips through
To cue chaotic minuets, and so
Like faeries laughing on a moonlit night
Leaves scatter and skitter across the leas
Across the lanes, across the lawns to lead
The drifting months through Advent’s silences,
And finally to the joys of Christmastide.
Mhall46184@aol.com
Autumn – a variant
In some confusion, laughing through the leaves,
Wild, giddy Autumn, her hair disheveled,
Happily dances sweet October in,
Unsure if the morning calls for a frost
Or should stray sunbeams whisper through the clouds.
Autumn is the golden antiphon to Spring;
She vests herself among the morning mists;
Her favorite flowers are her coronet,
Wild, wanton flowers, yellow and white and gold,
To celebrate the liturgies of time.
The seasons-turning coverts sigh in the breeze
As Autumn teaches each leaf how to fly:
A delicate descent, and then a brief repose
Until a giggling little breeze skips through
To cue chaotic minuets, and so
Like faeries laughing on a moonlit night
Leaves scatter and skitter across the leas
Across the lanes, across the lawns to lead
The drifting months through Advent’s silences,
And finally to the joys of Christmastide.
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis mentions that the elderly tutor who helped him prep for his university admissions exams was an atheist who remained such a dour Ulsterman that on Sunday mornings he wore his best suit for working in the yard.
Similarly, a recent movement among atheists, a movement perhaps enhanced by a gentle softener, is to gather on Sundays to kinda / sorta play at church. These Sunday assemblies are becoming popular, even to the point of mega-not-churches.
One wonders what exactly one does at an atheist kinda / sorta church. Does the service begin with the traditional “I will go to the altar of me, me, me?”
A really scary matter for the children of atheists is that the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents would be read with approval, with perhaps a round of applause for Herod’s freedom of choice. Following the reading, the assembly sings “Ave Margaret Sanger.”
Other atheist hymns and carols might include:
The Old Rugged Hammer-and-Sickle
How Great I Art
Good Comrade Wenceslaus
Nothing We Have Heard on High
Nothing Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Go Tell Nothing on the Mountain
At That First Wine-and-Cheese Tasting
O Come All Ye Faithless
O Little Town of Silicon Valley
O Go, O Go, Emmanuel
There is a Health-Care Plan in Gilead
We Gather Together to Ask a 504C Blessing
Amazing Graceless
Play-Doh® of Ages
This Little Energy-Efficient Light of Mine
Shall we gather at the Sewage Recycling Plant?
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
I Heard the Shopping Carts on Christmas Day
Joyful, Joyful, I Adore Me
Away in an Abortion Clinic
Now Thank we all our National Security Agency
Just a Closer Walk with my 4G Connection
All Hail the Power of Hubris’ Name
These Forty Days of Self-indulgence
If the atheist not-a-church thing becomes fashionable, will cowboy atheists and trucker atheists agree that they don’t worship the same God who doesn’t exist? Will rural atheists disdain town atheists? Will some atheists not worship God in Latin, while others not worship God in Greek? Will atheists argue whether L. Ron Hubbard should be read in Elizabethan English or in modern English? Will atheists abstain from food and drink an hour before not taking Communion?
That anyone would gather to worship as a way to deny worship is curious. People who don’t believe in Klingons don’t form associations denying Klingons, and those who don’t believe in fairies and pixie dust don’t put up posters desperately trying to explain how their lives are full, rich, and rewarding without accepting fairies and pixie dust.
But a group of lonely people who have no place to go on Sunday – isn’t that pretty much what those fashionable, overpriced coffee shops are for?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis mentions that the elderly tutor who helped him prep for his university admissions exams was an atheist who remained such a dour Ulsterman that on Sunday mornings he wore his best suit for working in the yard.
Similarly, a recent movement among atheists, a movement perhaps enhanced by a gentle softener, is to gather on Sundays to kinda / sorta play at church. These Sunday assemblies are becoming popular, even to the point of mega-not-churches.
One wonders what exactly one does at an atheist kinda / sorta church. Does the service begin with the traditional “I will go to the altar of me, me, me?”
A really scary matter for the children of atheists is that the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents would be read with approval, with perhaps a round of applause for Herod’s freedom of choice. Following the reading, the assembly sings “Ave Margaret Sanger.”
Other atheist hymns and carols might include:
The Old Rugged Hammer-and-Sickle
How Great I Art
Good Comrade Wenceslaus
Nothing We Have Heard on High
Nothing Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Go Tell Nothing on the Mountain
At That First Wine-and-Cheese Tasting
O Come All Ye Faithless
O Little Town of Silicon Valley
O Go, O Go, Emmanuel
There is a Health-Care Plan in Gilead
We Gather Together to Ask a 504C Blessing
Amazing Graceless
Play-Doh® of Ages
This Little Energy-Efficient Light of Mine
Shall we gather at the Sewage Recycling Plant?
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
I Heard the Shopping Carts on Christmas Day
Joyful, Joyful, I Adore Me
Away in an Abortion Clinic
Now Thank we all our National Security Agency
Just a Closer Walk with my 4G Connection
All Hail the Power of Hubris’ Name
These Forty Days of Self-indulgence
If the atheist not-a-church thing becomes fashionable, will cowboy atheists and trucker atheists agree that they don’t worship the same God who doesn’t exist? Will rural atheists disdain town atheists? Will some atheists not worship God in Latin, while others not worship God in Greek? Will atheists argue whether L. Ron Hubbard should be read in Elizabethan English or in modern English? Will atheists abstain from food and drink an hour before not taking Communion?
That anyone would gather to worship as a way to deny worship is curious. People who don’t believe in Klingons don’t form associations denying Klingons, and those who don’t believe in fairies and pixie dust don’t put up posters desperately trying to explain how their lives are full, rich, and rewarding without accepting fairies and pixie dust.
But a group of lonely people who have no place to go on Sunday – isn’t that pretty much what those fashionable, overpriced coffee shops are for?
-30-
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”
- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts
1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”
- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts
1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.
-30-
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Texas French New Wave Voting
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Texas French New Wave Voting
To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
- Louis L'Amour (www.lifequoteslib.com/authors/louis_l_amour)
Voting in Texas remains a lonely experience.
The new state requirement for an identification card with a photograph in order to vote was regarded by many as a solution to illegal voting by wild hordes of Those People. Others opposed the requirement as an attempt by meanies to suppress poor but honest Tom Joad just struggling day-to-day to scratch a living out of his new wide-screen television.
In the event, neither Tom Joad nor many other folks voted on state constitutional amendments last week. Perhaps Tom was too busy listening to the fat boys on A.M. radio to drive his Model A Ford to the polls (why do we call them polls?) while carrying his Texas driving license with his photograph on it.
Texas citizens who wish to withdraw from the noise and busy-ness and demands of job, family, and society for a day of solitude need not resort to a monastic retreat; they can volunteer to serve as election judges or poll watchers. As a polling official one can meditate upon the mysteries of the Rosary, read Keats’ Endymion, knit sweaters for the grandchildren, or write another chapter of that still unfinished book, all in perfect peace and quiet. The only sounds will be the air-conditioning cycling on and off and perhaps a fellow official making a fresh pot of coffee. Even the Desert Fathers would envy voting officials in Texas their solitude.
Similarly, a Texan who wants only a few minutes alone can do so by voting.
Imagine voting in Texas as a scene from an art-house movie – sorry, film; “movie” is so plebeian – in grainy black-and-white: the wind sighs across a desolate landscape as the camera pans slowly from empty prairie to an apparently abandoned town. Cue the tumbleweeds. Close-up of an unpainted, sun-weathered wooden front. Offscreen, footsteps are heard on the gravel. Since the auteur is influenced by French New Wave, this goes on for a long, long time. This is, like, y’know, art, and, like, stuff. Film, not movie. Finally, the unseen steps pause, and a hand reaches for the doorknob. After a long pause the hand pushes the door open. The rusty hinges squeak, and old spider webs, long still, are disturbed by the moving air. The camera, assuming the point-of-view of the still-unseen owner of the hand, moves into a room whose darkness is intermittently broken by shafts of light from the windows. This could be symbolic of the protagonist’s internal conflict between good and evil, or it could reflect the fact that the filmmaker has seen High Noon too many times. To the viewer’s right, shadows resolve themselves into people sitting silently in chairs. Do they symbolize Death (think Ingmar Bergman)? Do they symbolize Redemption-with-a-capital-R? Do they symbolize the bourgeoisie? Do they symbolize bureaucratic / hierarchic obscurantism as in Franz Kafka’s Das Schloss? Does their silence symbolize existential despair? No, they’re the election officials, and their brief silence reflects only their surprise that a Texan showed up to vote.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Texas French New Wave Voting
To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
- Louis L'Amour (www.lifequoteslib.com/authors/louis_l_amour)
Voting in Texas remains a lonely experience.
The new state requirement for an identification card with a photograph in order to vote was regarded by many as a solution to illegal voting by wild hordes of Those People. Others opposed the requirement as an attempt by meanies to suppress poor but honest Tom Joad just struggling day-to-day to scratch a living out of his new wide-screen television.
In the event, neither Tom Joad nor many other folks voted on state constitutional amendments last week. Perhaps Tom was too busy listening to the fat boys on A.M. radio to drive his Model A Ford to the polls (why do we call them polls?) while carrying his Texas driving license with his photograph on it.
Texas citizens who wish to withdraw from the noise and busy-ness and demands of job, family, and society for a day of solitude need not resort to a monastic retreat; they can volunteer to serve as election judges or poll watchers. As a polling official one can meditate upon the mysteries of the Rosary, read Keats’ Endymion, knit sweaters for the grandchildren, or write another chapter of that still unfinished book, all in perfect peace and quiet. The only sounds will be the air-conditioning cycling on and off and perhaps a fellow official making a fresh pot of coffee. Even the Desert Fathers would envy voting officials in Texas their solitude.
Similarly, a Texan who wants only a few minutes alone can do so by voting.
Imagine voting in Texas as a scene from an art-house movie – sorry, film; “movie” is so plebeian – in grainy black-and-white: the wind sighs across a desolate landscape as the camera pans slowly from empty prairie to an apparently abandoned town. Cue the tumbleweeds. Close-up of an unpainted, sun-weathered wooden front. Offscreen, footsteps are heard on the gravel. Since the auteur is influenced by French New Wave, this goes on for a long, long time. This is, like, y’know, art, and, like, stuff. Film, not movie. Finally, the unseen steps pause, and a hand reaches for the doorknob. After a long pause the hand pushes the door open. The rusty hinges squeak, and old spider webs, long still, are disturbed by the moving air. The camera, assuming the point-of-view of the still-unseen owner of the hand, moves into a room whose darkness is intermittently broken by shafts of light from the windows. This could be symbolic of the protagonist’s internal conflict between good and evil, or it could reflect the fact that the filmmaker has seen High Noon too many times. To the viewer’s right, shadows resolve themselves into people sitting silently in chairs. Do they symbolize Death (think Ingmar Bergman)? Do they symbolize Redemption-with-a-capital-R? Do they symbolize the bourgeoisie? Do they symbolize bureaucratic / hierarchic obscurantism as in Franz Kafka’s Das Schloss? Does their silence symbolize existential despair? No, they’re the election officials, and their brief silence reflects only their surprise that a Texan showed up to vote.
-30-
Dostoyevsky at the Garage Sale
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dostoyevsky at the Garage Sale
Commerce in used goods has lost its aura of shame and has become acceptable in our culture, and possibly constitutes a significant part of our declining economy. We are told by the propagandists that American manufacturing is on the rise, but the displays of shoddy foreign manufactures suggests to the consumer that this might not be so. Can an economy really be based on selling insurance, snakefingers, drugs, and questionable information to each other?
After World War II this nation was the world’s greatest manufacturer, and in the late 1950s one only with difficulty found a product made anywhere else. In our time, though, if one wants an American-made hammer, shirt, camera, dinner service, pocket knife, or toy train, he no longer shops downtown (which no longer exists) or from the Montgomery Ward catalogue (which no longer exists), but probably at that modern American custom, the Saturday morning garage sale (which seldom features a garage).
In the past year y’r ‘umble scrivener has found: two wagon wrenches (aka monkey wrenches), a Kodak 33mm Pony camera, a made-in-Chicago metal pencil sharpener, several pocket knives, a cast-iron rope pulley for a water well, a handsaw, and any number of hand tools and power tools, all American made, not as investments but mostly for their immediate utility (the camera is on a shelf and the handsaw is Miz Bee-ish fence art).
At a recent Friends of the Kirbyville Public Library book sale I found a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, published in 1938 by The Heritage Press. The book is hardbound in boards and linen, measures about seven by ten inches, is translated by Constance Garnett, and features engravings by a refugee German, Fritz Eichenberg. The paper is not particularly heavy but it is well-made (after all, it’s into its eighth decade) and cream-colored, which, with the large text, is easy on the eyes.
This book was not manufactured as an objet d’art; it was meant to be read, and I’m reading it. Most good stories are about redemption, and thus civilization, and with Dostoyevsky the concept of redemption can be cubed and squared. After all, who among us has ever faced a firing squad? Happily, the Czar sent a just-in-time reprieve (which no Communist would ever do), and Dostoyevsky spent the following ten years in a penal colony (which, again, is not a common experience among us). The man definitely had something to say, unlike our modern I, I, I, me, me, me writers whose focus is upon their hurt feelings and their scripted outrage.
And George Macy had something to say too: in the middle of a terrible economic Depression (we’ll never know how many died in those grim times), with the ascendancy of Communism, National Socialism, and whatever ism one might apply to Japan (who once again has begun coveting Chinese land), Mr. Macy chose to say that civilization will go on, even under food rationing and air-raids. Mr. Macy commissioned the printing of books, farming out the acquisition of papers and boards and cloth, typesetting, printing, and binding to various small companies throughout the country, and selling them under the imprint of The Heritage Club. These books sold for a dollar or so, a fabulous sum at the time, and anyone who bought a book had to think, plan, and save for such a rare event. Mr. Macy said that civilization should go on, and whoever bought this particular volume in 1938 probably skipped some meals so that civilization would indeed continue.
The Easton Press (http://www.eastonpress.com/) is the successor to the several Macy companies and other publishers, and continues to publish books, some to be read and some apparently merely for display.
Their edition of Crime and Punishment is bound in leather, and is available for $64.90. In terms of purchasing power, that is much, much less than the dollar edition of 1938.
Even so, one is not sure that the sellers know what the book is. The advertisement reads: “Impoverished and desperate, a young man is driven to the murder of a loathsome pawnbroker - and finds himself trapped in a hell of paranoia and terror. Dostoevsky's enthralling novel is, at once, an extraordinary psychological study, a harrowing mystery and a brilliant detective thriller.” The first sentence is good, a brief synopsis, but while details in the second sentence are correct, overall, the point of the story is missed, and that is the theme of redemption. Dostoyevsky is a Christian writer, not Agatha Christie or a scriptwriter for the BBC, and he is always about salvation.
Curiously, the “Sandglass” insert of 1938 makes the same mistake, referring to Crime and Punishment as “one of the great psychological studies.”
Well, Dostoyevsky knew his own book was about salvation, not about psychology, and certainly not about sustainability and greenness.
I wonder if someone will come across Dostoyevsky’s pocket knife at a garage sale.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dostoyevsky at the Garage Sale
Commerce in used goods has lost its aura of shame and has become acceptable in our culture, and possibly constitutes a significant part of our declining economy. We are told by the propagandists that American manufacturing is on the rise, but the displays of shoddy foreign manufactures suggests to the consumer that this might not be so. Can an economy really be based on selling insurance, snakefingers, drugs, and questionable information to each other?
After World War II this nation was the world’s greatest manufacturer, and in the late 1950s one only with difficulty found a product made anywhere else. In our time, though, if one wants an American-made hammer, shirt, camera, dinner service, pocket knife, or toy train, he no longer shops downtown (which no longer exists) or from the Montgomery Ward catalogue (which no longer exists), but probably at that modern American custom, the Saturday morning garage sale (which seldom features a garage).
In the past year y’r ‘umble scrivener has found: two wagon wrenches (aka monkey wrenches), a Kodak 33mm Pony camera, a made-in-Chicago metal pencil sharpener, several pocket knives, a cast-iron rope pulley for a water well, a handsaw, and any number of hand tools and power tools, all American made, not as investments but mostly for their immediate utility (the camera is on a shelf and the handsaw is Miz Bee-ish fence art).
At a recent Friends of the Kirbyville Public Library book sale I found a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, published in 1938 by The Heritage Press. The book is hardbound in boards and linen, measures about seven by ten inches, is translated by Constance Garnett, and features engravings by a refugee German, Fritz Eichenberg. The paper is not particularly heavy but it is well-made (after all, it’s into its eighth decade) and cream-colored, which, with the large text, is easy on the eyes.
This book was not manufactured as an objet d’art; it was meant to be read, and I’m reading it. Most good stories are about redemption, and thus civilization, and with Dostoyevsky the concept of redemption can be cubed and squared. After all, who among us has ever faced a firing squad? Happily, the Czar sent a just-in-time reprieve (which no Communist would ever do), and Dostoyevsky spent the following ten years in a penal colony (which, again, is not a common experience among us). The man definitely had something to say, unlike our modern I, I, I, me, me, me writers whose focus is upon their hurt feelings and their scripted outrage.
And George Macy had something to say too: in the middle of a terrible economic Depression (we’ll never know how many died in those grim times), with the ascendancy of Communism, National Socialism, and whatever ism one might apply to Japan (who once again has begun coveting Chinese land), Mr. Macy chose to say that civilization will go on, even under food rationing and air-raids. Mr. Macy commissioned the printing of books, farming out the acquisition of papers and boards and cloth, typesetting, printing, and binding to various small companies throughout the country, and selling them under the imprint of The Heritage Club. These books sold for a dollar or so, a fabulous sum at the time, and anyone who bought a book had to think, plan, and save for such a rare event. Mr. Macy said that civilization should go on, and whoever bought this particular volume in 1938 probably skipped some meals so that civilization would indeed continue.
The Easton Press (http://www.eastonpress.com/) is the successor to the several Macy companies and other publishers, and continues to publish books, some to be read and some apparently merely for display.
Their edition of Crime and Punishment is bound in leather, and is available for $64.90. In terms of purchasing power, that is much, much less than the dollar edition of 1938.
Even so, one is not sure that the sellers know what the book is. The advertisement reads: “Impoverished and desperate, a young man is driven to the murder of a loathsome pawnbroker - and finds himself trapped in a hell of paranoia and terror. Dostoevsky's enthralling novel is, at once, an extraordinary psychological study, a harrowing mystery and a brilliant detective thriller.” The first sentence is good, a brief synopsis, but while details in the second sentence are correct, overall, the point of the story is missed, and that is the theme of redemption. Dostoyevsky is a Christian writer, not Agatha Christie or a scriptwriter for the BBC, and he is always about salvation.
Curiously, the “Sandglass” insert of 1938 makes the same mistake, referring to Crime and Punishment as “one of the great psychological studies.”
Well, Dostoyevsky knew his own book was about salvation, not about psychology, and certainly not about sustainability and greenness.
I wonder if someone will come across Dostoyevsky’s pocket knife at a garage sale.
-30-
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