We're Home!

[lunabee34]

I know I missed some posts while I was gone, so let me know if you posted anything I need to know about over the last week.

I got another Etsy gift card, so I was able to get some silver and gold hair clips, a silver and turquoise bracelet to replace the one I lost about a year ago (yes, there is a theme to my Etsy gift card use), and writing gloves by Storiarts with text and graphics from A Christmas Carol. I also got a gift card to the Laurel Mercantile from spikedluv and got Ouida's Garden hand soap (how could I resist with that name!) and some Garden Mint wax melts; thank you! Mom and Dad gave me various and sundries, including some moolah. Altogether a wonderful birthday haul!



The Magic Grandfather by Jay Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book as a kid. I was fascinated by so many elements of this book. I had a great deal of autonomy (as most kids in the 80s did), but we lived so rurally that it was the freedom to roam around the woods and ride my bike to the nearby state park. The idea of having the same freedom in town to knock around at the ice cream parlor or whatever intrigued me. I also was intrigued by the grandfather smoking and letting the grandson drink beer, two things people in my life as a kid Did Not Do. And, of course, I was (and still am) a sucker for a Chosen One narrative.

Bonus points for the female protagonist's characterization.



View all my reviews

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'd forgotten that this begins with such a lengthy discussion of the writing process, including writer's block.

Dimmesdale is such a masterfully drawn portrait of cowardice and religious hypocrisy. In addition to all the other ways he exemplifies these characteristics, I hate the way he makes Hester responsible for his salvation as if she's denying him redemption by refusing to name him instead of him being too weak to confess. Also his argument that he doesn't confess so he can continue to do God's work--just such a jerk.

"Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott" (17). *dies laughing* I love this dig at Bronson Alcott.

And here's a quote that Hawthorne writes in the context of discussing the effects of place and occupation on writing ability but which describe what autoimmune brain fog feels like very closely to me: "But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum."



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Carnacki, the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is interesting; the protagonist is a psychic detective who investigates supernatural phenomena (or what he calls ab-normal or ab-human). His methods are very scientific and use the latest technology of the early 20th century along with information about repelling the supernatural that he learned from old manuscripts. He's careful to say that most supernatural instances are actually perfectly normal and that most of his cases turn to be perfectly explicable. But he's also a believer, and a small number of his cases are true hauntings. This book contains 6 stories: in one of them, the haunting is created by a group of thieves; in another, the haunting is caused by a hidden mechanism; in two of the stories, there's a mixture of natural and supernatural causes, and two stories are completely supernatural.

Some of these stories are genuinely disturbing and disconcerting in their creation of dread and in the way the supernatural manifestation is described.



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Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline (Volume 11) by David R. Shumway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book charts the emergence of American literature as a subdiscipline of study in English Departments in the American university. It represents a great deal of meticulous scholarship--curricula and programming over time, the emergence of professional organizations and their leadership, the kinds of articles published in PMLA and then in the journals of professional organizations devoted to American literature, the number and kinds of dissertations produced over time, the creation of the canon, contributions outside of academia to the formation of American studies, and the most important figures.



View all my reviews


Quotes and Ideas of Interest from Shumway:

"By 'ideological,' I mean more or less what Althusser meant when he used the term to name that part of experience which we take so completely for granted that it becomes 'nature.' Ideology so defined is a '"lived" relation to the real' that has a powerful hold on the subject because it is largely unconscious. Thus, to quote James Kavanaugh, 'at stake in [ideological conflicts] are not different opinions, but different realities" (32).

"But both groups accepted the traditional Christian view of human evil and thus rejected the assumption common to both liberals and Marxists that human nature could be improved given the right social conditions" (230). This argument explains a lot about my personal experience of conservatism vs liberalism, that the evangelical Christian worldview denies the ability for improvement and progress in favor of focusing on universal and unremitting human evil.

Comments

[gloss]

I love genealogies of disciplines like that! I read one of sociology several years ago.

That Althusserian approach to "ideology" works so well for me. (Have you read Eagleton's book on ideology? It's fantastic.

[lunabee34]

I also just read Gerald Graff's Professing Literature, which charts the development of the English Department. I read Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction in my first year of grad school, but that's it.

[princessofgeeks]

So glad if you had a fun getaway!

And a good birthday!

[lunabee34]

Thank you! <3

[lyr]

Welcome back, and I'm glad you had a good birthday!

Also, re: human nature being evil, I am currently reading Rutger Bregman's Humankind, which is all about how that is a conservative myth used to justify increased social controls and fascism rather than a historically supportable reality. I am finding it fascinating.

[lunabee34]

I came back to a very sweet birthday card from you, which I neglected to mention in my post. Thank you!

That book sounds really interesting. *adds to list*

[lyr]

I'm glad it came! You're very welcome.

[lunabee34]

<3 <3

[wendelah1]

Happy belated birthday.

[lunabee34]

Thank you! And thank you for the collage! I have a teensy little frame I'm going to put it in. :D

[wendelah1]

I'm so glad you like it.

[timespirt]

Welcome home hon.

"HUGS"

[lunabee34]

Thank you! It's good to sleep in my own bed.

[minoanmiss]

"But both groups accepted the traditional Christian view of human evil and thus rejected the assumption common to both liberals and Marxists that human nature could be improved given the right social conditions" (230). This argument explains a lot about my personal experience of conservatism vs liberalism, that the evangelical Christian worldview denies the ability for improvement and progress in favor of focusing on universal and unremitting human evil.

*makes a note*

[lunabee34]

Hi, hi!

[umadoshi]

Welcome home! <3

[lunabee34]

Thank you!

[spikedluv]

Yay for recieving so many lovely gifts! How does it feel to be home? No more Tales of Wells Fargo, sadly. *g*

[lunabee34]

I don't know how I will survive without my daily dose of dastardly deeds on horseback. LOL

So happy to be home; nothing like sleeping in your own bed.

[spikedluv]

There was a poll on Tumblr about being saved by people from the last show you watched, with one of the options being, will it be peaceful, and I was like, oh dear, no. I'm going to be saved, no doubt, but there will definitely be a gunfight first, lol!

Yay for sleeping in your own bed!

[lunabee34]

I watch very few scripted shows outside of children's cartoons anymore LOL so I think the last show I watched was on Food Network. I don't think Guy Fieri can save me from anything except hunger. LOL

[amejisuto]

I'm so glad you had a wonderful birthday! You deserve it!

HUGGLES!

[lunabee34]

Thank you, dear heart.

*hugs*

[amejisuto]

You're welcome, my dear!

[corvidology]

I hope you had a good trip!

...I think I may need a 12 step program for Etsy!

[lunabee34]

It was good. Only 2 instances of insanity and we just overheard them instead of them being directed our way.

Etsy is such a temptation for me too. Lol

[lokifan]

And here's a quote that Hawthorne writes in the context of discussing the effects of place and occupation on writing ability but which describe what autoimmune brain fog feels like very closely to me: "But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum."

Oh man, for real.

The Shumway sounds fascinating.

the evangelical Christian worldview denies the ability for improvement and progress in favor of focusing on universal and unremitting human evil.

Yeah, especially white American evangelicalism, from what I see. (I'm an atheist but a cultural Anglican, from the UK.) My theory about this is that because e.g. the Southern Baptist denomination was born out of supporting slavery, the theology of it all got twisted, with this huge focus on being reborn but not on what you actually do. An extension of the Protestant belief in "grace not works" to "grace, and NO works!" And I think you can absolutely still see it today.

While obvs there are plenty of problems with white Protestantism in the UK, there is much more belief in the importance of actions, of good practice and good works and building up a habit of kindness, and reading Fred Clark's blog leads me to connect that to how much of white Protestantism in the USA was built around 'how to be Christian while justifying slavery'. This obviously was a thing in the UK as well but I guess less foundational to it? Especially in an on-going way - Protestantism in the UK is much less politicised than in the UK, and I'd say broadly more left-wing than right-wing. Obvs this comment rapidly hit the end of what I know for sure haha but it's interesting to see the differences between the two countries!

[lunabee34]

That's an interesting theory!

I was raised Southern Baptist in MS, and I was never told about the origins of the sect and it's relationship to slavery; it was never acknowledged in any way (and still is not) by the church I grew up in. I think this is true of most Southern Baptist churches. I didn't find out about that history until I was an adult and had left the church.

I think that the people I grew up going to church with and my family believe in good works, but the good works they do are on a small individual scale and often to their own OR to an Other they perceive as inferior (mission trips to Guatemala or whatever). But, yes, faith is the most important; all that really matters in the end is whether you've accepted Jesus as your Savior, not anything you've done or continued to do.