The Hunger Games,

Having said all of that, I would like to spend the remainder of this look at the book by considering what is completely absent from the narrative and, apparently, from its future world. Unless I missed it, religion–specifically Christianity–has utterly disappeared from Panem, Collins’ future nation. As a success-seeking writer, Suzanne Collins can be credited with wisdom for avoiding the landmine of religion in the future. After all, if she plants Christianity in the soil of Panem, what flavor of Christianity will it be? Will it be a dominant state church used as a method of control by the authorities? And if there is Christianity, is there also Islam? Had she wanted to completely dive into mindfield, she might have painted a world where Islam has supplanted Christianity.

An apologist, of a more artistic bent, will suggest that the omission of religion makes perfect sense in a world set perhaps centuries in the future after devastating wars. While this seems reasonable on the one hand, I have to wonder how religion disappeared while Classical civilization lingered, evidenced by a host of Roman names and the very name of the nation.

You might accuse me of being unfair, criticizing a novelist for what she did not write into her book, yet I am not willing to give up this matter. What I wonder perhaps most of all as I read the book’s pages is the source of the fairly traditional morality that animates Katniss and Peeta. Both of the pair, as well as other Tributes in the Games, appear to resist killing. Instead they seem more inclined to “do unto others.” Loyalty and fidelity are championed in this world with religion. Even a Protestant work ethic seems to have survived as the industrious Katniss and the baker’s son Peeta are contrasted with the vapid attendants from the Capitol or the coddled “Career” Tributes.

A critical reader might question whether the morality that undergirds a vast swath of Collins’ readership is instinctual as opposed to a construct, largely flowing from the nation’s Christian heritage. Without the bread of life (John 6:35), the hunger that stalks both the games and the world of Panem will be satisfied. Although I enjoyed this book immensely, part of me sits back and wonders if the moral clarity of Katniss could truly emerge from a world as darkened as the one in these pages.

“A Deal in Wheat,” the lead story in a collection of Norris’ short fiction, follows a crop of wheat from a farm in southwest Kansas through the Chicago Board of Trade and a Chicago bakery. At the outset, Sam Lewiston, a farmer, heads to town to sell his wheat at the ruinous price of $.66 a bushel, only to find out that the price has dropped to $.62 thanks to the market machinations of Truslow, an apparently fictitious market manipulator, referred to in this story as “The Bear.” Like James B. Duke in the tobacco market, Truslow makes his fortune by pushing prices lower and then purchasing from desperate farmers.

Truslow is balanced by “The Bull,” Mr. Hornung, whose strategy is to keep the price high after he has purchased the bulk of the supply. As the story shifts from the despair of the Lewistons to the market makers of Chicago, we see Hornung selling a huge lot of wheat to Truslow for $1.10 per bushel with the stipulation that the grain be exported. Eventually, we see mystery grain appearing on the market. In order to maintain his inflated price, now at $1.50, Hornung instructs his agents to purchase all of this grain. Over time, this grain proves to be the same that Truslow had purchased from Hornung. Ever the good sport, Hornung laughs at the crafty Bear and schemes to drive the wheat price to $2.00 in order to recoup his losses.

The story closes with Sam Lewiston in a line outside a bakery, waiting to receive the free bread distributed there. Given the high price of grain, however, the bakery has been forced to discontinue their charity. Not broken by this move, though, Lewiston inexplicably lifts himself up and enjoys a new success.

But Lewiston never forgot. Dimply he began to see the significance of things. Caught once in the cogs and wheels of a great and terrible engine, he had seen–none better–its workings. Of all the men who had vainly stood in the “bread line” on that rainy night in early summer, he, perhaps, had been th eonly one who had struggled up to the surface again. How many others had gone down in the great ebb? Grim question; he dared not think how many.

Let it not be said that Frank Norris failed to make his point. In “A Deal in Wheat,” there is a definite point. The grain traders, “the great operators, who never saw the wheat they traded in,” are callous and destructive, proceeding through life, “jovial, contented, enthroned, and unassailable.”

The truth contained within this story–and one could change the actors to include officials of gigantic banks and fraudulent real estate dealers–echoes to the present. Nonetheless, Norris’ story feels a bit too much like a sermon illustration, the sort of story that might be told in a State of the Union address before the President asks Sam Lewiston, who is seated near the First Lady, to stand and be recognized.

As a work of persuasion, this story works well. As a piece of art, it is less than satisfying. “A Deal in Wheat” should perhaps stand as a cautionary tale not just for the would-be farmer but for the fiction writer with a message to convey.

In short order and marshaling an impressive cadre of sources, Morison argues that the best history is not only factually rich but textually rich. It is written in a manner that can inform the expert and the interested observer alike.

Now, the purpose of this quick, warm synthesis between research, thinking, and writing is to attain the three prime qualities of historical composition–clarity, vigor, and objectivity. You must think about your facts, analyze your material, and decide exactly what you mean before you can write it so that the average reader will understand.

Compare this clear, vigorous, and (I would argue) objective piece of prose with something culled from a recent historical journal:

Legitimation is the often veiled process creative of and prior to the formation and use of power. The study of legitimation in connection with the American presidency has been so neglected (in comparison to the study of that office’s governance roles) that an internal analysis of the Gettysburg Address, a probably paradigmatic example of presidential legitimation role playing, may yield concepts and patterns of wide utility.

In fairness to the more recent author, I should note that these sentences come from the article’s abstract. The actual body of the text reads more clearly but still labors under the burden of unnecessary verbal obscurity and unproductively convoluted sentences.

When did historians decide, apparently along with many literary critics, that difficulty of reading correlates with excellence. Why refer to a “good example” when you can refer to a “paradigmatic example”? Granted, there are some historians about these days who can claim to write clear and readable prose, yet those writers tend to be dismissed as popularizers by the academy.

This same push for obscurity seems to infect a great deal of poetry written over the past few decades, perhaps over the past century, with one of my heroes, T.S. Eliot perhaps leading the charge. Can anyone really claim to understand what Wallace Stevens is talking about most of the time?

Perhaps there is a doctoral dissertation awaiting some intrepid student who could trace the march of incomprehensible and sterile prose from modernist poetry, through fiction, and then into history.

When any art, be it music, theatre, fiction, poetry, or history, moves in a direction where only the highly initiated high priests can comprehend its mysteries, it should cease to be counted among the humanities. Morison’s humanity, on the other hand, is on excellent display in both this essay and his prodigious historical output.

In principio erat verbam, it begins. “In the beginning was the Word.” It’s the same Gospel of John that you know, complete with its seven “I Ams” and seven miracles. This book is, I believe, the most lyrical and memorable in the New Testament and perhaps in the entire Bible.

Of course, in St. Cuthbert’s time, the 7th century, Amazon.com had not yet gotten the Kindle off the ground. In fact, Gutenberg’s printing breakthrough remained more than 700 years in the future. Books in those days of parchment–paper made from carefully prepared sheeps’ skins–and quill pens were rare and precious items. They weren’t quite $9 million precious, but they were precious.

So how did that precious volume wind up in St. Cuthbert’s coffin after his death in 687 only to be discovered over 400 years later during a spate of sepulchral spring cleaning? Did Cuthbert, by all accounts a fine churchman, create this gospel by his own hand? Did he read it for his own devotional life? Opinions vary on these questions and no one can say for sure. The notion that an admirer tossed the book into Cuthbert’s coffin a few years after his death seems unlikely, but who knows?

Regardless of whether a dying Cuthbert called near his closest associate and gasped, “Bury me with this gospel” or an overzealous admirer chose an odd and expensive way to demonstrate his loyalty, it must be agreed that the inclusion of the book in the coffin suggests a very high opinion of the deceased and for the Word of God.

Whatever one thinks of burying the man with a book of scripture, I believe the story of St. Cuthbert’s Gospel as related in various venues over recent weeks raises some interesting question for a reader in the days after which the Kindle has emerged powerfully.

What if every reader of John’s Gospel created his or her own handwritten version. Regardless of how many times we have read “In the beginning was the Word,” we’ll take in those words differently when we write them. (I suppose there’s something to be said for typing the words, which would mean that I have achieved that benefit from three typings in two different languages over the past 400 words.) Would I cherish that copy of John’s gospel in the same sense that I do the printed words in a study Bible or the virtual words stored on my iPad?

The modern reader, and especially Catholic-averse Evangelical readers, might take a dim view of the St. Cuthbert story–particularly the part during the twelfth century when visitors to Durham Cathedral could wear the book, enclosed in a leather bag, as a sort of holy talisman. That same reader, however, can learn a lesson in the preciousness of the Word.

The British Library raised $9 million to purchase the book last month. Does that accurately appraise the value of the volume? Only the individual can make that determination. As much as I appreciate the artistry of John’s Gospel, its actual value will outlive bank accounts and the endurance of this mortal frame.

The British Library has digitized the book for your perusal. Bone up on your Latin and check it out.

And the rest of the brethren, together with Marcellus, besought him [Peter] to depart. But Peter said unto them: Shall we be runaways, brethren? and they said to him: Nay, but that thou mayest yet be able to serve the Lord. And he obeyed the brethren’s voice and went forth alone, saying: Let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone, having changed the fashion of mine apparel. And as he went forth of the city, he saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said: Lord, whither goest thou thus (or here)? And the Lord said unto him: I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him: Lord, art thou (being) crucified again? He said unto him: Yea, Peter, I am (being) crucified again. And Peter came to himself: and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said: I am being crucified: the which was about to befall Peter.

In this brief episode, we gain a quick insight into the thought process of the threatened believer. Peter is presented a perfectly good reason to go and a perfectly good reason to stay. Evidently, the way suggested by Christ is preferred, but one can imagine the mental gymnastics that might lie behind the decision.

In Shusaku Endo’s masterwork,
Silence, no vision of Jesus appears on the roads around Nagasaki. Instead, a Jesuit missionary, having entered Japan several years after the Shoguns had outlawed Christianity, must weigh the best course for himself without overt divine direction.

The priest, Sebastien Rodrigues, after being captured by Japanese officials, comes under powerful pressure to apostatize. Rodrigues apparently possesses sufficient strength to face truly horrible torture–a theory never actually tested in the novel–but he faces the temptation to recant for the benefit of others. His apostasy will bring about the end of torture for several others. Rodrigues can deny Christ and save those people, yet we–and he–will never know for certain if that decision was truly prompted by altruism or by the threat of upcoming torture.

Similarly, Rodrigues interacts with his former teacher Ferreira, a missionary who has already surrendered to the authorities.  In that exchange, the more experienced Jesuit suggests that all Christian activity in Japan has been a mistake.

This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp.

Is the elder priest speaking in wisdom or is this the story that he tells himself to justify his own infidelity? The reader can only puzzle over that.

These questions are just a few of the ones that will fascinate a believer in Endo’s novel. Perhaps the most fascinating character is the weak peasant Kichijiro. An abject failure in the face of persecution, this man suggests, perhaps correctly, that he would have been a successful and happy Christian in the earlier years when the religion was tolerated by the authorities. Kichijiro’s story makes a reader in a Christian-friendly world wonder how he might fare in a time or place of persecution.

Our Man in Havana

Consider the case of James Wormold, the English expatriate vacuum salesman in Cuba. Approached by the British Secret Service to recruit a circle of spies in pre-revolution Cuba, Wormold proves a singularly inept spymaster. Despite all of his veneer of competence, Hawthorne, the recruiter who approaches Wormold, displays no ability to judge the character of the merchant. Wouldn’t any rational person recognize that a randomly selected retailer–and a not-too-successful one at that–might not turn out to be a capable spook? Wouldn’t such a recruiter take a bit of time to verify the first reports of “our man in Havana”? Of course none of that happens.

The acceptance of Wormold’s string of bogus reports by the ironically titled intelligence forces takes place because of a typical string of human vanities. Wormold, recognizing himself as a failure of a spy, abandons an honest approach to the job and begins to invent reports. Hawthorne, Wormold’s recruiter, fails to see through Wormold’s lies, at least initially, because it is not in his best interest to see through them. In a sort of “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” operation, Hawthorne remains willfully blind to his subordinate’s actions. Further up the line, the officials in London choose to believe in the grandiose reports that make their own service appear successful. When Wormold’s lies are uncovered, at the cost of at least two innocent lives, the London authorities elect to reward their wayward operative rather than punishing him, since punishment would expose their ineptitude.

Greene’s novel appeared before the Cuban revolution had effected its victory, but the writing had appeared on the wall by the time the book debuted. How could Western governments have gotten Cuba so wrong? To some degree the novel is an answer to that question. Greene, far from being a sour-grapes detractor of all things official, had done time in MI6 during World War II. While the actions described in these pages are clearly exaggerated for comic effect, they revolve around a kernel of truth.

That kernel of truth, however, looms larger than the Cold War or the Cuban situation. Rather than simply relating information about the intelligence forces of modern nations, this novel speaks to much wider human tendencies. In 1 Corinthians 3:18-20 we read

Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

The wise men of British intelligence have been caught up in their own craftiness and had their thoughts exposed as futile. By the end of the book, they seem perhaps a tiny bit closer to recognizing their own folly. Or perhaps not.

In the hour-long presentation, Berry moves from the monopolistic actions of James B. Duke to Forster’s novel Howard’s End but begins and ends with the simple yet rich life enjoyed by his grandparents. Although the writer’s words proceed a bit slowly in this video, his lecture is worth the investment.

The novel revolves around a cluster of characters. Mac, a boy who wanders, Kerouac-style, from situation to situation, from Chicago, into Michigan, to Canada, the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, and then to Mexico, leads off, dominating the opening third of the book. The remaining two thirds introduce Janey and Eleanor Stoddard, a pair of women who prove that Dos Passos has no gift for creating female characters. In fact, his most significant women are those who are abandoned after getting pregnant and threatening to interrupt the exciting peregrinations of the males.  We also meet J. Ward Moorehouse, an apparently clueless but ambitious young man who transforms without any explanation from a credulous fool to an influential labor consultant. Finally, a scarce forty pages from the book’s close we meet Charley Anderson, who seems a bit too much like Mac to be a coincidence. Charley leaves town young, looking for work. Charley has a profession, auto mechanics, to match Mac’s printing. Charley leaves a pregnant girlfriend, although in his case the child is apparently not his. Like Mac, Charley espouses the gospel of the I.W.W., yet he seems as likely to uphold the opinion of those who refer to the union as “I Won’t Work” as to be seen as a genuine man of ideas.

To call 42nd Parallel a novel is generous. It is less novelistic than Joyce’s Dubliners. Granted, the five characters eventually cross paths, but they do so in largely insignificant ways. Janey winds up working as a doting secretary for Moorehouse who establishes a chaste(?) relationship with Eleanor, but even these convergences don’t seem to have much meat to them.

The one common factor that all the characters share is something that I doubt Dos Passos intended to foreground. No one in this book can stay home. Mac and Charley, the two young men who bookend the story, seem to have no ability to stay put. Janey and Eleanor both sacrifice stability and family in order to chase dreams of dubious value. Moorehouse cannot seem to get away from Wilmington, Delaware quickly enough at the top of his story. Even as he chases ambitions that never seem entirely concrete, he finds himself in constant motion.

This novel, following its title, is an arbitrary place, a line on a map, rather than a locale with roots and community. It ends, like the line of latitude where it began, with a directionless but mobile character.  As Charley sails toward France and service in the ambulance corps for World War One at the book’s close, we remark on the forces that took him there. Charley, who will work just as hard as he needs to, does not head to France out of patriotism or a sense of loyalty to family. He finds himself on that ship because of a conversation with a drunk he met in New Orleans. One wonders if Dos Passos, still mired in his socialist phase, had begun to see the vanity of human wishes.

Recently, I’ve been making my way through John Dos Passos
U.S.A. trilogy. Although I haven’t yet managed to get through the first novel, 42nd Parallel, I’m already ready to opine on the work as a whole.

This is a work that the Modern Library named as the 23rd best novel in English in the twentieth century. Granted, 23rd isn’t exactly the top of the list, but let’s recall that the twentieth was the century that gave us Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, O’Connor, Bellow, Lawrence, and a host of others. Apparently this list did not follow the convention of only allowing an author to appear once; therefore, for Dos Passos to place so highly amid such heady company is a great accomplishment, which leads me to my question.

Why does Dos Passos in general and this 23rd greatest English novel (or its components) of the twentieth century receive so little attention. Despite considerable coursework in modernism, your faithful correspondent never encountered any work by Dos Passos in graduate school. If for nothing other than his formal experimentation and its influence on other writers, this guy deserves a mention, yet literary history seems to have written him off as a writer of no greater reputation than, say, Frank Norris. He’s significant. You’ll have heard his name, but you needn’t trouble yourself to read him.

I’ve also been reading Louis Bromfield of late. That’s another American writer of the thirties who seems to have fallen off the planet, yet in Bromfield’s case, I understand (but don’t agree) with the lack of attention. Bromfield, to the contrary of Dos Passos, swam against the thematic and stylistic streams of his day. Bromfield’s work has been described as post-Victorian and his politics were relatively conservative. Plus there’s that whole farming thing. Dos Passos has no such strikes against him. Nobody is placing Bromfield on the list of 100 best novels, but there sits Dos Passos at number 23.

As another example of the inexplicable lack of attention given to #23, I turn to the Fount of All Knowledge, Wikipedia. Consider the entry for the aforementioned Frank Norris and The Octopus, which does not appear on the Modern Library list at all. That entry is considerably longer than the one for U.S.A., despite the much greater length and complexity of the latter work. In fact, if one took out the material on the four modes of narration from U.S.A., there’d be little in its entry. The Octopus is not an Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard novel, shamelessly glorified by its breathless ideologues. It’s just a book, yet it has received more attention than Dos Passos.

Is U.S.A. simply one of those works that one must admire even without reading it, rather like Proust or Finnegan’s Wake? That’s a question I’d like to consider as I wade through its three parts. For now, though, I can’t join The Clash in proclaiming boredom for the work.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Having just waded through Hawthorne’s
Twice-Told Tales again, enduring not only the brilliant items like “The Minister’s Black Veil” or “The Gentle Boy” but also the considerably less than brilliant–”The White Old Maid” or “The Great Carbuncle”–as well as the simply charming–”Sights from a Steeple” or “The Seven Vagabonds”–I’m left considering the themes that continue to crop up in the young Hawthorne’s writing.

The one thing that first pops into my mind as I read these tales, penned several years before Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody wed and took up residence in the “Eden” of the Old Manse, is the attachment that is shown to domestic bliss.

“The Maypole of Merry Mount,” discussed in the previous post, focuses on the wedding of a couple. While Endicott and his Puritan cadre put and end to the mirth of the Merry Mounters, the wedding of the couple is blessed and they proceed into a more sober and successful future.

Another young couple features prominently in “The Great Carbuncle.” After pursuing the mythic treasure of the carbuncle, this pair, upon reaching their goal, turn from it, demonstrating the same sort of wisdom that O. Henry would describe in “The Gift of the Magi.”

Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned.

In “The Lily’s Quest,” a young couple explores their estate to find the perfect site for a Temple of Happiness. After disqualifying various sites due to the tragic events that had taken place there, they eventually build their Temple atop a tomb only to be mocked by their creepy cousin. The couple have the last laugh, however, understanding the real import of the temple and the tomb:

But, as the Shadow of Affliction spoke, a vision of Hope and Joy had its birth in Adam’s mind, even from the old man’s taunting words; for then he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself had acted; and the mystery of Life and Death was opened to him. “Joy! Joy!” he cried, throwing his arms towards Heaven. “On a Grave be the site of our Temple; and now our happiness is for Eternity!”

With those words, a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky, and glimmered down into the sepulchre; while, at the same moment, the shape of odd Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom, symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that the darkest riddle of humanity was read.

“The Shaker Bridal,” carrying a far less hopeful message to the reader, promotes the same romantic sensibility. The story narrates a wedding among the Shakers, performed not for the traditional reasons of love and procreation but in order to provide celibate leadership to the community. At the story’s close, the bride, Martha, collapses, perhaps dead, as she contemplates a love-deprived “marriage” to the man with whom she had been enamored as a youth.

Perhaps Hawthorne only wrote these borderline maudlin tales in order to please audiences, yet his continued attitudes toward marriage, both in his fiction and in his life, would suggest that these tales, and others in Twice-Told Tales reflect the author’s attitude to some degree.