Author: Note and Query blog

In Praise of Robert Alter, Part 1

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I have been a unabashed fan of Robert Alter’s translations of the Bible, since his first, Genesis, appeared in 1996, and my admiration has deepened with each new installment. His most recent, Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets, is an expansion of his earlier project, The David Story (1999). Where the earlier book was limited to the life of King David found in 1 and 2 Samuel, the new collection also includes Joshua, Judges, and 1 and 2 Kings, capturing the grand sweep of the historical narratives, hence the title. At 880 pages, it is Alter’s most hefty, and perhaps most intimidating, translation and commentary to date.

Since I don’t know biblical Hebrew, I am not in a position to assess or critique the fidelity of Alter’s translations to the original texts. To be frank, it is not clear to me that James Wood, Michael Dirda, or John Updike are, either. That hasn’t stopped any of them from offering an assessment of Alter’s accomplishments. In that vein, I’d like to offer a few brief observations about the virtues I see in Alter’s work.

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“From a Wandering Nomad . . .”

For the past few months, Christ Church Vienna has been using elements of a Kenyan liturgy in its worship service. One particular section strikes me as an excellent encapsulation of the narrative arc of the Bible in exactly 100 words:

It is right and our delight to give you thanks and praise, Holy Father, living God, supreme over the world, Creator, Provider, Saviour and Giver. From a wandering nomad You created Your family; for a burdened people You raised up a leader; for a confused nation You chose a king; for a rebellious crowd You sent Your prophets. In these last days You have sent us Your Son, Your perfect image, bringing Your kingdom, revealing Your will, dying, rising, reigning, remaking Your people for Yourself. Through Him You have poured out Your Holy Spirit, filling us with light and life.

This passage was drawn from this site, where the entire Kenyan liturgy can be found. (The original Swahili can be found here.) In addition to its remarkable compression, it shows a gradual unfolding of God’s plan in history from His first appearance to a nomad (Abraham) in the burning bush and His faithfulness to an unlikely leader of an exiled people (Moses) to the underdog king of a tiny nation (David) and, ultimately, to Jesus Christ, God’s “perfect image,” who would bear none of the defects or shortcomings of his predecessors.

The wording emphasizes, without qualification or hesitation, the continuity of the divine conspiracy: through Christ, God did not upend His work in, or change the terms of his covenant with, ancient Israel. Rather, He extended His will and continued to reveal Himself in the acts of Jesus’s passion, “remaking [God’s] people for Himself.”

What a powerful restatement of the Christian view of history, of God’s everlasting kindness to His people! Amen.

Religion or Interior Decorating?

It is rare these days to encounter writer who’s ideas are as finely wrought as his style. I know of one such writer, who offers in four tight sentences this withering critique of modern-day “spirituality”:

Our ethics tends to be something of a continuous improvisation or bricolage: we assemble fragments of traditions we half remember, gather ethical maxims almost at random from the surrounding culture, attempt to find an inner equilibrium between tolerance and conviction, and so on, until we have knit together something like a code, suited to our needs, temperaments, capacities, and imaginations. We select the standards or values we find appealing from a larger market of moral options and then try to arrange them into some sort of tasteful harmony….

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Piecing Together the Symbolic Fragments of “Mud”

The new film Mud, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is without question a stand-out film for 2013, and it deserves all the critical praise that it has received to date. Most critics have focused on the film’s plot and characterization, both of which are superb, as well as powerful performances by Tye Sheridan (Ellis), Matthew McConaughey (Mud), Sam Shepard (Tom Blankenship), and Reese Witherspoon (Juniper). See, for starter’s, David Denby’s review at The New Yorker; the trailer can be viewed here.

The film is a classic coming-of-age story, but it also about life in rural Arkansas, broken families and their surrogates, and the frustrations and disappointments of romantic love.

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The Santa Barbara Alternative

Santa Barbara is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is nestled against the backdrop of several 4,000-foot peaks of the Santa Ynez Mountains, and its unique south-facing view of the Pacific Ocean is framed by Santa Cruz, the largest and tallest of California’s Channel Islands chain.

If one factors in the hospitable climate and the pleasing vernacular architecture (Spanish Colonial Revival), it perhaps comes as no surprise that the literary critic Edmund Wilson would refer to its lifestyle as “living and rejoicing in life among the primordial magnificence in the world.”

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BookExpo wrap-up

Last Thursday and Friday, I attended BookExpo, the largest book trade show in the US, with four of my colleagues.  As always, I enjoyed being immersed in the new offerings for the fall and seeing all of the talent and enthusiasm (aficion, as the Spanish say) on display.  Despite my own enthusiasm for books and publishing, I am reminded of the words of Qohelet: “Of the making of many books there is no end, and much chatter is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecc. 12: 12).

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Thomas the Unbeliever

Note: This review of James Wood’s The Book Against God (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) was originally published in Books and Culture and reprinted in RP in Australia.

James Wood has established himself as one of the most influential critics in the English-speaking world. His first book, The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (1999), included an account of his upbringing in a strongly evangelical family and his loss of faith in his teens, and skepticism toward religion in general and Christianity in particular is a recurring theme in the brilliant essay-reviews he contributes to The New Republic and elsewhere. It is no surprise, then, that his first novel contains a strident polemic against religious belief.

Indeed, at first glance, The Book Against God may offer little to recommend itself to Christian readers. It depicts no conversions and answers none of the profound and unsettling questions it poses. Yet it presents a compelling and powerful portrait of religious belief.

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Peat: a poem from my archive

Peat

Interviewer: Then you have had the freedom you wanted?

Carl Sagan: Yes… I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone…. But one’s not in love all the time. Apart from that… I’m free.

It’s not obvious at first,
the strange thickness of this cloud of witnesses,
the fecundity of the soil beneath your feet,
but then it appears, suddenly—
a firm embrace of damp earth,
soft like peat and rich
with the decay of broken branches
and leaves from winter’s past.

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Getting Gatsby Wrong

The reviews are in, and it looks as if Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby is something of a disappointment. As a friend at church this morning explained, it’s really a cartoon. The characters and their environs are animated and exaggerated well beyond the proportions of the book. Is this, a la Moulin Rouge, a fantasia on a theme of Fitzgerald’s?

My interest today is not really in the film. But I’ve been impressed with recent efforts to reengage with the book itself, to examine its place within American literature (an effort, I should add, that now seems rather quaint after being disparaged or simply neglected by the academy). NPR’s Studio 360, for instance, devoted an entire episode to the book in its “American Icons” series. It is well worth a listen.

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