Social Climbing in Life and Literature

Columnist Anne Applebaum wrote earlier this month about that gate-crashing scandal at the White House. The scandal per se does not interest me, it's old news now. Where the column astounds me, is in Ms. Applebaum's cerebral treasure-trove of classic literature, as she contemplates the art of social climbing. She cites the writings of Twain, Proust and Wharton, with comfortable familiarity.

I like that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/29/AR2009112902013.html

In the Days Before Seuss

Be ever so glad that you were not a child in 1700, when, among other miseries, the likes of James Janeway were the vanguard of children's literature. His "A Token for Children" contains this dismal bit of advisory doggerel for young sinners to contemplate:

"When by spectators I am told
What beauty doth adorn me
Or in a glass when I behold
How sweetly God did form me
Hath God such comeliness bestowed
And on me made to dwell,
What pity such a pretty maid
As I should go to Hell."

Droplets today, an ocean tomorrow

First a trickle, then a torrent, soon a cataclysmic deluge.

For the last fifteen years or so, I have been reading the books of ancient Greece, the Middle East and Rome, in careful, chronological order. Today, I finished with Suetonius’ account of the first twelve Caesars. And when I closed that book, I closed an era.

Surely the last few authors whose works I have read, would never have imagined that the starveling Christians whom they mention only briefly – and that in derision, condescension or disgust, as a new, obscure, loathsome sect of half-wits – would soon become the leaders of the Western world, including Rome itself, capturing the political and religious allegiance of virtually its entire population.

Imagine, the Moonies or some even more obscure, despised modern cult, rising to lead the world in the lifetime of your grandchildren.

Having concluded Suetonius, I step ahead to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a late Caesar to whom one of those Christians, Justin Martyr, actually wrote a petition/book/apology. Justin is one of the earliest extant Christian writers, if not the first, outside of the new Testament canon and pseudepigraphical scriptural works. I know nothing about him beyond his name and that brief detail. That will soon change and I will come to know others as well.

“Pagan” Rome will soon be a memory and I will be firmly inside a new world of literature, a genre carrying me right up to the so-called Middle Ages. At some point, the literature of Islam will have to occupy my attention, too.

What a ride I am in for!

I am capable ...

... Of now and then, noticing the good that is done by men, not just Women, and to find that a few of them actually have a little class and intelligence.

Please adjust your defibrillators, swallow your heart medicine, climb back into your chairs.

For example, I was quite pleased to see that a certain city official, imprisoned beside me in a horrendous meeting last night, had a copy of the classic "Crime and Punishment" tucked among his possessions.

The title was a propos to the situation, rather ironically.

I like to see people reading good books for pleasure, not by compulsion.