Ronald Hendel, The Book of Genesis, A Biography, c. 2013 by Princeton U Press
The Biography of Genesis, just seven short chapters, is basically a telling of the historical reception of Genesis that traces from the time of its composition through the centuries of its reception and interpretation. The dedication is Emily Dickenson, “Not to outgrow Genesis, is a sweet monition.” The book is really a testimony to Genesis’ long enduring influence in the western world.
Hendel, tells his readers of the hold of Genesis on western societies since its being read aloud and interpreted by priests to their community gathered in the public square. We can’t seem to let it go – from the Qumran desert monks to Grecian Alexandria, to the Roman Empire, Italy’s Copernicus and Galileo, Germany’s Luther, Rashi and Spinoza, Charles Darwin – what we’re seeing even today in America with fundamentalism is a direct effect of Darwin and his theory of evolution and the descent of man. Genesis endures. It has outlasted discoveries (eureka moments), banned books, inquisitors, burnings at the stake, outright indignation – apocalypic duality, shadows, figuralism, realism, literalism, science against theology.
The final chapter is my favorite. Hendel discusses the work of Sarah Grimké, Cady Stanton, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka. Also, Erich Auerbach, a German Jew and academic exile who found refuge at Istanbul State University around the time Kafka’s books were being burned among those of others such as Einstein, Darwin, Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller. Hendel describes Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature as a brilliant tour of the conceptual styles of Western literature: “Auerbach’s method of reading Genesis as a realized work of literary art does justice to the text and to its legacy. By approaching Genesis as a literary text – even if it has long also served as a source of doctrine and religious authority – he is able to discern its own sophisticated manner of representing the real.” And “[Genesis] is now a book written by real people, which we can read not only as Jews or Christians but as participants in Western civilization. This is a return to realism in modern times, a perception of reality that the writers of Genesis staked out long ago.” And, “This is a description of modern times. We live on the far side of tradition, and the stories of Genesis have become legends. Yet, the advantage [of exile] is that we can read these legends with new eyes, unencumbered by the burden of ecclesiastical authority. In our exile, we can read Genesis as it is now – an astonishing book of marvelous realism and the root from which we came.”
So, there is a very short description doing spare justice to the high quality, accessible book that it is, but I thought I’d post because the author and the title sparked my interest and I have not been disappointed!
Thanks! The thing about doing this description is that it brings home the reality of these historical events in the not so ancient past times. Combined with knowledge of the near elimination of an entire continent of “those savage” people after Columbus’ arrival to the Americas, carried out in the “spirit” of “manifest destiny” does, as you say, “give one pause” not to mention nightmares!
I share your thoughts about further reading. Too much, really.
For a while I’ve been firmly ensconced in the 19th century, circumambulating the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown with the occasional pause to immerse myself in the delirious prose of Thomas De Quincey.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even more so than Poe, he encapsulates for me that mid-century dark romanticism that is a distinct strain in American literature. His novels are well-known; The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables; but the perfection of his art lies in his wonderful short stories (at least in part also an American genre invention). Hawthorne was well acquainted with what we can call Dark Christianity; he knew its shadow side; its torments and repressions, and how they remain submerged though ever ready to consume the pious in some blasphemous reverse communion. Reading Hawthorne is why I have little interest in modern Horror Fiction. Hawthorne knew there were monsters about but that the worst monster of all is that person you see every morning in the mirror.
Hawthorne was also a much better writer than Poe. He was the master of the vignette, the compact image that can suck all the breath out of your lungs. In one of his stories he describes a night watchman walking down the street of a fishing village, the rosy light of his lantern illuminating the houses as he passes. In another he lingers over the faces of a crowd of villagers as a man is being carried away to be tarred and feathered.
Charles Brockden Brown was from an earlier generation of Americans. He was a gothic novelist; one of America’s first professional writers, active in the 1790s. His gothicism though is not lurid; there are no mad monks heaving bodice ripped damsels through abbey ruins past statues weeping blood at midnight. His work is furiously psychological. His best novel, Wieland, contains religious fanaticism, spontaneous human combustion, ventriloquism, and murder. But we plunge into the psyche of a woman who subjects every outré happening to her own self-analysis. In the remarkable chapter 10 she has a meeting with a Mysterious Stranger and the rest of the chapter is her ruminating and brooding and obsessing over the meaning of that encounter.
Brown is pretty much forgotten these days although a tremendous influence on the next generation, Poe and Hawthorne and Melville.
Thomas De Quincey, the Brit in this bunch, is both famous and unknown. He is associated with the Romantics, Coleridge and Wordsworth, but he lived long enough to be friends with several of the mid-century writers as well. He is infamous for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, a memoir of his life-long addiction to Laudanum, a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium, the equivalent of 1% morphine. It was, and presumably still is, prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy in alcohol. (Yikes, that just sounds evil.)
De Quincey was a memoirist and an essayist. He was fascinated with the underbelly of English society. Especially tales of crime and murder. His work, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, a trilogy of essays devoted to examinations of infamous crimes of the period, was a tremendous influence on Raymond Chandler.
De Quincey’s wife, Margaret, was a farmer’s daughter, and one of my favorite essays is his takedown of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy’s snooty class prejudice against her when they met.
But above all what makes De Quincey a writer you need to know is his absolute mastery of the English language. It’s sad to think that the summit, the zenith, of English prose style might have already passed us but it may be true. He wrote like an angel.
Next? My cousin who is working on his Master’s wants me to read George MacDonald (Phantastes, Lillith). I managed to miss him before so it might be interesting. And I will still be in the 19th century.
What a wonderful read that was.
I love Hawthorne for his short stories, and truly he was a master. The only other author I’ve read that I’d consider his equal in the genre is Chekhov. I haven’t read either of them in years but can still feel the settings and see the people clearly.
I’d not heard of Charles Brockden Brown at all and know De Quincey only from the Opium-Eater. I will see about Wieland as well as De Quincey’s essays. Those Brits and their class. I worked for the British Council for a decade and would come across it on occasion; I’m thinking in particular of one particularly unpleasant double-barrelled-named man.
Let us know what you make of MacDonald.
The Grammar of Dionysus Thrax
-trying make sense of the relationship it lists between the Present and Imperfect, the Perfect and Pluperfect, the Aorist and Future.
(I thinks he is referring to what they nowadays call Aspect).
The past has four kinds as stated in the same book: Imperfect, Perfect, Pluperfect, Aorist.
So the mystery of aspect is the Aorist to Future relationship that I’m pondering over in context of The Grammar of Dionysus Thrax. And also the relationship to the Optative Mood that was there in Olde English (ages of the Crusades: 1000AD-1400AD) if that has any relevance to the mystery of the aforementioned Aorist to Future comparison.
So, it’s not set up yet though it seemed to be when I sent it.
Apologies to everyone for thread drifting again here!
Jill, What the Robin Knows has been given to several. It’s great for becoming more aware of what all is going on around us.
I’ve given it to several. Thanks!
My son and girlfriend enjoyed a falconry class in Colorado, the result of my telling them about H Is For Hawk.
Hey according to the info in the footer text box I am now posting from Indianapolis!
I hope everyone is doing well.
Judith, those books sound interesting. Ever since I began the thread on the possibility of alien life and visitation I have been reading some nature/biology works myself. I discovered a tome entitled Slime Mould and Philosophy published by Cambridge Press. (CP is not known for its frivolity but I can’t help but imagine a twinkle in the eyes of the book’s author and editors when they were deciding on a title.)
Slime Mold always fascinated biologists because of its complex life cycle, unique physiology, morphology, and behavior. But even more weirdly interesting, and what first got my attention, is that it (they?) seems to exhibit decision making, learning, and memory, all in an organism lacking any sort of nervous system! If we ever do encounter alien life we should be prepared for profound and disturbing challenges to how we can even conceive of what intelligent life might be. Or, to put it another way, if we can’t talk to an octopus, what makes us confident we can talk to aliens?
The other consideration is that as we learn more and more about nature, the thinner the wall we imagine exists between human behavior and behavior detectable in non-human organisms. Exactly what you would expect of course if you accept the idea of common ancestry. The idea of “special creation” is obviously a self-serving delusion.
Robert has been quiet for a while. Should I find this ominous?
Updates?
– Stéphanos Mathitís
Or, to put it another way, if we can’t talk to an octopus, what makes us confident we can talk to aliens?
My Octopus Teacher (on Netflix)
** you do not have permission to see this link **
H is for Hawk (a new film!) (There’s also been a PBS documentary film)
** you do not have permission to see this link **
A review
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Does anyone do any Halloween focused reading? Socially, Halloween has been relegated to a child’s commercial holiday. Any actual “bite” it once might have had has drained away with fading of the Christian calendar. My Wiccan friends wisely bypass the whole issue by going back to the celebration of Samhain. The shopkeepers go full-tilt Christmas earlier and earlier each year. So, one is left to your own devices. Doubtless for the best.
For many years I would celebrate by reading one of my favorite horror classics, ** you do not have permission to see this link **
Several times I was joined by others and we would take turns reading aloud. Near midnight. By candle light.
Representative sample:
Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate, exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved bout. The door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There, another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and law across the pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise, he entered the bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had never been wilier nor more alert.
His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, he then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.
He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that under the bed in search of his slippers. . . .
But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for the circumstance he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather guard.
Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself again.
Like a nervous guest in a haunted house we wander through the psyche of a failed novelist who is in contact with, what? A spirit? A character in the book he is trying -and failing- to write? Or is it simply his own disordered mind finally come a cropper? But that moonlight…
This year I’ve been reading ** you do not have permission to see this link **. The character of the shapeshifter goes all the way back to the classical world (Petronius has a werewolf tale in the Satyricon) but as popular as the figure of the werewolf is, there’s not really been a classic novel about it comparable to Dracula or Frankenstein. Endore’s book is as close as we get. However, though it is set in 19th century France, it was written in the 1930s.
I could have sworn I had read it back in my twenties when I read most of the classics but so far it is totally unfamiliar to me so it might just be one I missed. The quality about the novel that I’ve notice reviewers criticize the most is, for me, one of the charms of the book. Let’s say the author “chases rabbits” and lets his “seams” show, to mix me some metaphors. This quality, I suspect, is a function of writing in a literary culture. As opposed to the buttoned down, corncob up the ass, wrap it up before the next commercial break approach of modern media. This book is a curious admixture, by turns erudite and lurid. It needs to be much more well known than it is.
This year I’ve been reading ** you do not have permission to see this link **. The character of the shapeshifter goes all the way back to the classical world (Petronius has a werewolf tale in the Satyricon) but as popular as the figure of the werewolf is, there’s not really been a classic novel about it comparable to Dracula or Frankenstein. Endore’s book is as close as we get. However, though it is set in 19th century France, it was written in the 1930s.
That’s one killer of a cover. The book looks like it’ll be a great read, so I just got it. We’re leaving for Naxos on Thursday, so I’ll start it then and read it through our weekend there.
Locale always adds something to one’s reading – maybe it’s just in retrospect. For me, the most vivid involves reading The Castle when I was working as a security guard at the annex of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I sat next to a radiator at the entrance as pressmen came in, bringing the freezing winter with them.
They used to play such great monster movies on TV when I was a kid. Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance in The Wolfman has always been a favorite. And James Whale’s Frankenstein is really a piece of art. That mob with the torches…
They used to play such great monster movies on TV when I was a kid. Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance in The Wolfman has always been a favorite. And James Whale’s Frankenstein is really a piece of art. That mob with the torches…
Some great memories of my brother and cousin and me as kids staying up late on Friday night watching Big Movie Shocker on a big ole black & white TV. Back in those days TVs were furniture. A eight year old boy could have slept comfortably on top of the set I’m talking about. My favorites were Wolfman, The Invisible Man (with Claude Rains) and Boris Karloff’s turn as the original Mummy. (The later Mummy movies weren’t very memorable but they always had this one scene that freaked me out. An old couple would be lying in bed illuminated only by moonlight. You would hear the sound of heavy shuffling steps and then the shadow of the Mummy would pass by as he went on his way to visit some unfortunate.
When you’re a little kid you believe everything and have no defenses. The saddest thing in the world is to encounter adults who have completely grown up and lost any trace of that little kid in their soul.
Massive things. As a youngin’, few things impressed me so much as a cathode ray tube.
Invisible Man was wonderful as was Claude Rains.
The ’30s and ’40s is by far my favorite era. Those monster movies from Universal Studios, the screwball comedies (e.g. My Man Godfrey (always quite taken by Carole Lombard), The Philadelphia Story, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, etc.), The Thin Man series, psychological thrillers (e.g. Gaslight, Double Indemnity, The Spiral Staircase, etc.), and so many, many others. I think when we’re back in the States we’ll start subscribing to Criterion.
I really love the look of the movies made in the 1930s. So distinctive. It was a combination of the technology available at the time, the influence of the Art Deco movement, and the fact that the movie industry was still finding its feet. They were creating templates and cliches but they hadn’t yet dominated. People are often at their most creative when they’re not completely sure what they’re doing. As far as 30s movies go I am a huge fan of Fritz Lang’s output, M with Peter Lorre, and Dr Mabuse.
What I find alluring about the 1940s are the fashions. I secretly long for the return of baggy, wide lapeled, double breasted suits (with big ole buttons) and most of all, hats! The 40s’ great contribution to cinema was Film Noir. There are so many good noirs it would be hard to pick.
Between Criterion and Kino Lorber you can spend your time enjoying some great old movies.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert