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The Weekly Wrap: July 27-August 2

Reading Logs

The story began with a post from the Columbus Metropolitan Library about one of their patrons who recently passed. What was extraordinary about Dan Pelzer was that he kept a hand-written log of all the books he read between 1962 and 2023, 3599 in all! His family created a website reproducing the log. The story was subsequently picked up in the national media including The New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine (one of the five articles below).

I was intrigued in part because Dan Pelzer was from my home town of Columbus. But also, I have kept a reading log since the early 1980’s, when it was a hand-written list like Pelzer’s and since 2011 on Goodreads. And since February of 2014 my Month in Reviews posts list all the books I’ve read. And from the running tally I kept on the hand-written list and my Goodreads tally, I think I may have Pelzer beat! I need to do some work since the lists may overlap.

The value of the reading log, in whatever form is not only that it reminds me of what I’ve read (sometimes saving me from re-buying a book I’ve read). It also is a kind of record of my life. Looking back at what I’ve read reminds me of what we were talking about at the time.

Part of me wishes I’d kept up the hand-written tally. This would allow me (and perhaps my family) to have this all in one place. I don’t expect a Times story. I also wish I’d begun this practice earlier. I’ve always been a reader.] I would love to reconstruct my reading list from the 1970’s!

Five Articles Worth Reading

“This Man Kept a Meticulous List of All 3,599 Books He’d Read Since 1962. When He Died, His Family Published It Online.” This article tells Dan Pelzer’s story, includes local coverage and interviews with family and link’s to Dan’s list. Perhaps this will inspire you!

Speaking of lists, “W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages.” Educators complain about not being able to get students to read a complete book. For a sixteen week semester, students probably needed to read 400 pages a week. And this was for one class!

“In Defense of Laughter” explores the humorist art of Dave Barry and how challenging it is to be funny in print.

In “Colony, Aviary and Zoo,” David Denby, a literary critic, explores the distinctive brand of literary criticism featured in The Partisan Review. He described their editorial approach as “a demand for intellectual toughness, for originality and force, for an end to rote position-taking and inane redemption narratives.” The article gives a flavor of the New York intellectual scene in the mid-century.

Finally, Sadie Stein writes about “My Love-Hate Relationship With Hans Christian Andersen.” And I agree. The Little Match Girl” might rank among the saddest of stories.

Quote of the Week

Emily Brontë was born on July 30, 1818. She made this pithy observation that we might use to evaluate the actions of all our public officials:

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I used to be able to read with instrumental music in the background or in noisy coffee shops. That is not so true anymore. With all but the lightest reading, I need silence. Perhaps it is because I’m operating on fewer brain cells. But writing is different for some reason. I have Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance playing in the background as I write this post.

Self-knowledge, both of what we do well and enjoy doing, and what we do not do well, is a gift. For example, Mark Twain was a great humorist and writer and a great lecturer. Had he stuck to that he would have enlarged the fortune his wife Livy brought to their marriage. Sadly, he tried to be a publisher and entrepreneur pursuing an ill-begotten typesetting machine. He did not have good business sense and imperiled his family’s finances. One of the lessons from Chernow’s biography of Twain.

I won’t be purchasing this but The Folio Society is selling finely bound and illustrated sets of Jane Austen’s six major works. Only 750 will be published at $250 per set, to celebrate her 250th birthday. You can read about it in “The Folio Society Celebrates Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday with Limited Edition Box Set.” Perhaps this is as good a time as any to confess that I’ve never read Austen. Maybe I ought to get onto that!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Jerome W. Berryman, Teaching Godly Play

Tuesday: William Kent Krueger, Tamarack County

Wednesday: Charles McNamara, Learning to be Fair

Thursday: Georges Simenon, The Late Monsieur Gallet

Friday: Walter R. Strickland II, Swing Low: An Anthology of Black Christianity in America (Volume 2)

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for July 27-August 2!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

The Year of Our Lord 1943, Alan Jacobs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary: Drawing upon the work of five Christian intellectuals who were contemporaries, explores the common case they made for a Christian humanistic influence in education in the post-war world.

By 1943, it was becoming apparent that the Allies would eventually win the war. For the five Christian intellectuals in this book, the crisis had shifted from resistance to authoritarian regimes, living in the shadow of death, and how one persevered in intellectual work in war-time, to what ideas would shape the post-war world. The five intellectuals featured in this book, along with a cameo by Jacques Ellul in the Afterword, were known to one another but tended to operate in separate circles. They were: Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil.

The basic thread of this book was the common advocacy Alan Jacobs sees among these authors for a kind of Christian humanism that would shape education over and against the rising pragmatism and technocracy that prevailed in wartime. Jacob’s method is to follow these thinkers more or less chronologically, leading off with a particular thinker, and then turning to what others were saying, sometimes in response, but often independently.

Negatively, Maritain, Lewis and Weil particularly warned against technocracy. Maritain characterized it as demonic, and Lewis created the memorable N.I.C.E. in That Hideous Strength. Without the moral framework of Christian humanism, you had the “flat-chested” men of The Abolition of Man. Weil called for a society that began with the notion of obligations rather than rights. Eliot and Auden, the older and younger, contributed to a Christian poetics, a vision of vocation, and a vision of Christian culture.

These were formidable thinkers yet one wonders why in the end technocracy and pragmatism prevailed. Jacobs describes a wider circle that several of these participated in called Oldham’s Moot. A more extensive study of this group would be fascinating. Most of those involved were Christian and were concerned with rebuilding the Christian underpinnings of European culture. They met regularly, debated various schemes, but eventually lost energy, especially after the death of German sociologist Karl Mannheim, a Hungarian Jew who was both odd man out and set the intellectual tone.

They illustrate a challenge that faced the five principals of this book as well–translating these ideas into the warp and woof of society–its political, educational, industrial, and civic institutions. Perhaps that is always beyond the capacity of such thinkers, except that they need to capture the attention and imagination of those working in these other realms who have some influence and the creativity to translate these ideas into policy and practice. One wonders if it was a lack of people outside their circles who shared their vision and worked entrepreneurially to foster it that consigned the vision of these thinkers to their books and publications.

Many think we are at another time of crisis, one that calls us first to prayer, and then to the communal work of thinking and refining and implementing anew. Jacobs shows us what these five were able to accomplish and educates a new generation to their work. Who will be the thinkers who engage in the retrieval and refinement of their work for our time? Who will be the actors who combine thought and action in creative ways? And will it be enough to check our slide into decadence and disorder in the year of our Lord 2022? These are the questions posed to me in this work.