Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Was Nietzsche Really German?

He wrote such entertaining books, one can hardly grasp his Germanity, yet there it is. I just breezed through What Nietzsche Really Said and can't resist making a comment or two on this fine and very accessible introduction to his writings. Everyone loves Nietzsche, partly because he wasn't particularly hung up on consistency so over the course of his many books he said just about everything. And for the most part he reads so well after a century--compare the zest and freshness of Nietzsche with your average stuffy Victorian narrative. Ignored in his own day, he is now claimed by every philosophical school.

The Meaning of Everything

"He brought them [beasts and birds] to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name" (Gen. 2:19 NIV). There's language, right there at the beginning along with the rest of Creation (if a bit tilted in favor of nouns). And a concern with ancient languages and the wonderfully flexible word "translate" characterizes the Mormon account of the restoration of the Church as well. So perhaps we should take language and even dictionaries a little more seriously. I just listened to the unabridged CD text of The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (OUP, 2003) by Simon Winchester, and got a short course in both the OED and the history of English. I'll make short comments on dictionaries, language, Mormon doctrine, and the Internet. Yes, they are all related.

On Narrative

I recently finished Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), by Jonathan Culler. I wrote a one-sentence Book Note on it (left sidebar, way down) which is probably all I am qualified to write on the subject, but I want to run through a few terms, mostly for my own benefit. Bloggers rush in where angels fear to tread. What follows is reading notes, not a review or an essay.

How to Win Friends and Influence Bloggers

I just finished up The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (HarperCollins, 2002), by Colin McGinn, an English philosopher now at Rutgers. It is sort of a pain-free introduction to analytic philosophy, packaged as a readable memoir. I found his short discussion of propositions versus "propositional attitudes" such as belief, hope, or doubt, rather helpful (p. 127-42). Seeing the difference and distinguishing between the two when writing (especially online) helps avoid a lot of misunderstanding and conflict, I think.

Book Notes

I have split my growing book list on the left sidebar into "Queued Up," for books I'm presently reading (I read about eight books at a time, see below), and "Book Notes," for those I have completed and written up in a short one-sentence summary along with a rating, one star to five stars. The Perfect Storm and Faking It are my only five-star books so far. Oh, and there's my "Book O' Month" in the upper-left corner as well. Book lists are really easy to do in Typepad!

Maybe I've spent too much time with econ and evolution, but my approach is I select a bunch of good books then let them compete for my scarce time. After reading a chapter or two some just fade away and go back to the library unread (apart from chapter one), whereas others turn out to be worth my time and get read--those are the ones that make it to Book Notes and get a one-sentence review with a rating. I'll try to save full-blown blog posts for those books that really deserve a writeup and that have some Mo connection (most books do, you know). If you've read a good book lately, go ahead and sound off in the comments.

Faking It, Round Two

Round One here. I finally finished Faking It (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003) by William Miller. An outstanding exercise in applied moral philosophy. If you liked Hamlet, read this book. If you've never seen Hamlet but pretend that you have, definitely read this book. You will learn to second-guess and third-guess youself and everyone else. I'll summarize Miller's comments on prayer, irony, and alchemy.

The Perfect Storm

Blew through this book in four days--great read. The movie was entertainment, the book is a freight train. It won't stop for anything. The book's not really about the storm, it's about the men and women who got stuck in it, who lived through it or didn't. It's better than reality TV--it's reality period. Sebastian Junger starts the book with a quote from a seaman who penned his last words in 1896 as his ship went down on Georges Bank in the North Atlantic.

On Georges Bank with our cable gone and our rudder gone and leaking. Two men have been swept away and all hands have been given up as our cable is gone and our rudder is gone. The one who picks this up let it be known. God have mercy on us.

He wrote it on a note. It went in a bottle and was actually found. Then it went in the book. Now it's here on the Net.

Faking It

I flushed the old reading list yesterday and put up a completely new one (see left and down). For one, I heartily recommend Faking It (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003) by William Ian Miller, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Role-playing and double-mindedness pervade daily life and are not rare things in Church life either. But there are also many positive aspects (not really insincere at all) to "faking it" in social encounters and rituals. The book gives new meaning to the phrase "All the world's a stage."

In Search of Good Fiction

I recently whizzed through Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000) by Jonathan Culler, a literary Brit. It covers a variety of interesting issues surrounding narrative of all sorts (literary, historical, or cultural). Reading the book has whetted my appetite to read a few novels, so I'm soliciting recommendations. I'm inclined toward American fiction; I suppose I ought to read Huck Finn sometime.

Mother's Day Tribute

I have posted a new Book of the Month for May 2004, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2d edition, 1994), by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery. The controversy surrounding this book partook in an odd way of the controversy surrounding Emma Smith as a figure in LDS history. As Joseph's (first) wife, she had firsthand information concerning events associated with the publication of the Book of Mormon and with the murky, private events connected with Joseph's practice of polygamy. She later became a critic of Brigham Young's emergence as leader of the Church in the wake of Joseph's death, punctuated in later years with the ascendance of Joseph Smith III as leader of the RLDS Church.

Given that Sunday was Mother's Day, it is appropriate to quote Joseph Smith III's tribute to his mother Emma, given in the frontpiece to the book (p. v):

My mother [Emma Smith] was one of the best poised women that I ever met. Of the noblest and purest intentions herself, she never submitted to be made a party to anything low, wrong, or evil, was absolutely fearless where the right was concerned, and was a just and generous mother. Her heart never changed toward her children, and her fidelity to them never waivered. It's needless to say that we loved her. (italics in original).

Four Word Book Review

Last week I discovered one of the funnier sites on the web, Four Word Film Review. Go check out the collection of four-word film reviews (yes, just four words) of Fellowship of the Ring, for example. Zingers: "Short hero, long movie"; "One perm rules all"; and "Are they there yet"? Iambic pentameter is more than I can handle, but the four word review is right up my alley. I'll specialize in the four word book review, starting with my just-completed Book of the Month, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software.

Here it is: Everthing is like ants.

Critic Unlimited

Just finished Harold Bloom's Poem Unlimited (Riverhead Books, 2003), his pleasantly short collection of celebratory observations on Hamlet and Hamlet. It comes to only 176 pocket-book size pages, a limited book for an unlimited poem. Remarkable, really, since Bloom could no doubt have written a thousand pages on Hamlet, and a few hundred more on Hamlet.

Reverence as a Virtue

I finished a fine little book, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), by Paul Woodruff, a classical scholar at UT-Austin who is into Thucydides and ancient political philosophy. For many today, "reverence" is just a polite Sunday codeword for "shut up and stop hitting your sister." For Woodruff, reverence is a forgotten classical virtue that has more to do with politics than religion--it is "the virtue that keeps leaders from taking control of other people's lives" (p. 4). "Reverence is the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have" (p. 8). He is preaching virtue ethics from a classical, rather than a purely philosophical, perspective.

Angels and Demons

No, not that book. This one: Madness: A Brief History, by Roy Porter (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), one of those "Gee, that looks interesting" books I found on the New Books rack of my local library. In the post-Enlightenment world, science now explains disease and mental illness through medical science and psychiatry. But fundamentalist religion, Mormonism included, maintains a sporadic and slightly schizophrenic belief in spirit possession. In fact, a literal reading of the New Testament makes it almost impossible not to maintain a latent belief in demons and possession. But that belief runs so counter to modern science that one is apt to tuck it away and pretend it's not there. Is it? Is demonic possession a real threat, or do you not consider that a real part of your world?

The Beast and the Bay

Spring has come early to the Bay Area--I came to work in shirtsleeves today, and read Thomas Cahill's description of John the Revelator's visions of good and evil (in Cahill's Desire of the Everlasting Hills, on my Now Reading list) as I zoomed toward the City by the Bay. Reading visions of the Beast while headed for the city named after a Catholic saint, St. Francis (I'm guessing it's this one, but could be this one or even this one). Cahill summarizes the standard view that the number of the Beast, which John says refers to a man, clearly points to Nero and Rome, as do most of his other rather transparent symbols. But he thinks John also critiques power in general, tyranny and empire, as equivalently evil. From Nero to Hitler, Rome to the Nazis, symbols from John's Apocalypse seem to fit every Evil Empire. Even American power, if you're on the receiving end of things, doesn't feel much different (go rent the director's cut of Apocalypse Now to see that jarring "we're not really the good guys" perspective depicted in a different set of unforgettable images). Maybe I'll try some lighter reading on the way home today.