Sheffner's Reading Blog

The Worm Ouroboros

In January’s meeting, we read Batter Up! Part 3 which begins with Bump Bailey’s death, and ends with Roy having dinner with Memo Paris, Max Mercy and a new character, Gus Sands, a “bookie” with a glass eye.

We discussed the various meanings of “hit the wall”, the associations of worms in English/Western literature and culture (I forgot to mention that “worm” has an old meaning of “snake” and is sometimes used to refer to the snake/Satan in the Garden of Eden; in Old English, “worm” was also used as a synonym for “dragon” – see “The Worm Ouroboros”, and “The Hobbit” (chapter XV) by J.R.R. Tolkien, “The king is come unto his hall, Under the Mountain dark and tall. The Worm of Dread is slain and dead, And ever so our foes shall fall!“), and why Roy does not want anyone to know about his past.

Our next meeting will be March 7 at 3 pm (not 3:15)

Today we finished reading the first section of Bernard Malamud’s “The Natural”. This first section is called “Pre-game”. It ends with a shocking event: Roy Hobbs is shot by a mad girl in a Chicago hotel, before he even has a chance to try out for a baseball team!

What we discussed today:

1. the story of Perceval and the Holy Grail (see the previous blog entry)
2. the vegetative deity or the Green Man myth
3. the Biblical story of David and Goliath
4. Chiyonofuji and the end of his career (this is the same story of any fighter or warrior who grows old)
5. why does Harriet Bird shoot Roy???!?

It is difficult to appreciate The Natural without some knowledge of the mythological traditions behind it. The most important of these are the legends of the Waste Land and the Fisher King. Malamud loosely based his novel on the story of Sir Perceval and his quest for the Holy Grail, originally recorded in the eleventh century by the French writer Chrétien de Troyes.

In Chrétien’s story, Perceval starts out as a country bumpkin, much like Roy. Raised in the forest by an overprotective mother, he has little knowledge of manners or chivalry. One day, Perceval meets several knights of King Arthur, and he immediately wants to join them. He goes to Camelot, but Arthur refuses to make him a knight until he proves himself. Perceval goes out to do so, and he proves his worth by winning many matches; he turns out to be a surprisingly good knight. Perceval meets a knight who arms him and teaches him about chivalry, particularly the idea that he should not chatter, and should instead remain quiet most of the time. Perceval plans to return to his mother and show her his new skills, but he is waylaid by an infatuation with a woman named Blancheflor.

Finally, one day, Perceval comes upon a strange castle. Inside is an old man, who presents Perceval with a fine sword. Perceval then witnesses a strange procession: several youths enter the hall carrying a bleeding lance, golden candelabra, and a golden grail. Perceval, remembering the advice of the knight who instructed him, decides to stay quiet and wait to ask the old man about the mysterious procession until the next morning. When Perceval wakes up, however, he finds the castle and its inhabitants have disappeared. He rides on and meets a woman who tells him that if he had only asked the right questions, he would have learned about the lance and the Holy Grail and could have healed the Fisher King, and thus also the Waste Land.

Though Chrétien died before he finished the story of Perceval, scholars are reasonably sure, based on the sources from which Chrétien worked, that Perceval returned to the Fisher King and, swallowing his pride, asked the questions necessary to obtain the Grail and heal the King.

via SparkNotes: The Natural: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols.

Rifuan, April 6th, 2011

We are still working our way through an English translation of St Exupery’s “Wind Sand and Stars”.  In today’s session, we read through and discussed sections 4-6. Our next session will be May 25th.

1. uillaumet lost in the Andes – chapter II, section II, page 30-40 (end of chapter II)
2. Chapter IV (pages 48-62) – the cyclone
3. Chapter V, section II, pages 68-74 (end of chapter V) – night in the Sahara
4. Chapter VI, pages 76-82 (end of chapter VI) – the snakes under the table
5. Chapter VII, section I (pages 85-90) – the gazelle in the Sahara
6. Chapter VII, section V pages 106-119 – Bark the slave
7. Chapter IX, pages 174-189 – the Spanish Civil War
8. Chapter IX, section VI pages  215-224.
9. Chapter X – conclusion.

Scientism dna

I have discovered that there is a name for Weston’s “disease”: it is called scientism. From Wikipedia,

Scientism is the idea that natural science is the most authoritative worldview or aspect of human education, and that it is superior to all other interpretations of life.^[1] The term is used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,^[2] or philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, to describe what they see as the underlying attitudes and beliefs common to many scientists, whereby the study and methods of natural science have risen to the level of ideology.^[3] The classic statement of scientism is from the physicist Ernest Rutherford: “there is physics and there is stamp-collecting.”^[4]

There it is: Weston’s disease, or evil is that for him, science has “risen to the level of ideology”. It is not a criticism of science, but of a few people who go to an extreme and take science into something that it is not – an ideology. For those who remember, this is similar to Lewis’ criticism of Darwinism. He was not criticising Darwinism itself but rather some of its crazy supporters. As this writer puts it,

C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), perhaps the most widely read Christian apologist of the 20th
century, was careful to distinguish between evolution as a theory in biology and Evolution as an idea that came to dominate the politics and religion of his time. He noted that decades before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, poets and musicians had started proclaiming that humanity was inevitably evolving, onward and upward, to a glorious future    [http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2005/05/cs-lewis-wrote-mock-hymn-to-evolution.html ]

This belief in the inevitable upward evolution of humanity, that human society and the world in general is always improving and can only improve, is what Lewis called “The Myth”. He grew up with it. He fought against it. Yet it still sings its siren song. Are we not also still in thrall to it today?

One of our members mentioned the word “hubris” last time in connection with Weston. Today I came across a blog entry titled, “Scientism, Secular Humanism, Hubris“, in which the writer how closely connected are these three ideas.

The Wikipedia entry on scientism points out how similar scientism is to a kind of religion:

The Persian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, commented that in the West, many will accept the ideology of modern science, not as “simple ordinary science”, but as a replacement for religion.

CS Lewis understood that scientism is a kind of competing religion. Unlike Lewis’ Christianity, however, scientism does not bring love, joy, power, peace, awe, wonder, admiration, poetry, to the human spirit. It is not a coincidence that in Perelandra the Un-Man takes Weston’s physical form. Ransom, who we might take to be Lewis himself, fights Weston, i.e. Christianity in the form of its present, living believers fights against scientism.

By the way, this blog entry calls Stephen Hawking the Grand High Priest of Scientism, mockingly identifying scientism as a religion.

The same blog entry points out the important consequences of scientism:

We have to tell our grandchildren that they have no soul, no higher purpose in life, that they are just a mix-up of chemicals.  They are not the gift of God, but rather, worthless trash destined to die in a dying universe. 

Ayn Rand took up arms against the very same beliefs, and for the same reason: she saw the terrible and terrifying consequences of these beliefs on the human spirit and mind, especially the minds of the young. And yet Rand was not a believer in any religion. In fact, she was very strongly anti-religious for the latter part of her life.

Autumn stones

Update:

Thank you very much to all of you who attended yesterday’s session. It was a very interesting discussion! We decided to have one more session on “Perelandra”, then we will read a new book, Wind, Sand and Stars (click the link to buy or to see the details of the book on Amazon Japan) by the French pilot and poet, Antoine de St Exupery. The Japanese translation is 人間の土地 (新潮文庫). (Click the link to buy or to see the details of the book on Amazon Japan.)

The December session will be on Dec. 8th at the usual time and place.

Here is a list of questions on “Perelandra” to focus on for the December session:

1. What wound remains with Ransom even when the rest of his body has healed? How does Ransom finally kill the Un-man/Weston?
   1. Read Genesis 3:14 and 15. This passage is usually taken to mean the first promise of a saviour who will defeat sin and Satan and redeem humanity.
   2. List the similarities between the Genesis passage and C.S. Lewis’ story.
2. The long and somewhat confusing dialogue at the end of the novel about the Great Dance might be summed up like this: “All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for.”
   1. Read Job 38, Isaiah 40:12-31, 55:8-11. What do these passages say about God’s plan? Do you think Lewis was thinking of these passages when he wrote about the Great Dance?
3. Read Genesis 2:4 – 3:7.
   1. List the similarities between the tempting of Eve and the tempting of the Green Lady.
   2. What differences are there?
4. Science fiction is sometimes divided into two types: utopian and dystopian.
   1. Can you give examples of utopian and dystopian science fiction?
   2. Which category does “Perelandra” fit?
5. Ransom (and presumably C.S. Lewis) believes it is sometimes necessary and justifiable to face evil physically with violence. Do you agree?  Give reasons for your answer.

Why not  make use of your knowledge of Perelandra, and write a review of the book on Amazon Japan?

Here are some reviews of Perelandra (Space Trilogy) by other readers. These reviews are mostly written by ordinary people, not by professional writers.

At the moment, there are only two reviews of the English version of Perelandra (Space Trilogy).  There are just 3 reviews of the Japanese translation ヴィーナスへの旅―ペレランドラ 金星編 (別世界物語).
Why not write your own review? I strongly recommend it! You don’t have to write a positive review. In fact, sometimes the negative reviews, if they are well written,  are more interesting and useful than the positive ones. When you write a review, try to keep in mind that you are writing for a reader. What information does a reader want? Why do people read the reviews on Amazon? Because they are thinking of buying the book, and they want to know what the book is about, and if they will enjoy reading it.  Here are my examples of badly written reviews. First a positive one, then a negative one. Try not to write a review  like these!

1. This is a great book! You will enjoy it! It has many marvellous descriptions. The writer is a famous author. Once I started reading, I could not stop. Some parts were difficult, but it is worth reading.
2. This is a terrible book! Don’t buy this book! It is a waste of time. The author is a very bad writer. I stopped reading this book after 50 pages. It is boring. The story is completely unbelievable! We know that Venus is nothing like how it is described in the book. Venus is full of poisonous gasses, therefore this story could never happen. Also, how Ransom gets to Venus is also completely nonsensical. Don’t waste your money on this book.

New Update:

Another theme we discussed in this session was that “reality” is not real! To be more specific, our everyday reality masks or hides a different reality which is hiding behind it.

The part of Perelandra which expresses this idea is in Chapter 2 where the character Lewis talks about the price we pay for our comfortable reality.

At the sesion, I mentioned a quotation from Lewis (the author) where he expressed a similar idea. It is from Lewis’ foreword to a fairy tale byGeorge MacDonald:

The quality that had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real university, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.

In this session we discussed the first few chapters of  C.S. Lewis‘ novel “Perelandra“, the second book in his science-fiction trilogy. Please write any comments about Perelandra after this blog entry. Comments are welcome in Japanese or in English.

At first, we discussed the details of the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man, as described in the Book of Genesis and in  Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics). We recalled most of the details, but we were not sure exactly why Satan and the other angels rebelled against God: some of us thought it was a power struggle, others thought it was because Satan and the rebel angels wanted more freedom.

Then we began to discuss the book itself, starting with the Study Guide questions. However, the Study Guide questions were quite difficult, and we ended up discussing other topics. We did not get very far in the book or in the Study Guide!

One topic we discussed was about “being drawn in”: Lewis, at the beginning of the story, is afraid of being drawn in to something he will not like. He is afraid that already he is too much involved to retreat. One member asked how we can prevent ourselves from being drawn in to dangerous or unpleasant groups or activities. I suggested an essay by Lewis entitled “The Inner Ring”. I’m sure there exists a Japanese translation. Can you help me find it? Here is how one man, a Christian and a historian, describes this essay by Lewis:

Here is what C.S. Lewis wrote many decades ago. Take it to heart… This lecture, “The Inner Ring,” was the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, University of London, in 1944. By the time he gave it, he was famous. The inner rings wanted to get him in, so as to increase their prestige. He demurred.

He had the group he needed. His circle of friends — the Inklings — included authors J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. The “grunt” member, his brother Warnie, as an amateur historian eventually dwarfed them all in academia with his book on Louis XIV.

It was the high quality of the men in the group that served as a screening factor for their writings. They read their stories to each other. Their stories got better.

This opens up a very interesting possible path for future discussion:

1. the meaning of temptation
2. how to resist temptation

In fact, the Christian historian who wrote the paragraph about Lewis above,  has written a “curriculum” for young people to teach them how to resist temptation. He calls it “Providing your children with the will to resist”. It is a 10-week course. Week 3 is to read and discuss Lewis’s science fiction story That Hideous Strength.

Another way to say “being drawn in” might be “being tempted”. In his speech “The Inner Ring”, Lewis describes how this temptation will come. It is similar to the temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost, and of The Lady in Perelandra. A very subtle temptation, very difficult to protect oneself against. Only strong principles and a deep understanding of your own heart (it’s strengths and weaknesses) can help you:

And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still–just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig–the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”–and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure–something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face–that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face–turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

Perhaps the story of Adam and Eve is not a story about something that happened a long time ago, but a story that is very relevant to us today.

We also discussed the character of Lewis in the novel. Lewis wrote the novel, but he also placed himself in it! Why? Why not just keep Ransom as the main character and narrator?

A possible answer is that Ransome, especially in book 2, becomes a rather special, even super, human being. It might be difficult for readers to relate to or identify with Ransome. So Lewis created an “ordinary person”  and called him “Lewis”! This person thinks, feels and acts very like ordinary people, like people who might read this novel. This makes it easier to read and to understand what is happening. Perhaps some people would not be afraid of meeting a real ghost or a real angel, but most people would be, just like Lewis.

It was a very interesting and wide-ranging discussion, and we all felt rather tired by the end of it.

Finally, we agreed to hold our next session on the last Wednesday in November, November 24th. In that session, we will continue our discussion of Perelandra. I don’t know whether we will finish it or not, but please try and finish reading the whole book by next session.

As well as reading the book itself, in both English and Japanese, I recommend that you read the relevant parts of the Book of Genesis, and a summary of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Related articles

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In this session, we will finish answering the questions about “Out of the Silent Planet”, and begin reading the second book in this science fiction trilogy, Perelandra.  This story deals with several important matters regarding Christianity. Reading this story is a good way to learn about Christian values.

Anyone is welcome. In fact, as we will be starting a new book today, this session would be a good time to join or re-join our informal reading group. I will bring photocopies of the first chapter of Perelandra, for those who do not have their own copy of the book. (I will also bring extra copies of the worksheets for “Out of the Silent Planet“.)

I will bring worksheets for “Perelandra”. You will read the novel at home, in your own time. The worksheets are not compulsory, but I recommend them. The questions will help you

• focus on the key points of the text,
• get more out of reading the story.

We will discuss the novel in the next two or three sessions by discussing our answers to the worksheets. To answer some of these questions, you will need a Bible. A Japanese Bible should be sufficient. (The language in the English Bible, although beautiful, is very difficult, and should only be attempted by advanced learners of English.)

As always, the discussions will be in English, and in our sessions I will refer to the English version of the book (I will be using this paperback edition). However, it is perfectly ok to read the book  in Japanese. In fact, I encourage you to do so.

1. Reading the book in Japanese only is better than not reading the book at all.
2. Reading the book (any book) in both Japanese AND English is perhaps THE most powerful language-learning method of all.

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Update: Thank you to all of you who attended today. I was surprised to see so many people.

We went over the answers to the questions for “Out of the Silent Planet”, but we did not finish them: we did up to p. 22, question 8.

We decided to continue next time.

We also decided to read “Perelandra” as our next book. Other suggestions made were:

• something by the French pilot and poet St. Exupery
• something by the American Jewish writer, Bernard Malamud.

Future sessions:

•  September 22nd (#31)
• October 27th (#32)

Our next session will be September 8th, 3-5 pm.  We will discuss “Out of the Silent Planet” and go over the answers to the questions.

What shall we read next? I propose the next book in Lewis’ trilogy: “Perelandra”.  But I am open to any other suggestions. If you have other ideas, please bring them to the next session and/or email me.

金星への旅 (1979年)
ヴィーナスへの旅―ペレランドラ 金星編 (別世界物語) [単行本]

It’s over 30 degrees every day, but it’s even hotter in Moscow! And floods in Pakistan.

I hope you are all well and managing to stay cool (but not chilled) in these hot summer days.

It has been about a month since our last session, and our next session will be in about a month’s time. How are you getting on with “Out of the Silent Planet”? Post your thoughts, reactions, comments, questions, etc., here, in either English or Japanese.

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