READING AND LISTENING

I've been listening to a audio recording of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows read by Jim Dale. He is an amazing voice actor, able to create the dozens of different voices necessary for the huge cast of characters. It's a delight to listen to him, although the time Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend wandering through various forests is still interminably long. I hope that's fixed in the movies. It is interesting how much more I picked up listening to the book read than I did reading it to myself.

Maybe it's my profession or perhaps just my interests, but I suspect that I am involved in reading books aloud to a far greater degree than most people. Every Sunday there are three Scripture lessons read aloud at our worship services. This is actually a modern approach since for years the Scriptures were chanted rather than read. I also belong to a prayer group where we study a book each week. (Right now it's Seeds a collection of excepts from the writings of Thomas Merton.) Generally we read section alound and discuss them. And although it's not quite the same as reading books, my Reader's Theater group does read the scripts. Also, when I visit at Saint Leo Abbey, dinner is accompanied by reading.

Of course, all this started when I was just a little tyke and my mother would read me a story every night at bed time. It was usually one of the Little Golden Books. When my mother was in the hospital when my sister was born, I conned my Father into reading a bunch of stories telling him that's what Mom did. It's one of my earliest memories. More unusual was the reading aloud with my friend Jim. I was probably around 11 or 12 at the time. I would go to Jim's house on a summer afternoon and we'd play war games. We'd take a break when his mother brought us refreshments and read from his collection of Oz books. That's the series by L. Frank Baum that began with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Most people are only familiar with that first book. We'd read a chapter each. I don't suppose young people do that today.

Most people are first taught to read aloud, although I have heard of youngsters who watch their parents read aloud and learn how to read that way. Not me. I learned to read using look-say method where you learn whole words at a time. Turns out that isn't as good as learning phonetically, but it was the "in" method in the 1950s. Besides, I have the happy memories of the Dick and Jane stores. We started with a huge book with the teacher pointing out the words with a rubber tipped pointer and pronouncing them. Then each person in our reading group did the same until they could read the whole book. Then they were ready to go one to having our own books to read from.
For some reason they wouldn't let you take the readers home for fear you would "read ahead" which was forbidden. Fortunately, as soon as I was able to read tolerably well, my Father took me to the old Hamlin Park Library, a wonderful old-fashioned library. Here's a picture of the building designed by one of the masters of prairie architecture, Dwight H. Perkins.



There was a wonderful display of books at kid level. I think I picked up a Dr. Suess book. My father had me read it to him. After a few moments a librarian came over to say we had to be quiet in the library, though she did remark to my father that I read very well. That was the beginning of my love affair with libraries. Hardly a week has gone by in my life when I haven't stopped in at a library somewhere.

So we had to learn to read silently to ourselves. That was a real struggle for some of my peers. Actually, there is something quite unnatural about reading silently. As I understand it, writing came about as a memory tool. It was to remind you of things so you could tell a story for example. That's true of the picture writings I have seen used by some American Indians as a way of recording a story. If you didn't know what the story was, you'd have a hard time figuring it out. That's true even with phonetic systems like Hebrew. The Hebrew characters started off as picture writing, but became phonetic. They indicate sounds. Except Hebrew only had consonants and a few vowel-like symbols. You had to know what the word was to get it right. It's like this billboard I read with the message "IM STRVN" which I kept reading as "I'm striving" until I realized that's not a message a restaurant would post. It was supposed to be read, "I'm starving." Ah, yes.

Back to reading aloud. I think the first example of someone who could read silently to themselves as Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the 4th century. As I recall the story, someone brought Ambrose a document, he looked at it for a time, and without reading it aloud knew what it said. People were astounded.

This brings me back to Bible reading. The evidence is that normally a person wrote by dictating to a scribe. Reading reversed the process with a person reading aloud so others could hear. Reading was, then, essentially a community experience. There are a lot of advantageous to that, principally that it moves us away from the private interpretation of Scripture where each individual goes off on a tangent of their own.

I just receive a pile of new books. Unfortunately, no one is going to be interested in hearing me read them or in reading them to me. Pity, because one is a collection of sermons by St. John Chrysostom which were meant to be heard and another is The Institutes of John Cassian which were frequently read aloud in monasteries.

When all is said (or read) and done, there is a disadvantage to reading aloud. It is much harder to read and eat ice cream at the same time when you have to say the words. Well, nothing's perfect, though books and ice cream are nearly so.

Whatever way you read (or eat ice cream) may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne






3725

NEW BOOKS

SO somebody asked me if I'd read all fifty books I bought while on vacation. Duh! Of course not. (By the way another six books have arrived by mail and there are a few more that I have to order before my special discount runs out.) Anyway, not all the books are the kind you read through. Several are commentaries, books you use for the study of the Bible. You consult them as needed. I have used three of them already for the Bible study on Mark we're doing at church.


I have, however, read several of the books. First, Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World. The book was written for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Exhibition which I never saw. It contains eight lavishly illustrated chapters on various aspect of Franklin's life as a scientist, a politician and statesman, a printer, and as a possible abolitionist. The later chapter is interesting because at one time Franklin was a slave holder, but in 1787 he became president of the Pennsylvania society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery. What changed his mind? Historians don't seem to know what made the change, only that he did change. This is quite different from may of today's politicians who brag about never changing their positions of anything. It has been just that sort of prideful stubbornness that has gotten us into such trouble. We could use some more practical statesmen like Franklin.


I also read the children's book The Magic Shop by H. G. Wells in an edition illustrated by François Roca. I didn't know this short story at all, but the essence of the story is a magic shop that turns out the be a real Magic Shop.


Next on the completed list is Chicago Originals: A Cast of the City's Colorful Characters by Kenan Heise and Ed Baumann. I have to grant that New York has produced more famous people than Chicago, and certainly there are more movies stars in LA than Chicago. (Although, Chicago was a great movie making center in the silent film days.) However, Chicago has had per capita more characters than any other great city. There's Al Capone, of course, and the notorious Everleigh sisters, but also Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini (now a saint) and Louis Sullivan. But it's the politicians that give Chicago is character as the "Windy City": "Bathouse" John Coughlin and Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna, "Paddy: Bauler and Richard J. Daley–Hizzoner. The book is far from complete lacking "Big Jim" Colosimo and Jane Adams and Colonel McCormick and William Wrigley and Oprah Winfrey and Studs Terkel, but it's a start.


Speaking of Studs, he passed away while I was in Chicago at the tender age of 96. Among other things, Studs was the popularizer of oral histories. I picked up to of his books, Hope Dies Last and The Good War. I also bought Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation of which I read about 60 pages so far.


The final book for now is one I haven't exactly read, but I've listen to. It's a collection of three of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries by Dorothy Gilman. Mrs. Pollifax is an older woman (sort of like a Miss Marple) who works for the CIA. It's quite an accident that she began in this role, but she looks like the least likely person to be a spy so who better to send on missions? I stumble in the series a few months ago and have been listening to recordings of them in my car as I travel around. I have listened to A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax and am in the midst of Mrs Pollifax on Safari. I picked up this collection in hardbound for $1.00.

There are more books to report on, but they are of a rather heavier sort, so I'll leave them for another time.


May you enjoy a good book or two (or a dozen) on your pilgrimage. May the days of Advent prepare the Way. And may the Lord bless you on your journey and welcome you on your arrival.


Wayne


3239

CURIOSITIES

I have some curious books in my library. Well, a lot of them are curious. (Some people say that's because I am curious, or is that peculiar? I forget.) In any case, I think the strangest one is a small copy of Martin Luther's German New Testament written in shorthand. It is beyond me why anyone would publish a book in shorthand. Anyone who could read the shorthand could also read the actual German. Maybe somebody thought anything, even shorthand, would be easier to read than the Fraktur type used to print German books before 1941. Maybe it's just a German thing. Ve know how to read und write in shorthand, zo ve vill publish zis book in shorthand. People vill like it or else. I know my cousin routinely wrote notes to herself in shorthand, and her ancestry was 100% German. In any case, the book remains a mystery to me.

Not really curious, but special to me is a book titled simply Chicago by Studs Terkel. Studs is a fixture in the Chicago literary world. He took his nickname from the character Studs Lonigan in the books by James Farrel. He's probably best known for his oral histories like Division Street America, Hard Times, Working, and The Good War. Last year the ninety-five-year-old published his latest book, Touch and Go. I used to listen to his radio program where he interviewed anybody who was anybody and a lot of people who seemed to be nobody. And he always signed off, "Take it easy, but take it." One of my fond memories is of eating at Chicago's Berghoff Restaurant and seeing Studs a few tables away obviously enjoying himself. I finally met Studs when he spoke at a book fair in Miami in the late 80s. It was his first time in that city since WWII. I asked him to autograph my copy of Chicago. As soon as I told him I was from Chicago, he asked me where, I told him, just west of Wrigley Field, near Damen and Addison. Of course he knew exactly where that was. So I have this book inscribed, "To Father Wayne, Peace! Studs Terkel." Priceless.

One author I wish I could have met was Robert Benchley, noted humorist, theater critic, actor, and member of the Algonquin Round Table. I have a few of his books in reprints, but my prizes are three original editions. Well not quite original. Two of the books, Benchley or Else and Chips off the Old Benchley. are posthumous collections of his works. The only one that I own published during his lifetime is My Ten Years in a Quandry and How they Grew. Unfortunately it is a 1940 reprint and not the 1936 first edition, but the stories are just as good. Two of the books have Dewey Decimal System call numbers carefully written on their spines in white ink. On one of the books the librarian had to paint a patch of back across the spine so the white numbers could be placed on it. And inside on the full title page, a librarian has pedantically corrected the author's name by inserting his middle name "Charles." As far as I know, he never published using his middle name. Amusingly, his long-time friend and colleague Dorothy Parker always called him Mr. Benchley and he called her Mrs. Parker. Lest you think I swiped this book from the Harris County Public Library in Huston, I assure you that it is properly stamped "discard." I evidently bought it somewhere for 96 cents (marked down from $1.25). I don't know where I found it since I've never been in Huston. I do know the provenance of the other volume. It once belonged to the West Baden College Library which passed it on to the Bellarmine Library (which later changed its name to the Jesuit School of Theology) which moved into the same facility as the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago which then combined the libraries and later added McCormick Theological Seminary's library as well, and then kept all the books when the Jesuit School faculty moved to Berkeley. Well, there wasn't room for such ephemeral books such as the writings of Robert Benchley in the new combined library, so it was sold to me, probably for fifty cents. Their loss, my gain. The last article in this collection is "Why Does Nobody Collect Me?" in which Mr. Benchley bemoans the fact that no one collects his writings. He's had even found autographed presentation copies he had given out in second hand book stores. Oh, how I would like to come by one of those to add to my curiosities.

I have a number of crumbling books from the mid to late 19th century. Most are old hymnals, but I do have a set of the collected works of Charles Dickens printed in 1896. While the pages are in good shape, the covers are falling off. I have been hauling them around with me for the past 30 years. I can't bring myself to part with them even though they aren't in any condition to read. Hmm, I wonder if I could call my apartment, The Old Curiosity Shop in recognition of the Dickens set. Well, it's better than Bleak House.

For my final selection, a really old book. Actually, its only one page of a book. It is a hand written on vellum from an Italian Antiphonale made in 1423. It is a beautiful piece of Gregorian chant with two decorative capitals in red and blue ink. (That's it in the picture.) The central text is the Alleluia for the common of a confessor not a bishop. Alleluia, Beatus vir,Blessed is the man who fears the Lord. I bought it for $25, 38 years ago when I was a poor student. It must have taken all the money I had. I have since then purchased a page from another much nicer manuscript, but nothing gives me as much pleasure as my first find.

Well, that's all for today. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update the blog until after Easter as my schedule gets pretty pressing this time of year.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

BOOKS

My faithful readers (What does that mean? Are unfaithful readers people who read other blogs or something?) will have gathered that I am a somewhat eccentric person. This is no accident. I have been working for years to become eccentric. It started when I was a child. I used to drive my parents and teachers wild by being different. Today’s nonconformist young whippersnapper don’t now how to be eccentric. They dye their hair blue, put rings in their eyebrows and think that’s a big deal. Hah! Eccentricity is a subtle art. To be eccentric is to be slightly strange, not out and out whacko. As a kid I would button my shirt all the way up to my neck. While all the other students drew birds facing left, I drew them facing right. For goodness sake, I even celebrated Beethoven’s Birthday complete with a cake and non-stop music.

Books are now at the heart of eccentricity. Now, this sounds quite normal. Many people have a few shelves of books. I have more than a few shelves. I have walls filled with book cases–the living room, both bedrooms, and now the hallway. There aren’t any in the dining room. I’m saving the seven feet of wall space there for the books that will someday have to be moved from my church office. I seldom realize how odd this is until I walk into a bookless person’s home or until they walk into mine. “Look at all the books,” they exclaim. ”Have you read them all?” No, I haven’t. Some are reference works, some are cook books, and some are good things that someday I may get around to reading. Doing a quick check of a few book cases, I find I have read every book on some shelves, on others about half and on still others–the ones with important works of American fiction–only a few. I bought a bunch of Hemingway and Fitzgerald before I realized that I didn’t really care for them. On the other hand, I have read everything by Herman Hesse and Christopher Isherwood and Robertson Davies that I have bought as well as all the mystery books.

I don’t know how many books I have, perhaps 3,500 to 4,000 at home and maybe another 2,500 to 3,000 at church. I had been aiming at a library of about 6,000 volumes by the time I am 65, so I’ll have to do some thinning out.

The books are eclectic. (That’s eclectic NOT eccentric. I’m eccentric, not my books.) They follow changes in my interests. The older ones are on music, then lots and lots of Biblical studies church history with a smattering of theology, then philosophy, then a few adult and higher education text books, then spirituality, then Benedictiana Across the board in terms of age are books on history, art, architecture, literature and children’s books. I buy more children’s books than serious literature. It’s easier to read and doesn’t tax my brain as much. I must have at least 12 editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I should remark that I rarely pay full price for any book. I try to buy ones I must have at a discount. I haunt used book stores wherever I go. And I always look through sale books. Lot of the sale books are serendipitous; I’m not looking for anything in particular, but find something that appears interesting at a price I can afford.

This brings me to my most recent addition The Book on the Book Shelf by Henry Petroski. That’s a very clever title, because the subject matter of the book is bookshelves. I’ve seen books on the history of books and book making, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen on bookshelves. I first saw it when it was new in 1999. I glanced at it then, but didn’t buy it. Only now as a $2 remainder copy did I purchase and read it–290 pages in about three days. It was a fascinating read. Petroski is professor of both civil engineering and history at Duke University. He looks at technical aspects of shelves and their history while tossing in personal anecdotes and stories along with pictures. (The picture at the head of this blog is of the library at St. John’s College, Cambridge. It’s from p. 90 of the book). I knew that in the middle ages books were chained to the shelves to prevent theft, but I didn’t realize that they were shelved with the spine facing in. So many things to lean. So many books to read.

I am not alone in this particular eccentricity. Remember the clerk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?


A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For him was lever have at his bedde heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.

That clerk was on a pilgrimage to Canterbury which makes him a spiritual ancestor of mine, for as I say, life is a pilgrimage and I am just a pilgrim on the way, even if my baggage does include a few (thousand) books or so.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne