Henry Miller and Alexander Schmemann walk into a bar
Because both books are in my diaper bag right now:-)
I mentioned before there is something in the way that I remember these two books as having something in common. As I begin my parallel reading, I am still holding onto the still-smarting slap on the face thing. But I think the other thing that causes them to share a place in my affections, or at least close proximity in my affections, is that both books I felt compelled to give as gifts.
Several years ago I gave someone my copy of Tropic of Cancer. I know that that recepient only made it so far into the novel and abandoned it for more pressing work things. It is a book that you must be sucked into or committed to to complete. It is also an interesting gift, don't you think? I mean, what is the appropriate response to a gift of Henry Miller. This book causes strong reactions and can stir up in you a tempest of emotions. The recepient was someone whose reactions I valued, more than his thoughts (which would have been brilliant on the subject anyway). I wanted to know that he loved the book as much as I did, show me his own notes and turned-down pages. Or call me in the middle of the night to tell me he had thrown the novel in disgust, that it was awful, not worth calling literature, and then enumerate for me every delicious reason why it was positively moronic for someone like me to give that book to someone like him. I salivated until my mouth went dry waiting for something--anything-to tell me how this novel made him feel. I gave up, and I progressed toward the life you read about now.
Schmemann's Eucharist came into my life in a quite different manner. It was required reading for my liturgy class at Spring Hill. My professor had a personal relationship with this book from his days at Duke. How he tells it shows this book as being the fulcrum upon which his entire life pivoted. When he arrived at Duke he was a liberal Protestant, interested in Systemmatic Theology. When he left he was getting ready to start his PhD in Liturgics at Notre Dame and was seeking out an RCIA program. One summer he asked Prof Wainright for some suggested reading, and among the books recommended was the Schmemann. That book, which is esentially only the author's own musings on the state of worship in the Russian Orthodox Church, can be read by any Christian for a much needed boot in the pants. And the experience of my professor at Spring Hill can't be that unique; I once joked on Open Book that Duke turns out a lot of Catholics for a Methodist school, and more than one commenter that went to Duke noted how true that was, and one even "blamed" Wainwright for his own crossing of the Tiber. And Wainright remains a hard-core Methodist!!
So when someone tells you how important a book is to them, and then they press it into your hands (here as required reading), you are already prepared to expect great things. And Schmemann delivers. Even in the midst of reading it I immediately thought of 2 people who needed this book--Puritas Corbin, and one of our former Philosophy Professors from Seton Hill who was now a very devout Christian. I needed to get this book into other people's hands because it was that good.
I give books as gifts all the time. That is what readers do. But they all haven't been as loaded gifts as the Miller and the Schmemann for me.
I mentioned before there is something in the way that I remember these two books as having something in common. As I begin my parallel reading, I am still holding onto the still-smarting slap on the face thing. But I think the other thing that causes them to share a place in my affections, or at least close proximity in my affections, is that both books I felt compelled to give as gifts.
Several years ago I gave someone my copy of Tropic of Cancer. I know that that recepient only made it so far into the novel and abandoned it for more pressing work things. It is a book that you must be sucked into or committed to to complete. It is also an interesting gift, don't you think? I mean, what is the appropriate response to a gift of Henry Miller. This book causes strong reactions and can stir up in you a tempest of emotions. The recepient was someone whose reactions I valued, more than his thoughts (which would have been brilliant on the subject anyway). I wanted to know that he loved the book as much as I did, show me his own notes and turned-down pages. Or call me in the middle of the night to tell me he had thrown the novel in disgust, that it was awful, not worth calling literature, and then enumerate for me every delicious reason why it was positively moronic for someone like me to give that book to someone like him. I salivated until my mouth went dry waiting for something--anything-to tell me how this novel made him feel. I gave up, and I progressed toward the life you read about now.
Schmemann's Eucharist came into my life in a quite different manner. It was required reading for my liturgy class at Spring Hill. My professor had a personal relationship with this book from his days at Duke. How he tells it shows this book as being the fulcrum upon which his entire life pivoted. When he arrived at Duke he was a liberal Protestant, interested in Systemmatic Theology. When he left he was getting ready to start his PhD in Liturgics at Notre Dame and was seeking out an RCIA program. One summer he asked Prof Wainright for some suggested reading, and among the books recommended was the Schmemann. That book, which is esentially only the author's own musings on the state of worship in the Russian Orthodox Church, can be read by any Christian for a much needed boot in the pants. And the experience of my professor at Spring Hill can't be that unique; I once joked on Open Book that Duke turns out a lot of Catholics for a Methodist school, and more than one commenter that went to Duke noted how true that was, and one even "blamed" Wainwright for his own crossing of the Tiber. And Wainright remains a hard-core Methodist!!
So when someone tells you how important a book is to them, and then they press it into your hands (here as required reading), you are already prepared to expect great things. And Schmemann delivers. Even in the midst of reading it I immediately thought of 2 people who needed this book--Puritas Corbin, and one of our former Philosophy Professors from Seton Hill who was now a very devout Christian. I needed to get this book into other people's hands because it was that good.
I give books as gifts all the time. That is what readers do. But they all haven't been as loaded gifts as the Miller and the Schmemann for me.
Comments
one could probably argue that so was Pynchon
rc