happy birthday, dear jack

Happy 115th Birthday, dear Jack!

To celebrate, here are a few of my favorite quotes of his.

Read a book today.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson

Such a satisfying read.  Finally.  Of course, considering the content, this one's pretty par for the course: it's hard to mess up Shakespeare for me.  (The only one who's ever done that is a certain undergrad professor of mine - who will remain unnamed, although that's probably an unnecessary courtesy.  She said once, literally, "Shakespeare was a pretty good writer for his time," as we read through his masterpiece Hamlet.)  This book is comparatively well-informed and -researched, with a substantial bibliography (many works of which I already own.  Yes!)

Shakespeare is a delightful, engaging, and succinct overview of the main points of one William Shakespeare's life.  Bryson discusses and probes various theories to the overwhelming silence of Shakespeare's life outside his plays and poetry, and gives the reader clear understanding of what we may believe to be true, without tremendous assumption (which, unfortunately, Shakespeare scholars and aficionados are wont to do.) 

In regards to his schooling, for instance, Bryson puts it this way:

Shakespeare's genius had to do not really with facts, but with ambition, intrigue, love, suffering -- things that aren't taught in school.  He had a kind of assimilative intelligence, which allowed him to pull together lots of disparate fragments of knowledge, but there is almost nothing that speaks of hard intellectual application in his plays -- unlike, say, those of Ben Jonson, where learning hangs like bunting on every word.  Nothing we find in Shakespeare betrays any acquaintance with Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, or others who influenced Johnson and were second nature to Francis Bacon.  That is a good thing -- a very good thing indeed -- for he would almost certainly have been less Shakespeare and more a showoff had he been better read.  As John Dryden put it in 1668: "Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd."

And so, we love him for his humanity.

Bryson also addresses the various theories as to who Shakespeare "really" was (e.g. Marlowe, Bacon, de Vere.)  He sheds light on the origins of these theories - briefly, thank God - and concludes thusly:

In short it is possible, with a kind of selective squinting, to endow the alternative claimants with the necessary time, talent, and motive for anonymity to write the plays of William Shakespeare.  But what no one has ever produced is the tiniest particle of evidence to suggest that they actually did so.  These people must have been incredibly gifted -- to create, in their spare time, the greatest literature ever produced in English, in a voice patently not their own, in a manner so cunning that they fooled virtually everyone during their own lifetimes and for four hundred years afterward.  The Earl of Oxford, better still, additionally anticipated his own death and left a stock of work sufficient to keep the supply of new plays flowing at the same rate until Shakespeare himself was ready to die a decade or so later.  Now that is genius!

Haha.  Oh, Bill Bryson.  Thank you for charming me once again.  

thrifty!

All this for $0.30.  No lie.  

Yes, please, I think I will.

Thus far, then, our Lewis collection:

The Abolition of Man

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Four Loves

The Great Divorce

A Grief Observed

Mere Christianity

Miracles

Reflections on the Psalms

The Screwtape Letters

The Space Trilogy (sans Out of the Silent Planet)

Till We Have Faces

The Weight of Glory

...And some biographies.

C.S. Lewis: Christian and Storyteller

C.S. Lewis: Christian and Storyteller, by Beatrice Gormley

This one was short and to the point.  Ms. Gormley has little of the delightful, clever prose of the man whose life she describes.  I did, however, appreciate the balanced look at every era of Lewis' life, and the photographs.  For a person unfamiliar with Lewis apart from The Chronicles of Narnia, formative 'events' like his mother's death, his friendship with his brother Warren, his adopted mother Mrs. Moore, experiences in the Great War, friendship with JRR Tolkien and the other Inklings, and marriage to divorcee Joy Davidman provide a nice backdrop (and explanation) for the stories Jack needed to tell, and the faith he needed to defend. 

This particular biography is perhaps better suited for younger readers, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a teaser, whetting my appetite for more of Lewis.

fare thee well, Ray

Ray Bradbury

1920-2012

Our world has lost another brilliant mind, prolific writer and visionary in Ray Bradbury.  

He is famous not only for his contributions to the science fiction and fantasy genres, but also, ironically, his skepticism of the value of the Internet and modern technology.  His book Fahrenheit 451 was released as an e-book, against his will.  "We have too many machines now," he said.

Honor Mr. Bradbury's life.  

Pick up a real book and read it.  

I recommend his short stories.

Rest in peace, old soul.