The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

From Michael Shaara's note to readers of The Killer Angels:

You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war. I have there fore avoided historical opinions and gone back primarily to the words of the men themselves, their letters and other documents. I have not consciously changed any fact. . . . The interpretation of character is my own.

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels is a wonderful book. When before reading the book, I saw Ken Burn's liner notes on the back and read, "REMARKABLE . . . A BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE," I thought, "Well, I guess." However, while I don't think the book quite changed my life, it did peel back a sort of film over my vision and clarified some things for me.

As you may have gathered, this is a novel about the battle at Gettysburg, and it is the book from which the movie of that name is taken. I have always had an interest in the Civil War, and wanted to read more about it, but I thought it would be a bit of work. I have a hard time following battles, both in print and on the screen. I usually just skip to the end of the battle to find out who won and who is still alive. However, since many of the most important moments of The Killer Angels take place during the battles, my usual practice just wouldn't work, and because of the many maps Shaara included, and his clear descriptions of the action, I didn't have much trouble.

The story is told from the point-of-view of the participants, and each chapter's title is the name of the man whose thoughts and experiences we are sharing. The only exception to this is the first chapter which is called, The Spy. and is about a man named Harrison, a paid scout, who first informs the Southern generals that Union soldiers are gathering in the area of Gettysburg. The narratives are mainly those of Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (who commanded the Union forces at the Battle of Little Round Top), with a few others appearing at the beginning and end of the book.

One of the main strengths of the book is Shaara's ability to get us into the heads of the men who fought this battle. As I was reading I was with the man whose life I was sharing. It didn't matter if he was Union or Confederate, it was only important that he was a person who was struggling through that moment. The battle, and the war itself, are only the background for the thoughts, fears, motivations, and physical experience of the characters.

What struck me most, I think, is the motivations of the soldiers. I know that the big reason for the war was slavery, although I think it is much more complex than that, but I wonder what drove each individual soldier to battle. I'm pretty sure that the real answer would differ quite a bit from man to man.

I'm trying to remember, and I can't, an instance where the Southern soldiers discuss slavery. The only one of Shaara's characters that really professes slavery as his reason for joining the Union army is Chamberlain, who is not a professional soldier, but a professor of Rhetoric. This conversation between Chamberlain and his brother, Tom, after the Union had won the battle made me think.

[Tom said,] "Thing I cannot understand. Thing I never will understand. How can they fight so hard, them Johnnies, and all for slavery? . . . When you ask them prisoners, they never talk about slavery. But, Lawrence, how do you explain that? What else is the war about?"

Chamberlain shook his head.

"Well then, I don't care how much political fast-talking you hear, that's what it's all about and that's what them fellers died for, and I tell you Lawrence, I don't understand it at all."

 What it makes me think is this. Slavery was the big, over-riding cause for the war, but in some way, slavery was just the spark that lit the wick of the war between the North and South. That wick was there to be lit, and if it hadn't been slavery, I imagine it would have been something else.

It seems to me that the Civil War was not so much a political battle, but a battle between cultures, and I don't mean the slave culture. I think that had there been no slavery, that difference would still have been there--well, it still is, I guess. It has always seemed to me that the great tragedy for the South in the war was that by refusing to give up slavery (which was clearly wrong, although I think that maybe some people were blind to that fact), they lost something very important that they would miss much more than their slaves. But that is a discussion for another day.

I would recommend The Killer Angels to anyone who likes to read. If you like history, or are interested in the Civil War, that would be a bonus, but not at all necessary for anyone to enjoy the book. I should also mention that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975, so I guess I'm not the only person who likes it.

And here is a bit of trivia that I picked up while looking around for the date of the Pulitzer Prize. Joss Whedon says that The Killer Angels was his inspiration for the TV series Firefly. In an interview that I found here, Whedon say, in answer to a question about his inspiration . . .

It was The Killer Angels. It's a book. I think it won the Pulitzer. It's a very detailed account of the Battle of Gettysburg that I read in London when I was on one of my vacations where I didn't write anything, but I did come up with Firefly and a couple other shows. I read The Killer Angels. The minutia of the Battle of Gettysburg and the lives of the people in it really made Firefly just pop out of my head. I want to get into people's lives this intimately. I want to do it in the future and show that the future is the past. So I built the structure of the world and the look of the show on the Reconstruction Era.

AMDG

The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter

This book doesn't quite fit the rules of the blog. I have read The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter before, and I wouldn't have written about it, but the Memphis C. S. Lewis Society, of which I am a member, has been reading it, and so I thought I would add it to the shelf. In a way, it does fit, though, because it has been a very long time since I first read it, and I remembered nothing about it.

When I first bought The Inklings on the recommendation of a friend, I had read a bit of Lewis, almost certainly all fiction. I knew who he and Tolkien were, but not much about them, and the rest of the Inklings were completely unknown to me, so, when I read the book it was interesting, but I had nothing to link the information to, and since it was a long time before I read anything by the other Inklings--well, I think to this date I have only read Charles Williams, and that only in the past 15 years or so--I quickly forgot what I had read.

In case you do not know who the Inklings were, they were a group of friends, most of them academics in Oxford, who met to talk, drink beer, and read each other what they were currently writing. The meetings first took place in the mid--50s on Thursday nights in Lewis's rooms. They also met more informally on Tuesday mornings at a pub officially named The Eagle and Child but more commonly known as The Bird and Baby because of the inn's signboard which pictured Zeus disguised as an eagle, flying off with the infant Ganymede.

Most of the people who attended are not well-known, especially in the United States, but there as a third member whose novels still enjoy a moderate popularity, and that is Charles Williams. Williams also wrote poetry, but it was his six supernatural novels that captured the attention of the reading public.

The Inklings is divided into four long sections, and has brief biographies of the main members: Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams. There is also information about the less-known members, including Lewis's brother, Warren, and Tolkien's son Christopher, and the story of how their friendship came about. Part Three has a reconstruction of a typical Inklings meeting which Carpenter scripted from Warren Lewis's record of the meetings, and things which the members had actually said in other contexts.

The book is a great resource for those who have read Lewis and Tolkien, and maybe some of the others, and are interested in the men behind the stories. It is also a great record of a group of friends who enjoyed each other, good conversation, and good beer. I am pretty sure that they were all Christians of one sort or another, and their Christianity informed their conversation. It drew them together, but where they differed, it could be a source of friction.

The meetings lasted until 1949.

The end came almost imperceptibly, and for no apparent reason. The last Thursday Inklings to be recorded in Warnie Lewis's diary was on 20 October 1949, when there was a 'ham supper' in his brother's rooms. The next Thursday, 'No one turned up after dinner, which was just as well, as J. [Lewis was called Jack] has a bad cold and wanted to go to bed early.' 

Carpenter ends the book with the story of Lewis's meeting with his wife Joy, their friendship and marriage, and her death. He concludes with the story of Lewis's own death. The end of the book is very moving if you are a reader of Lewis, and probably even if you are not. I cried for at least ten pages.

My edition, but not all editions, has a good many photos of the Inklings. If you are looking for a copy of the book, you might want to look for an older edition that includes them. You can have this one if you like.

AMDG

Memoirs by Louis Bouyer

Quite some time ago, I was reading something somewhere, and the writer said he (I am almost sure it was a man.) was reading Louis Bouyer's Memoirs, and highly recommended the book. For some reason, I think the somebody might have been Scott Hahn. So, as so frequently happens, I found it at a book sale, and brought it home to gather dust on my shelves.

Fr. Bouyer was born in Paris in 1913. His description of the people and places of his childhood is very charming in a very French sort of way. Although his young life took place during World War I, the war did not affect him very much at all. The areas where the Bouyers lived were safe, and although there were air raids, young Louis was not afraid. He was more amused by the air raids with their search lights and the boom boom of Big Bertha, although he was aware of his mother's fears.

The family moved more than once, but wherever they went, there were always gardens, and it was gardens that Louis loved, and described in his memoirs. He also loved to visit the shop of his uncle, who was also his godfather.

Even after years of visiting this pleasant shambles, I would not be able to recount everything to be found there, and still less what might not be unearthed. Dry goods, knick-knacks, stationery goods, perfume, hardware, newspapers (especially the most popular illustrated ones), all in an inextricable jumble, even for my aunt. But, in an emergency, all my uncle had to do in order to go straight to the desired object to satisfy the request of an imaginative client was to adjust his pince-nez with its black cord.

 The joyful childhood was brought to a sudden end with the unexpected death of Louis' mother in 1924 when he was 11. He was overwhelmed with grief, and when after a year or so, his father remarried in order to provide a new mother for him, it only made matters worse.

Increasingly absorbed in my reading and [writing] . . . I would soon arrive, under these conditions, at a veritable obsession that could well have turned into dementia praecox. I in fact came to doubt that there could be other consciousnesses than my own, that the idea of God or of other beings in the world was anything more than a projection of my own thinking.

 On the recommendation of a psychiatrist, he was sent to recuperate in Sancerre in the Loire Valley, and the peace and beauty of the place brought him healing. He began to receive religious instruction from a local pastor who introduced him to the Fathers of the Church. He spent many hours reading in the library of the home where he was staying with friends. There, he found the impetus for the rest of his life.

I believe that it was in Adolphe Monod that I found for the first time so clearly expressed the idea that God is love and that this love had its manifestation par excellence in the Cross of Christ: there I saw in all clarity what the heart of Christianity is . . .

I must also note that I was reading at that time, with personal satisfaction, a very subtle essay by Pastor Henri Monnier . . . on the redemption, which convinced me that the Cross of Christ saves us as a supreme act of solidarity with us. That presupposes, obviously, as he did not fail to point out, that it saved us, not by exempting us from suffering, but by making us capable of a suffering that is fruitful. 

 It was the next year at Sancerre that he discovered John Henry Newman. He read Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and some other works. This began a lifetime interest in Newman which culminated in his writing a biography of the Cardinal.

At some point, Bouyer entered the Protestant Theological Seminary in Paris. There are very few clues in the text as to exact dates, but he must have been there roughly between the ages of 14 to 17. While he was young, his family had attended whatever Protestant church was close to their homes in Paris, but he entered the seminary, which educated both Reformed and Lutheran seminarians, with the intention of being ordained a Lutheran minister.

All the while he was at seminary though, he was praying the Roman breviary, sneaking off to hear Étienne Gilson explain Thomas Aquinas, and becoming entranced with the orthodox liturgy of Russian émigrés. He had begun to see that the sacraments, and beautiful and appropriate liturgy were essential, but he also wanted to hold on to what he felt was true in protestantism, that is, "a passionate interest in the Bible as well as the totally personal character of the life of faith as the awareness of a grace that is effectively gratuitous to the highest degree." For a while, he and some friends had the idea that they might bring the fullness of the Eucharistic and the liturgy into the Lutheran church by bringing apostolic succession back into the church. I don't really understand exactly how they thought to do this--they were getting some very bad advice--but it had something to do with Bouyer receiving the sacraments in the orthodox church, which he did.

In the end, however, he knew that he had to become Catholic, and so he was received into the Church at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Wandrille in 1939, and eventually became a priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri at the College of Juilly. In his time there, and indeed during the rest of his life, he found himself in conflict with those he worked with over his insistence on the importance of the Bible in the life of the Catholic, or the development of appropriate liturgy, and this led him to work and live in many places, although he never severed his connection with the Oratory.

Fr. Bouyer spent much of his life teaching, both in Europe and America. He taught Theology at Notre Dame, and Mount St. Mary Seminary. He wrote many books, not only theological texts, but also novels. He served on a preparatory Commission for Studies and Seminaries for Vatican II, and on the International Theological Commission which was responsible for the new liturgy. He was very unhappy with the results of both. In writing about his frustration with the council, he refers to Cardinal Ratzinger quoting St. Gregory Nazianzen about the Council of Constantinople.

To tell the truth, I am convinced that every assembly of bishops is to be avoided, for I have never experienced a happy ending to any council; not even the abolition of abuses . . . , but only ambition or wrangling about what was taking place. 

I have never been very interested in all the machinations involved behind the scenes of the council, but I found Fr. Bouyer's account of his disheartening experience interesting.

Much of this book is taken up by comments on people that Fr. Bouyer worked with and was friends with over his life, and that is a lot of people, most of whom I have never heard of before. Sometimes his commentary was funny and engaging, but often there were just a lot of facts that I found difficult to navigate. However, I was delighted by the friends whom he seemed to care about the most.

He first mentions visiting, ". . . that . . . beautiful house where Elizabeth Goudge, who was to become one of my best friends, had spent her youth and written her first stories." Elizabeth Goudge takes turns with J. R. R. Tolkien as my favorite writer, and was someone whom I would have loved to meet, so that is impressive. Then a few pages later, he mentions two other very close friends, T. S. Eliot, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Near the end of the book, he talks more about his close friendship with Goudge, and also with Julien Green, an author whose Each Man in His Darkness I recently read for the first time, and found very, very good. So, if a man is known by the company he keeps, I'd say this is all in his favor.

I also really enjoyed his descriptions of all the beautiful places where he has lived, and there were many. Both the natural settings and the rooms he inhabited make one long to visit them. My favorite passage about a room, though, is this one.

. . . I spent many weeks, if not months, in the very room where Newman died, among his own furniture, handling his papers at leisure, nearly all just where he had left them.

I will end with a quote that I think sums up the thinking of Fr. Bouyer very well.

I was suffering from having only a very reduced priestly ministry. While other priests with a theological vocation may be delighted to be able to devote all their time to study and teaching, I have never shared that view of things. And I believe I can say that the more or less outrageous fantasies spread about after the council as products of a new theology, but which have only brought chaos and hindered any renewal, are the typical products of those armchair theologians who leave the ministry to those they consider clerical plebians who cannot hold a candle to themselves. On the contrary, it seems to me, and it is obviously what Saint Tomas himself, just like the Fathers of the Church, thought about it, the revealed truth is revealed to us only in order to lead us to salvation and to lead others to it. As soon as it is made a mere subject of cogitations and discussions, one no longer knows what one is saying because one has begun no longer to have any knowledge of what one is talking about.

AMDG

Scars by Paul Murray, O. P.

Scars is one of the few books I've written about that I actually bought new. I heard Fr. Murray speak at a local church, and I was so impressed by his talk, that I wanted to read something he had written. I don't remember why I bought this particular book because the name puts me off. I'm not sure why, but I think it reminds me of something else, or maybe it is just a personal idiosyncrasy. He must have mentioned the book during the talk.

 The first question that Fr. Murray asks in the book is how we can talk to someone who is undergoing great affliction, or whether we can really have anything to say to them at all. We are all familiar with this situation. Some person whom we care about is going through some terrible thing, and they seem to be in another place that we can't reach. Anything we think of to say sounds inadequate. I'm not sure how much of an answer this book gives. For one thing, every person and every situation is so different. The exact thing one person needs could be the very thing that upsets someone else.

Part One of the book, Impossible Words is subtitled Essays on affliction. The first essay is The fourth friend: Poetry in a time of affliction. Fr. Murray talks about how after 9/11 poems began to appear all over New York City. He quotes the New York Times:

In the weeks since the terrorist attacks, people have been consoling themselves--and one another--in an almost unprecedented manner. Almost immediately after the event, improvised memorials often conceived around poems sprang up all over the city, in store windows, at bus stops, in Washington Square Park, Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere. And poems flew through cyberspace across the country in e-mails from friend to friend.

He calls poetry the fourth friend after Elihu, who after Job's three friends have spoken, appears to defend God to Job and his comforters. Fr. Murray references Fr. Victor White, O. P., who calls Elihu, "something of an intuitive, a poet." But then asks, "But should the poet, in a time affliction presume to speak at all? .  . . how, confronted by the enormous affliction of an individual or of a people, can the words of a poet be said to bring consolation?"

In the rest of this section, Fr. Murray gives examples of poetry written both by and to people who are in great affliction. The most beautiful example, though, is about the poetry of music. He quotes a letter that Mendelssohn wrote to Handel:

She [Dorothea] told me that, when she lost her last child, Beethoven was at first unable to come to her house any more. Finally, he invited her to come to him, and when she came he sat at the piano and merely said: 'We will now converse in music,' and played for over an hour and, as she expressed it, 'He said everything to me, and also finally gave me consolation.'

The remainder of Part One contains reflections on affliction in sickness and in prison, and on the martyrs of the last 100 years. He then writes about his friend Sister Joan and the conversations they had after she was diagnosed with an incurable blood disorder that took her life two months later.

Part Two, The dark hours; Songs for the afflicted is a collection of poems written by Fr. Murray. There is a great deal of poetry that I really love, and still more that I like quite a bit, and I recognize it as good poetry. However, I don't consider myself a really good judge of poetry, and I might not always be able to see that a poem is good. That said, I do not think that much of this is really poetry. I'm not saying there is no merit to what Fr. Murray writes, but that it is more like prose formatted like poetry. But, maybe I am wrong. Here a couple of the ones that I like.

               The Cry

When I awoke, the room was dark
and the rain was beating
against the window pane,
it was the room that faces out to sea,
the room in which I was born.

And from my bed I thought I saw
the dark curtains lifting
and moving, and thought I heard
far out at sea
a lone seabird crying in the storm.

But, as I listened, there leaned
against my heart
- and it made me tremble - the memory
of that other dream,
the same dream, that other night.

And I thought to myself: Is it
possible, then, I am
not awake at all, and the rain
is not now beating
against the window pane,

and there is no seabird crying
in the storm
but that instead, once
more, this stark, isolated cry
is, perhaps, my own? 

               A Reading

The text opens like a river
in full spate. Or it's like a window
opening with a sudden gust of wind.
And it's as if an archangel
had entered the room. And everybody
has to stop what they're doing.
And the air is a river of divine words.
And all of a sudden you see
 - and with a start -
that an archangel has entered,
and your heart is in your mouth,
And you feel you are drowning
in a river of divine words, and hear
yourself saying, over and over,
'How can this be?'

 Part Three, The scars of God: Meditations on the seven last words is, as it says meditations on the seven last "words" of Jesus from the cross. If you are not familiar with this terminology, these are not just seven solitary words, but sentences that Jesus said, or prayed, as He was dying.

I did not read through these all at once, but prayed with one each day for seven days. Some of them were helpful, and some were not, and maybe I don't really know which was which. That's a very personal thing, and you might benefit from some that I didn't and vice versa.

My thoughts and feelings about this book are very mixed. When I first read part of the book (I'm not sure I even finished Part One.) I really liked it. Then, it got put aside somehow, and when I came back to it a couple of weeks ago, I didn't like it much at all. Only parts seemed good to me. This probably says more about me than about the book, but maybe it also had something to do with having just heard Father speak, and being more in tune with the way he thinks and expresses himself. If you would like to see for yourself, I'd be glad to give you the book.

AMDG