The Most Beautiful House in the World by Witold Rybczynski

Ever since I read Home: a Short History of an Idea, I have wanted to read another book by Witold Rybczynski, and now I have. I mentioned (well, not in so many words) in my former post that Rybczynski never met a rabbit trail he didn't like, and he proceeds along on (and off) the same path in The Most Beautiful House in the World. I was happy to see this because the digressions are one of the main charms of the books.

In the newer book, however, he doesn't only follow rabbit trails in his narrative, but in his life. After a while, I couldn't help thinking about the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. One thing leads to another, and eventually Rybczynski reaches a totally unexpected end.

The one thing was his idea that he would like to build a boat. This wasn't as unrealistic an idea as it would be for me--I daydream about learning how to build stuff--because he was experienced with construction and the tools he would have to use, and being an architect, he would be able to come up with a plan. But there was one problem--he needed a place to build the boat. He needed a boatbuilding shed. And then, of course, he needed a piece of land to put the shed on.

It was a five year journey from the day Rybczynski first made sketches for a boatbuilding shed in September, 1975, until the day that he and his wife, Shirley, moved into their Most Beautiful House. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, Rybczynski says:

I told the story of my house to a fellow visitor (at Tianjin University), a Belgian engineer. "You must write about this," he said . . . I thought that this would be an easy book to write, or at least a straightforward one. Instead it has take many unexpected twists and turns . . .

The book was published three years later.

As we join Rybczynski in navigating all those twists and turns, we learn many things. First, we learn about feng-shui, and ask the question, "What is architecture?" Then, we learn the history of construction toys--latecomers to the toy game, we also learn about pre-construction toy toys--from building with playing cards to the first building blocks introduced by Friedrich Froebel in 1837 as part of his method of education to Meccano to the ubiquitous Lego. Rybczynski describes architecture as the building game. It's not a game you play with others, but more like a word puzzle, something that you do alone in quiet times, when you draw plans, make models, and dream about what you will do next.

Along the way we learn about why a building has to fit into it's environment, what happens when it doesn't. We find out a lot about barns and their history--there's a reason for the barn discussion. And when the building project is finally reaching its end, Rybczynski tells the story of a man who built his own house from almost nothing in a poor area of Mexico, and also about five well-known men who built their own houses: Samuel Clemens, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Bernard Shaw, and my favorite, Carl Larsson. You have probably seen pictures of Larsson's home and family on calendars and Christmas cards.

The Most Beautiful House in the World was just the kind of book that I expected from Rybczynski. It underscores something that I have really learned while reading all these diverse books. A good author can make almost any subject interesting if he loves what he is writing about. This book is a good example of that concept. It's also a great book to read when you are looking for something that is enjoyable and not terribly demanding--a book to relax with.

AMDG

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