Hey!
I have been feeling down lately, but I think, I am making my life a bit overly dramatic.
I think it’s just not my year, but I’m all good out there!
My hot girlfriend, N. prepped a meme about herself:
In the Meantime
I was in Paris, at least theoretically and N. and I had a good time working on our essays and eating family dinners with her sisters and parents. We also started watching Supernatural and to some surprise I liked it! Wouhhh.
I did not go to Warsaw, as some of you know by now, and that stopped me from seeing Dune: Part Two again. Hence, no proper Dune dispatch. I will let you think that I dislike strong female characters in movies. Although, I think it’s disgusting J. propaganda.
Before I left for Massions-Laffite J. and I went for the advertised in this publication concert of likely-my-favourite-polish-band (I’m sorry J. - if you are reading this, your music sounds better anyway!). Oxford Drama seem like lovely people, I could grab a beer with them and their previous album was a revelation on many levels for me. I loved the moody melodies and I found myself in the lyrics.
You have an arts degree
And you're such an ambitious woman
Your soul speaks all words
You're doing it right
Your ideas are bright(…)
Have I already cracked the code?
I pay the bills, throw out the trash
Shouldn't I get a reward?
Or is it for the members only?
If you read between the lines you can probably sense that it isn’t as nice anymore to listen to that particular song.
On the Shelf
I am risking a double review today. I am feeling awful and this should help me feel a bit better about myself!
They Flew
Sometimes (not too often) I like to scroll through websites (or social media profiles) of the two most renowned book review magazines in the Anglo-Saxon world - the NYRB and LRB. My hatred towards the latter is well-known and laughed at by some. The hatred is (of course) partially due to my sincere knowledge that neither an essay by me nor about a book I published will ever appear in it. But wasn’t frustration with the review of a (good-but-not-great) book Free by Lea Ypi (Booooks #2) and its review that started this very fun project of mine? NYRB is my preferred book-pretentious paper to read and also if you ever wanted to buy me a birthday gift you could get me their editions of (all - yesss - all) John Williams books. (Only if you really wanted to though)
Let’s cut to the chase! I was scrolling through NYRB website (I LOVE THEIR DESIGN) and came across a review of a rather unnotable book published by Yale University Press - They Flew.
The book is a fairly academic endeavour, but it makes it both highly readable and very grounded in the source materials - baroque non-fiction literature about mystics who are claimed to have flown. The topic itself seems too otherworldly to the NYRB reviewer (Erin Maglaque):
They flew. They flew! That is Carlos Eire’s claim, in this deeply unserious book. Salvador and Teresa; the idiot savant Joseph of Cupertino, patron saint of airplane travelers; Saint Francis of Assisi, who with flames of love pouring from his face and mouth lifted his friend Masseo up in the air with his breath, uttering “Ah! Ah! Ah!”
In Poland, more accurate paraphrases are reasons to get called out on twitter and have to issue apologies.
Eire doesn’t claim that his protagonists (sometimes anti-heroes) flew. He is not very interested in the actuality of the flying and bilocations. The book is aimed to picture and discuss (but does so only partially) the zeitgeist of times when claiming that one flew did not lead to being laughed out, but rather a meticulous authentication process that in some cases ended in beatifications and cannonisations. What the author claims to be especially fascinating about the period he chose is the fact that at the same time, the XVII century was the age of reason. In some cases, the aeronauts came close to meeting figures like Leibniz or Newton, the icons of Enlightenment.
How was it possible that people who read Descartes and soon would read the Encyclopedists were so gullible? How come we stopped caring about the supernatural?
These questions are unfortunately not answered by the book. But neither is the book silly. It gives its readers a detailed snapshot of the world, with a lot of details and anecdotes that help us understand the people we are reading about. Particularly memorable for me was a quip about Martin Luther sending the devil away with a fart.
The declared quest of the book and the author is only partially achieved. Treating religious worldview seriously is often lacking in our historical analysis. Further, it is also often forgotten in fiction (ekhm ekhm… Dune) and to some degree also to the political debates.
I noted on many occasions that my less or non-religious friends usually find it hard to believe that some people act in certain ways because they believe in irrational things. Often, when I read the history textbook entries about Crusades I found that religion was not in any way part of the standard reasons for waging the war in the Middle East. But it was. In a similar way (which I already discussed) some commentators look for ulterior motivations in the actions of conservative politicians not thinking one could actually believe things they do.
Reading books like They Flew we can engage in meaningful exercises in empathy trying to immerse ourselves in worldviews distant from ours. Carlos Eire is an incredible guide in such a journey!
Anomaly
A trend is haunting Europe. A trend of writing novels in the form of short story collections. Some of the books written in that manner are tragic. Some win the Nobel Prizes (Flights).
Anomaly did not land the author Herve Le Tellier a Nobel (yet) but landed him over one million copies sold and a (apparently) prestigious xyz prize.
The book is a fabulous read. It is not very complex. It is after all a thriller. But despite the initial chapters, it is not about a paid assassin. It is about so much more.
On the News
No news this week, I will be back with this section next week.
Up Next
That’s all for this week. Sorry for stalling for the last week, I was busy reading more books, including some vintage Szczepan Twardoch and People’s History of Upper Silesia.
More booooks to follow next week!