Sunday, March 27, 2011
Down to Bizness
Okay, now that I'm finished with all of the pre-emptive explanatories . . . the thing lately on my mind is when really smart authors quote other really smart authors. This behavior is very disturbing to me as it drives home the point to me that I am most definitely NOT one of those aforementioned "really smart authors." Perhaps an illustration will help--while re-reading an excerpt from Kathleen Norris' Amazing Grace the other day I noticed her quoting a few pithy lines from Emily Dickinson (okay, that was redundant). This was worthy of note to me because I claim Emily as one of my favs . . . but had never considered those lines as quoted by Norris in quite that way before. The immediate thought that struck me was that I had never obviously really read Dickinson before--perhaps mearly looked at her words arranged on a page. And then, the same exact thing happened to me while reading Keller's The Reason for God. He quotes extensively from C. S. Lewis, from some Lewis titles that I thought I was familiar. But, alas, I read Keller's analysis of Lewis' thinking and thought again to myself, wow, guess I haven't really read Lewis . . . must have also just stared at the page while holding a book with his name on the cover. Sigh. Anyone else have this experience? Also, my apologies go out to Stephen King as I just realized that I broke his cardinal rule of absolutely not ever over-using adverbs.
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Yes, yes, yes! But two things you should know...a.) No one knows CS Lewis that well. It's one of the reaons he's so magnificent - each time re-reading can seem like the first and b.) Keller's wife is a CS Lewis expert- did theses on him, was his penpal for a long while as a child, etc. He probably had help. :)
ReplyDeleteFYI, I'm reading A Reason for God, too. We'll have to talk. :) Love you.
So happy to see you writing within another context. Looking forward to more tears and laughter. Dad
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