365: Guardians and Guides
Working on a biography, you meet yourself in your reactions to your subject.
I'm busy finishing an index today, so I'm just going to link to this article:
"The Experience of Writing a Biography" by Susie Boyt.
She especially pleases me by talking about how biographer A. N. Wilson came to dislike C. S. Lewis intensely. I thought I was the only one who felt that way. *
While writing Lewis's bio, Wilson said, "I would wake up in the morning with a feeling of dread thinking, ‘I’ve got to spend the day with this person.’”
The article got me thinking of my most involving editing job: working on a bio for teens of Pope John Paul II a few years ago.
I got so immersed, staying up way late at night with him, I felt like I'd met the man. I loved that because while I disagreed--sometimes vehemently--with many of JP's politics, we asked a lot of the same questions.
He held that people treating each other always as persons, and never ever using each other as objects, is key to a moral life--like Augustine's "Love, and do what you will." [full quote in comments]
But how does one do this?
Further, what would a society, including the Church, founded on this principle look like? How far can you trust people to follow this guide; and how much must you police them to make sure they do, and arrive at the right place? (Here, he and I part company.)
Trying to help the author articulate some of JP's thinking, at a 8th grade reading level in a small 102-page book, I not only had to understand his thinking, I had to understand mine.
Most people aren't up for bearing Big Power, and I'd say the weight hardened JP into rigidity.
I liked him most when he was Karol Wojtyla, back when he wore high-top tennies.
I'd like to have been on the camping trip in the 1950s when this photo >
of him shaving in said tennies was taken. I still have it up on my bathroom wall.
___________
By the way, the photo on the wall below him (you can see it in the top photo) is of a dyed textile piece called "The Tree of Life" (1919-1926), by Lydia Bush-Brown. Looking for more on the artist, I found a post about LBB on The Textile Blog, a most informative blog, and more amusing than it maybe sounds.
And "Very good, but very mysterious" is what Glinda says of the Wizard of Oz.
* P.S. Art Sparker (thanks!) tells me Philip Pullman (of His Dark Materials) dislikes C. S. Lewis too. I found Pullman speaking on Lewis--he sounds Augustinian:
Working on a biography, you meet yourself in your reactions to your subject.
I'm busy finishing an index today, so I'm just going to link to this article:
"The Experience of Writing a Biography" by Susie Boyt.
She especially pleases me by talking about how biographer A. N. Wilson came to dislike C. S. Lewis intensely. I thought I was the only one who felt that way. *
While writing Lewis's bio, Wilson said, "I would wake up in the morning with a feeling of dread thinking, ‘I’ve got to spend the day with this person.’”
The article got me thinking of my most involving editing job: working on a bio for teens of Pope John Paul II a few years ago.
I got so immersed, staying up way late at night with him, I felt like I'd met the man. I loved that because while I disagreed--sometimes vehemently--with many of JP's politics, we asked a lot of the same questions.
He held that people treating each other always as persons, and never ever using each other as objects, is key to a moral life--like Augustine's "Love, and do what you will." [full quote in comments]
But how does one do this?
Further, what would a society, including the Church, founded on this principle look like? How far can you trust people to follow this guide; and how much must you police them to make sure they do, and arrive at the right place? (Here, he and I part company.)
Trying to help the author articulate some of JP's thinking, at a 8th grade reading level in a small 102-page book, I not only had to understand his thinking, I had to understand mine.
Most people aren't up for bearing Big Power, and I'd say the weight hardened JP into rigidity. I liked him most when he was Karol Wojtyla, back when he wore high-top tennies.
I'd like to have been on the camping trip in the 1950s when this photo >
of him shaving in said tennies was taken. I still have it up on my bathroom wall.
___________
By the way, the photo on the wall below him (you can see it in the top photo) is of a dyed textile piece called "The Tree of Life" (1919-1926), by Lydia Bush-Brown. Looking for more on the artist, I found a post about LBB on The Textile Blog, a most informative blog, and more amusing than it maybe sounds.
And "Very good, but very mysterious" is what Glinda says of the Wizard of Oz.
* P.S. Art Sparker (thanks!) tells me Philip Pullman (of His Dark Materials) dislikes C. S. Lewis too. I found Pullman speaking on Lewis--he sounds Augustinian:
"Pullman said the Narnia books contained 'a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice' and 'not a trace' of Christian charity.Peevish and reactionary, yes, that's what I'd say too.
'It's not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue,' he added. 'The highest virtue - we have on the authority of the New Testament itself - is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books.'"