June 19, 2007

• Introductions

  Having
  finished one book, I’m starting three. 
  

  Three books, three introductions. 
  

  Ursula
  K. Le Guin’s opening paragraph to Buffalo
  Gals and Other Animal Presences resonated with me.  I, too, prefer to read the introduction after I’ve read the book, a behavior
  I’ve never heard spoken of before.  Any
  one else do this? 

  Having done introductions before, I
  have found that many readers loathe them,
  reviewers sneer at them, and critics
  dismiss them; and then they all tell
  me so.  As for myself, I rather like
  introductions, but generally read them
  after reading what they were supposed to introduce me to.  Read as extra-ductions,
  they are often interesting and useful. 
  But that won’t do.  Ductions must be intro, and come first, like
  salad in restaurants, a lot of  cardboard
  lettuce with bits of red wooden cabbage soaked in dressing, so that you’re disabled for the entrée.

   

  
  Thomas
  Cahill’s latest book in his Hinges of History series, Mysteries of the Middle Ages, The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art
  from the Cults of Catholic Europe, is a lush, beautiful book.  The type, sidebars, illustrations, yea, even
  the paper announce: this book is special. 
  I’m unsure of his premises and am feeling a bit reserved about the book.  But these words warmed me:

   

  All across Europe,
  a pilgrimage in company with others was a life-defining event and one of the
  principal satisfactions of a well-tuned life. […]  I invite
  you on a pilgrimage, dear Reader.  Come
  along with me (and many others) to places
  we have never seen before and to people we could  otherwise never have expected to know. We are surely
  sundry folk, as Chaucer would have
  called us, and we shall meet sundry folk even more exotic than ourselves.  “By
  adventure”—by happenstance—we have fallen into
  fellowship.

   

  

  Barbara
  Tuchman’s introduction to A Distant
  Mirror, The Calamitous 14^th Century  provided the best reason I’ve
  ever read for learning historical dates– in one short sentence.  Oh man, this revved my engine.

  Dates may seem dull and pedantic to
  some, but they are fundamental because
  they establish sequence—what precedes and what follows—thereby leading toward an understanding of cause and effect.

  Here’s a sequence I’ve pondered, one I’ve never seen mentioned in
  print.  What does The Fall of Constantinople
  to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 have to do with
  Luther’s Reformation of 1517?  Have you
  ever wondered why Martin Luther died from natural causes at the age of 62, when
  many reformers/heretics were burned at the stake before and after him?  Charles V wanted to deal with Luther, but the
  Ottoman Turks were knocking at the door of Vienna. 
  Hmm.  So the threat of Islam gave
  the Reformation a small period of incubation. 
  I talked to a missionary to Turks living in Germany and posited this
  theory.  He nodded vigorously and said
  that the connection is something many Moslems are aware of.

   
  
  

  • 10:42 am
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