In Pursuit of Copiousness

So, ladies and gents: it appears I have another blog on my hands. Yes, you read that correctly. No, this is not a joke. Allow me to present In Pursuit of Copiousness.

The Ink Slinger isn’t going anywhere, of course. This new blog is merely an addition – the throwing out another wing, if you will. Many of the books I read (the good ones, anyway) yield bushels of quotes and phrases that I want to write down and stashed away for future reference. I keep a commonplace book already; the purpose of this commonplace blog is to help organize the tidbits I find and thus make them easier to find later on. Many thanks to Becky for the inspiration.

Do I want to sort through all the Chesterton scraps I’ve accumulated? There’s a tag for that. Do I need a quote on, say, writing? Enter the categories.

Also, I like to share – especially if the sharing involves words – so that’s another major motivation. Stroll on over to the new site and hit the subscribe button. Just be warned that your inbox may experience some major flooding.

Just kidding.

(Actually, no, I’m not.)

Book Review: Defiant Joy

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Chesterton and his writing. I devoured The Man Who Was Thursday at age fourteen; probably not the ideal place to start – the story blew my mind so completely I’m still picking up the fragments four years later – but even though I didn’t “get” half of what I read, I knew I’d found something special, and I was eager to get more of it.

I know for a fact that some of my readers are also GKC fans, so it pleases me to be able to recommend a book I think they will thoroughly enjoy: Kevin Belmonte’s Defiant Joy. If you love Chesterton the writer, but want to know more about Chesterton the man, this respectable little biography is a good place to start.

Belmonte traces Chesterton’s life – from his early childhood to his death in 1936 – with care and an obvious affection for the man. Well deserved affection, I might add. Equally adept as a journalist, literary critic, poet, and novelist, this jovial and corpulent “prince of paradox” still looms large in our imaginations today, with hair askew and a joke on his lips.

Chesterton’s joie de vivre - which bubbles up in his writing like shaken Coca-Cola – is one of the things I’ve always most admired about him. The “defiant joy” with which he faced the skeptics and pessimists of his day is both thrilling and inspiring to consider. To me, he is the Jolly Crusader, and if his careful arguments do not slay thee, by my troth, his sense of humor will.

Belmonte’s book has received a heavy amount of criticism for not being more detailed and exhaustive as a biography. On one level, I can understand this complaint; anyone looking for a thorough examination of Chesterton’s life and works will be disappointed here. Having said that, I think the criticism is somewhat unfair, since Belmonte makes it clear from the get-go that Defiant Joy is not intended to be a comprehensive study:

I’ve always admired G.K. Chesterton’s gift for the simple declarative sentence. Few knew better than he how to nail one’s colors to the mast. So we find him writing in the introduction to his classic study St. Thomas Aquinas (1933): “This books makes no pretense to be anything but a popular sketch of a great historical character who ought to be more popular. Its aim will be achieved, if it leads those who have hardly even heard of St. Thomas Aquinas to read about him in better books.”

Such is the aspiration of this book: to introduce a life and legacy that should be better known. It does not in any way aspire to be a comprehensive or definitive study. (p. xi)

There you have it. If nothing else, consider this book a helpful springboard to loftier and more challenging things.

This isn’t to say I have no quibbles with Belmonte myself. For one thing, his writing can get rather repetitive (I lost count of the times he spoke of this or that work showcasing “some of Chesterton’s finest writing”). For another, I was disappointed with his glib and flippant handling of Chesterton’s later conversion to Roman Catholicism – a bigger and more problematic leap than Belmonte seems willing to acknowledge. It is here that I’m tempted to expound on a variation of Boromir’s quip (“One does not simply apostatize…”), but that’s another discussion for another day.

You’re Going to Kill Him For Me

In 2009, director Kathryn Bigelow gave us The Hurt Locker, a tour de force Iraq war film that blew the socks off audiences and critics alike. Her latest film, Zero Dark Thirty, is generating a similar buzz. Tense, intelligent, and well acted, this compelling dramatization of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden has earned Ms. Bigelow a heaping of praise – and some controversy to go along with it. Continue reading —>

My review of Zero Dark Thirty, one of the standout films of 2012.

The Wit and Wisdom of Douglas Adams

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’”

“The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.”

“Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.”

“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”

“His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.”

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”

“There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.”

“We’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

“’I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.’ ‘Yeah,’ said the voice from under the table, ‘you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.’”

The Matrix Retold by Mom

This is hysterical: an impromptu retelling of The Matrix (“Moshimo? Moshimo?”). Now, if only they’d make one for Inception and Blade Runner, we’d be set.