Happy 4th--and Three Things Elsewhere This Week
Forbidden meat in Kyiv, Christopher Lasch teaches writing, and Winnie the Pooh weighs in on Mahmoud v Taylor
Last Sunday evening, we went to a patriotic band concert at the local park. It was phenomenal. And as an immigrant who became a naturalized citizen 17 years ago, I found one particular aspect of the concert moving that perhaps no one else did: It opened with the Star-Spangled Banner (as you would expect), but towards the very end, the band played Tchaikovsky’s epic 1812 Overture. Here was a composer from my childhood home country, yet his patriotic music has become incorporated into an American patriotic concert!
Then yesterday morning, we enjoyed Ashland’s annual July 4th Parade. Unlike all the other parades we’ve ever been to, the July 4th Parade here for the past 30+ years has involved… kids on bikes/scooters/in strollers, with parents walking along. Simply brilliant.
On to three things elsewhere this week.
1. Forbidden Meat in Kyiv: A review of Andrey Kurkov, The Stolen Heart
I am a big fan of Andrey Kurkov’s writing—translated so faithfully and masterfully into English by Boris Dralyuk. If you (like me) like some good mysteries to go with summer vacation, Kurkov’s latest—the second installment of his Kyiv Mysteries—is excellent. Here’s my review for Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Online. A taste from the opening of my essay:
There is blood seeping from under an otherwise ordinary shed door in the city. This possible sign of a crime sets in motion the plot of The Stolen Heart, Andrey Kurkov’s second installment in the delightful series of Kyiv mysteries, set nearly 100 years ago and following the low-brow exploits of a young policeman, Samson Kolechko (“The Ring”). But what is a century in the grand scheme of history?
This is Kyiv shortly after the Russian Revolution, under the rule of the Bolsheviks. Rebellious elements still murmur in the air—that turned out to be part of the mystery of the first novel in the series, The Silver Bone, which opened with crisis—personal and national. There is indiscriminate slaughter and chaos on the streets of Kyiv, and a Cossack kills Samson Kolechko’s father as he and Samson walk down the street. Samson comes close to death himself in that same moment, but the Cossack’s saber misses, so Samson loses an ear rather than his life. This loss of an appendage, though, becomes his defining feature for the series. It adds an unexpected element of the supernatural to an otherwise historically grounded tale: the sliced ear can still hear. In fact, when separated from its owner, even by some distance, the sliced ear can effectively eavesdrop on conversations, which offers occasional advantages.
2. Christopher Lasch Teaches Writing
In my latest for Providence Magazine, I reflect on Christopher Lasch’s short and spicy book Plain Style, a writing manual with real style and quite a bit of humor. With the AI invasion, I think his convictions about why it is so important for people to write well—and to write honestly—are more relevant than ever. A taste:
Less well known than his other books, Plain Style deserves to be read—not only for its advice but for its wit and social insight. Consider the opening line: “Since the sentence is the basic unit of literary composition, an introduction to style will have to give most of its attention to the misunderstandings, sloppy habits, and misplaced eloquence that lead to ill-formed, tone-deaf, ambiguous, or downright unreadable sentences.”
Lasch’s description of bad writing points to habits of mind and character. Sloppiness, for instance, is a form of sloth, while misunderstanding and ambiguity can become a kind of lying. In this way, bad writing is not just objectively poor, but also malformative to the writer’s soul.
3. Winnie the Pooh and Mahmoud v. Taylor
For Mere Orthodoxy, I wrote about last week’s SCOTUS decision: “Mahmoud v. Taylor, Winnie the Pooh, and Why Children in Public Schools Deserve Beautiful Books.” A taste:
Anyone who takes the time to peruse any of the books involved in this case, such as Pride Puppy! or Uncle Bobby’s Wedding or Love, Violet, will notice the quality of prose. It is similar to the quality of writing in most recent books that are marketed to children—in a nutshell, it is remarkably unremarkable. Simplistic sentences and words accompany the shallow plot. There is nothing to inspire wonder, whimsy, or delight. The authors, on a related note, seem to have no understanding of real children. Their sole interest is their very adult concerns.
Meanwhile, one-hundred years ago this year, A. A. Milne published his first Winnie the Pooh story—“The Wrong Sort of Bees.” While this first story was commissioned originally for the Christmas Eve issue of the London Evening News, the stories about the lovable “bear of very little brain” were, from the beginning inspired by Milne’s close relationship with his son, Christopher Robin Milne. Born in 1920, Christopher Robin was 5 years old at the time of this first story’s publication—thus in the age range of children whose reading materials are involved in Mahmoud v. Taylor.