Books That Made Me Who I Am, Part III

I wrote my first novel in high school. It was a World War II action story that I never properly titled, but concerned the terrible events that befell one Corporal John M. Phillips between D-Day and the end of June 1944. I wrote it because I typed so fast in Typing class that I’d finish my exercises and have nothing to do. One day, I described Phillips and his companions struggling to remain upright in a Higgins boat, and 70,000 words later, I had a novel. Then I wrote a sequel.

High school was a critical period in my development, as it is for any person. I was in the grip of any number of the themes that take teenagers emotionally hostage—unrequited love, the poetic cruelty of life, the weepy beauty of heroic death, and any of those other Shelley-worthy sentiments. So when I started writing, I was unstable. I was a big fan of Poe, of course, which dictated certain tics of style and theme if not content, and as I read the following books I changed and evolved accordingly. That was inevitable.

I was obsessed, as I’ve overabundantly shown, with truth and realism. But what I most needed to learn was moderation. My novels left out nothing. I poured in detail. My battle scenes were studies in gratuitous violence. I had yet to learn that less is more, that a mature writer—as any kind of mature person—knows how to limit himself to what is absolutely essential. Indulgence warps his art. John Ciardi, translator of a poet who was to reshape my whole world at the end of high school, said that “Poetry is the art of knowing what to leave out.”

That was an art I would commit myself to soon.

III—High School

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque—I never studied World War I as closely as I did the other wars that obsessed me in elementary, middle, and high school—the Civil War and World War II. It’s odd that I didn’t—though I have studied it in more detail since high school—because when I was in 10th grade I read the novel that became and remains my favorite to this day—All Quiet on the Western Front.

There was nothing particularly different about All Quiet that set it apart from books like Red Cap and The Killer Angels. Like those, warfare is depicted realistically and bad things happen to characters that matter. Unlike those, Remarque’s novel does not end happily. I think the unhappy ending appealed, at the time, to my teenage sense of the beauty of tragedy, a stage I think a lot of teenagers go through—though I must point out that I never succumbed to anything as pathetically emo as Twilight.

What really set this novel apart, though, was that it was among the first novels I read to deal with first-person, boots-on-the-ground experiences in combat—it took place literally in the trenches. The Killer Angels is told primarily from the point of view of generals and combat commanders, and though the Civil War general was of necessity close to the combat and very often did his share of brutal fighting, the novel’s limited time-frame left room for nothing of the day-to-day life of soldiers. The characters of All Quiet, on the other hand, spend a great deal of their time in boredom. The reader learns about waiting out a shelling, stringing barbed-wire, and even the preferred style of toilet to be used in the field.

And, of course, All Quiet continued my burgeoning obsession with realism and truth. I loved this novel because it was realistic and, therefore, had the ring of truth about it, even if I realize now that its anti-war message was something with which I couldn’t agree.

* * * * *

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger—I can’t explain why I like this novel except to say that it has, in a way, grown up with me. I first read it on the recommendation of a friend in high school. I was shocked by the language—or at least the idea that high schoolers somewhere talked like this—but found Holden Caulfield an incredibly funny person. And, of course, I could smirk when I recognized the targets of his cynicism.

I have since read it at least twice and each time I have grasped more and more clearly what kind of person Holden Caulfield actually is. While I was amused by him in high school in precisely the way I was amused by some of my more bitter friends, I recognized on later readings that Caulfield was actually a self-consumed, almost sociopathic person. He always finds a way to hold the blame for his own actions at arm’s length, exonerating himself of everything and lashing out at the “phonies” who insist he take some responsibility. The antagonist in the novel isn’t the staff of Pencey Prep or Ackley or the elevator operator or anyone else—it’s Caulfield himself.

As psychoanalysis of the modern American teen—or modern Americans in general—Salinger’s work was prophetic.

I admire this novel because, like any good work of art, each new visit reveals new layers of art and meaning that had gone unnoticed before. I must also admire anything that can be so funny and so profound at the same time. I may never write like Salinger, but I certainly hope I can balance my art like him.

* * * * *

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury—High school was a period of firsts for me. Fahrenheit 451 was my first taste of dystopian fiction, a genre which has long intrigued me and to which I hope someday to contribute.

Curiously, Fahrenheit 451 is read by a generation that needs its message but is looking for an entirely different message. In a video interview I watched in high school, Bradbury discussed at length the fact that his novel wasn’t originally about censorship—it was about television. Television, and the mind-numbing, soul-searing effect it has on the perpetual couch potato.

Bradbury’s novel had two profound effects on me. First, it continued my obsessions with truth and completeness—with the irritation over Edgar Allan Poe’s bowdlerization still burning in my mind, a novel ostensibly “about” censorship appealed to me powerfully. Through Bradbury’s story of Montag and the firemen I first grasped that censorship is necessarily an opponent to truth, since censorship is the tool of human agents acting in their own interests. And the moment something is censored, what little you have left of it is no longer the true image of what it was. How could one understand the horrible ugliness of Mein Kampf if one never read it unabridged?

Second, while censorship is usually used as a cudgel to brain the perceived fascism of conservative groups, censorship is a crime anyone could commit. Everyone who has felt offended by something or someone and who seeks to eliminate the source of offense is on a dangerous anti-intellectual path. Or, as Bradbury put it, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.”

In other words, I do not censor because I do not want to be censored.

It’s worth noting that Fahrenheit 451 is one of the few books I’ve read more than once. It’s short enough—and important enough—to warrant a rereading every few years. If you haven’t yet introduced yourself to this novel, I beg you—please turn off the TV and read it. Bradbury and I will thank you.

* * * * *

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien—I’ll be brief in my treatment of these novels, since what I learned from them I mostly learned upon reflection in college. But that’s not to say that Tolkien’s seminal works had no effect on me as a highschooler.

My friend Josh introduced me to Tolkien, and to him I am eternally grateful. The Hobbit was the first real fantasy novel I ever read. Until I picked it up in Wal-Mart on Josh’s recommendation, I had dismissed it as the kind of weird and, having heard no few sermons on Dungeons & Dragons, possibly demonic pulp that food-court druids liked to dip into between vampire novels. As a child, the VHS cover of the animated version scared me every time I went to the video store. With these presuppositions and memories firmly in place, I bought The Hobbit and opened it for the first time.

Suffice it to say that I was caught off guard. The novel was not only not weird—and definitely not demonic, especially since I found out later that Tolkien was a devout Catholic—but it was so beautifully layered, at times majestic, funny, frightening, and possessed of the power of our oldest dreams, that it carried me away. I was transported. I bought all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings before I finished it.

Tolkien’s novels have had an enormous influence on my literary tastes, style, and method—but more on that in the future. What struck me in high school was the story itself. This was something I could sink my teeth into, something that, despite its potentially off-putting exotic settings, had the ring of true life about it. And let’s face it—if Tolkien has taught us anything, it’s that fantasy is sometimes more real than real life.

* * * * *

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, by J.K. Rowling—Honestly, as much as I’ve enjoyed the stories of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, it feels a little wrong to move from Bradbury and Tolkien to this novel before finishing up with Dante. But I have Rowling’s Harry to thank for a particularly important formative episode in my life.

The cumulative effect of my experiences with Poe—whose work was censored in my textbook—and Bradbury—whose inclusion in our high school English class resulted in a completely straight-faced censorship challenge—was to make me a skeptic. Not a skeptic who refused to believe anything, but a skeptic who had to investigate everything to determine its validity. My skepticism was uncynical.

This, then, was my frame of mind when the Harry Potter rage hit its first strides. Of course, coming from a fundamentalist Baptist background, everyone had an opinion on this new series. Since I was incurious at first, I mostly let the storm pass over. I couldn’t care less. But I had friends who liked it and trusted authorities who thought it hellspawn, and I, caught indifferent in the middle, at some point felt it necessary to form an opinion. It was readily apparent to me that the e-mail forwards and sermons based on third-hand information weren’t going to be enough. I had to find out for myself. I wanted to come by my opinion honestly—and find out the truth.

To be brief, I dove into this first novel searching for something wrong, and found nothing. The controversy was sound and fury, signifying nothing. In fact, I was so charmed that I immediately lit into the rest of the series.

The most important fruit borne of this incident was that my skepticism was suddenly justified. I had investigated an issue and discovered the truth—Harry Potter was harmless fantasy fun, unless you happened to suffer the delusion that broomsticks were airworthy. Second-hand information would never again be enough. I found myself identifying with the New Testament Bereans, whom St. Luke lauded for their skepticism and willingness to investigate diligently the claims made by others, even men like St. Paul. These discoveries would soon bear exponential dividends.

* * * * *

The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri—This is perhaps the most daunting of any of the books I’ll revisit in these posts. How do I put into words my admiration, appreciation, and abject need of a book that means so much to me?

I can start by saying how I came to The Divine Comedy. I already liked medieval poetry and was writing a rather lame epic of my own when I decided to check out Dante, which I did for reasons similar to those for which I dug into Poe in elementary school. I was after the grotesque and lurid, and figured the story of a journey through Hell itself could offer up plenty of over-the-top supernatural phantasmagoria. I wanted something stereotypically medieval. That wasn’t what I got.

I resist saying anything even remotely laudatory of Dante because I find it nearly impossible not to gush. It’s difficult not only to know where to begin, but where to stop. Despite its decidedly medieval provenance, The Divine Comedy is the most transcendent work of literature ever committed to paper. Here you find the whole of human experience—birth, death, final fate, and everything in between. And here also you find the most beautiful and perfect allegory of salvation outside the Bible.

For those who haven’t read it, I can only say do so immediately. But I offer a short version here.

The character of Dante—who, as a pilgrim, represents the individual human—finds himself lost in a dark wood. He has strayed from God and cannot find his way. Repeatdly attacked by three sins, he prays and God sends Beatrice, the symbol of Divine Love, to the Roman poet Virgil. Virgil, because he lived a pagan and could not convert, languishes in the eternal boredom of Limbo, and represents Human Reason—the mind. Virgil comes to Dante and guides him through Hell and Purgatory. In Hell, Dante at first sympathizes with the damned, until he recognizes the monstrosity of sin and rebellion against God. In Purgatory, he meets those fated for salvation but not yet pure, and slowly Reason guides him through even these sins closer to God, revealing to him his own need for salvation. Finally, at the top of Mount Purgatory, Reason can take Dante no further—Reason cannot save a person, Divine Love must take over. At last, Dante is swept with Beatrice into Paradise and is saved.

My summary does terrible injustice to Dante’s poem, but it’ll do.

At first I didn’t know what to make of Dante. Whatever interest I had in the disturbing content of Inferno dissipated rapidly. Something else grabbed me about the story. I see now that another part of my appreciation grew in college, as I delved further into issues like the role of human reason in faith. But the initial impact of Dante’s work on me was like an earthquake far out to sea—quiet, indeed silent, but more powerful the longer its effects linger. It was so deep, so layered—even more so than Tolkien’s novels—and above all so beautiful that I could do nothing but read more.

This post has gone on quite long enough, so I’ll try to rein in my enthusiasm of Dante and summarize his effect on my mind and heart quickly.

First, I was once again reminded of the power of fiction. I also realized that there was more to mythology than cool stories—here was a whole system of shorthand meaning, and through Dante I learned to appreciate it. And use it. Dante did not include Cerberus in Hell because he thought that was what Hell was actually like (something people continually ask me), but because Cerberus, the guardian hound of the pagan netherworld, was a useful symbol of sin—specifically, gluttony and wrath.

In a related effect, I realized what a truly gifted writer could do. To this day, through many, many readings of the Comedy, I still find new layers of meaning and parallels in the three parts of the poem. The foresight, planning, and artistic brilliance of Dante in executing this work still floor me.

Finally, in an area in which I’m still realizing its effects, The Divine Comedy opened my eyes to the middle ages, specifically medieval religion. In high school, the Catholic Church was the punishing fury of all the Foxe’s Book of Martyrs stories I’d heard handed down through the years. Depending on who I asked, it was a series of misguided rituals masquerading as Christianity, it was the Great Whore of Babylon, the Antichrist, the False Prophet, even the seat of revived Egyptian paganism—or things even more creative. But everything Dante said was strictly orthodox, even if an entire volume of poetry named Purgatorio made fundamentalists squirm. His allegory of salvation was so beautifully perfect I can think of no better articulation outside scripture itself. Furthermore, Dante was a great writer. And everything he said made logical sense. I would have to investigate further.

Reading The Divine Comedy was an epiphany of sorts. I could articulate for the first time the dissatisfaction I felt with my own corner of Christianity—after all, I had investigated Harry Potter because many of my coreligionists were issuing blanket condemnations of a book they'd never read. I wanted artistic excellence and intellectual rigor, and fundamentalist and evangelical Christian writers and thinkers seldom achieved either. Their fiction was terrible and their “inspirational” and devotional works unfulfilling. Dante, though intended for neither purpose, met both needs. And those two needs—artistic excellence and intellectual rigor—combined to hone my search for truth and realism ever finer.

Later, of course, I would finally dive into C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Peter Kreeft, David Bentley Hart, and others. More on that in future posts. But until then, Dante was the only Christian writer whom I ever loved. And I still do.

Books That Made Me Who I Am, Part II

Guibert of Nogent was a twelfth-century French monk who wrote one of the few surviving autobiographies of the middle ages. Not only an historian and theologian, Guibert had a lot to say about the corrupt world he found around him as an adult. But his memories of growing up with his mother are fond, rosy, and genuinely moving. In my first post in this series you could probably tell that, like Guibert, I get the warm and fuzzies when I think about my earliest memories.
In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King compares his memories from youth onward to walking through a forest in which a dense fog slowly dissipates. The farther back one thinks, the less forest one sees—individual memories, like trees singled out in the fog, stand out from the murk with no “forest” context in which to place them. As one gets older, the fog burns off and the trees blend into a tangled forest as one becomes more and more aware of the world around them and more events become important for purely adult reasons.
Those warm images—like the single trees in my now hoplessly mixed metaphor—melt into one another and their sentimentality becomes more lukewarm as I grow older. In my childhood now—which for convenience’s sake I identify with elementary school—my reading becomes more adult both in its sophistication and its realism. Like Guibert, I have to leave the rosiness and comfort of infancy to become, slowly, a member of the real world.

II—Childhood

Dangerous Journey, adapted from John Bunyan—I remember this book from my earliest childhood, too, but it was also a book I was eventually able to read for myself. A lavishly-illustrated adaptation of The Pilgrim’s Progress, I remember this book for two chief reasons. First, the beautiful illustrations. Second—and closely tied to the illustrations—its Apollyon scared the living crap out of me.

Those things impressed me as a kindergartener—I imagine a dragon-like demon breathing fire from a second mouth in his belly would make some kind of impression on any child—but looking back I also realize that this book marks my first encounter with allegory. The Berenstain Bears and ValuTales series wore their morals on their sleeves, imparting simple lessons with obvious morals. Nothing wrong with that. But an important part of growing up is moving on to things ever more sophisticated—from colored blocks to Legos to cars and computers. And literature should be no exception.

While Brother Bear and Sister Bear might have to consider the implications of telling a lie or talking back to their parents, Christian and Faithful face decisions that could lead to their deaths. The simple, cipher-like characters of children’s books gave way in Dangerous Journey to complex people whose actions stood for more than themselves—corrupt leaders, shallow townsfolk, the lazy and slothful and, of course, death itself.

Dangerous Journey also continued my early obsession with truth. Among the first things I wanted to know about stories—like those of Louis Pasteur and the Wright brothers—was whether they were true or not. Dangerous Journey, as an allegory, was a challenging bridge in that obsession. When Christian suited up for combat with Apollyon, my dad pointed out King David’s armor in the armory. I wanted to know if those were really his. No, my dad, said, it’s just a story, and I don’t remember anything else about that but he somehow helped me understand that fiction isn’t necessarily untrue. And that’s especially the case with allegory.

A lot of people consider Bunyan’s work the greatest allegory ever written. It’s not—The Divine Comedy is infinitely more complex and subtle—but it’s one of the best and most important books of all time. And I’ll always value it as a book that introduced me to complex fiction and pushed me forward from my literary teething-toys, forced me to consider not just the immediate consequences of my actions but their moral implications, and, yes, scared me to death.

* * * * *

Red Cap, by G. Clifton Wisler—The first historical mania I developed was for the American Civil War, and I read a lot of Civil War novels in elementary school. Indeed, two of them are on this list.

Red Cap is the story of a drummer boy in the Union Army, a flaw for which I was willing to forgive him, as Confederate-centric children’s novels like Johnny Reb were few and far between in the God’s World catalogue. The story begins with a boy joining the army and assigned as a regimental drummer, and because he is issued—or finds, or happens to inherit—a red artilleryman’s kepi, the unit nicknames him Red Cap. Red Cap’s unit tangles with the Confederates and many of the men are killed or captured. Red Cap is captured, and he and the survivors are sent to the prisoner-of-war camp at Sumter, Georgia—better known as Andersonville.

Andersonville, for those not in the know, was a hell-hole. POW camps in the Civil War were notoriously bad and had tremendous mortality rates, and the problem was especially acute at Andersonville. The struggling Confederate economy could not afford to reroute the supplies necessary to keep the camp’s huge prisoner population healthy, and even had the had the resources, Georgia was at the same time feeling the ravages of Sherman’s army, which destroyed the state’s infrastructure and most of its agriculture while making no effort to rescue the prisoners. This is where Red Cap lived out the rest of the war.

Red Cap stands out to me not for the strength of its narrative—if you haven’t inferred it yet, I have forgotten most of the main events of the book and even the names of all but one of its characters—but for the simple fact that some very, very bad things happen to the protagonist. Red Cap and his compatriots starve, waste away, and die in Andersonville amid miserable conditions. This never happened in a Golden Book.

As with Dangerous Journey, I remember this book and realize that another step in maturing is realizing that bad things happen and being able to incorporate that reality with one’s world view. One may never be pent up in a wooden stockade with thousands of other dysentery-stricken prisoners, but it is a mark of maturity to know that some people have and, no matter how painful it is, to empathize with them.

* * * * *

The works of Edgar Allan Poe—Poe was the first real adult literature I ever read, and here’s why—I heard he was creepy. As I got older and entered the 4th-6th grade class, which met as one group in my small private school, I first read actual literature, including simple poems and short stories. Somewhere in there was Poe, skulking in a dark corner of the Bob Jones lit book like a predatory octopus. I remember reading some piece by him, one of the milder short stories, and hearing some classmate say that his stories were usually scary and weird. I liked the sound of that. Beginning with books like Red Cap, I couldn’t get enough of more realistic fiction, and so I got on the internet at my dad’s office later and read “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
There are some movies and books I wish I could experience again for the first time. Those two short stories are among them.
Poe’s grim menace struck a chord with me. Here was the odd supernaturalism of Dangerous Journey and the stark, cruel reality of Red Cap. Here were people making big choices and suffering the consequences, whether they were even caught by the authorities—as in “The Tell-Tale Heart”—or not—as in “The Cask of Amontillado.” And in addition to all that, there was the admitted fascination that many young readers have with the lurid and shocking.
I compared Poe to an octopus earlier for a more important reason than that the octopus is a violent lurker. Poe’s works have had an incredible influence on me—his poetry, short stories, essays, and theory all reach into my thoughts and work like so many tentacles. Thanks to him, I find overlong short stories intolerable and never-ending chapters in novels a torture. His poetry was my first introduction to the beauty of sound, and I carry a fascination bordering on mania with words, their meanings and sounds and the way both change when put together with other words.
Poe also occasioned another chapter in my obsession with truth. After Red Cap I searched diligently through photos of Andersonville for a drummer boy in a red cap—just out of curiosity, and with the secret hope to be surprised that Red Cap was a true story. With Poe, the surprise I did receive carried more consternation. After maintaining for years that the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” did not cut up the old man’s body but buried it whole beneath the floor, I read an unedited version of the story and found that the version through which I had met Poe had been bowdlerized. I swore I’d never read an edited or abridged version of a story again, and I haven’t.

* * * * *

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara—If Poe was the first real literature I ever read, The Killer Angels was the first serious, adult novel I ever read. I can’t remember which came first for me—the novel or its film adaptation, Gettysburg—but at any rate I came to one through the other, and for years the movie was my favorite movie, and the book my favorite novel. And it helped that the novel is actually great literature.
I’ll wrap this up quickly.
The Killer Angels is still among my favorite books, and it’s among the best examples I’ve ever read of good historical fiction. This novel stepped into an important gap in my life, giving me good history, good fiction, and a mostly true story in an exciting package. It’s long, complex, and mature, and with this novel I think my literary taste reached something approaching adulthood. Ever since, the criteria on which I judge historical fiction are those that I picked up from this novel.
And of course, those criteria are the same I apply to my own historical fiction. I only hope I can live up to them.

Books That Made Me Who I Am, Part I

While at dinner with some friends tonight, the conversation passed over my latest reading list before moving on to bigger and better things. It reminded me, though—and I mentioned this at the table—that I have for a long time been considering some kind of semi-biographical essay, or at least a ramshackle post about the books that I consider most important to my formation as a person—the books that made me who I am. One difficult thing to accomplish in the many, many times I’ve thought about putting together this list is narrowing it to a manageable size. After all, everything I read influences me in some way.

So after typing out the first books to come to mind—those that prompted me to compile a list like this in the first place—I decided I could sort them into chronological categories, beginning with childhood reading and ending with “post college,” a catch-all into which I’ve put several books I’ve read since undergraduate school and here for my master’s work.

There is a lot more to making someone who they are than the books they read. In an age of literal mass media—our prolific speciation of the kinds of media someone can enjoy—the means of entertainment and enlightenment in which people indulge are legion and will all contribute in some way to the shaping of their persons. And of course personal choice is a factor which I can’t address—I have read The Catcher in the Rye a half-dozen times without turning into a blasphemer or assassin, after all. But looking back, my reading has both reflected and affected the changes in my thinking. It’s that chain of books, stretching back to my earliest memories, that I want to examine.

After an hour or so of fevered writing in one category gave me nearly 2,000 words, I decided to publish this post in installments. The benefit, I think, is that you’ll get to spend a bit more time reading about my reading evolution, and evolve with me. Or something like that.

Enjoy.

Prehistory

I call this prehistory because it concerns the books that were read to me before I could read myself. I honestly don’t know the titles or authors of most of them. We had a huge collection of Golden Books and Berenstain Bears books, and a series on great historical figures that I’m sure had a huge impact on my young mind. It’s hard to think about these books without getting at least a little confused—their messages have been so long ingrained in my mind that it’s hard to say for sure that the book on Louis Pasteur taught the value of imagination (or was it perseverance?) or that the book about the kitten that ran away from home was a Golden Book. But I remember the stories and the illustrations with alarming clarity—alarming, because as an adult I often can’t remember how many laps I’ve run when I go jogging.

I grew up in the best home I could possibly imagine, and I was fortunate to have parents who not only took the time to read to me, but also valued that time and actually wanted to read to me. The books they bought were good children’s books—easy to understand, with quality artwork, plots that could keep a four year-old entertained, and the kind of morals strong people like my family valued. I remember those books fondly, not only because of whatever influence they have had on the development of my intellect, but also for the amount of my parents that went into them. They weren’t just books, they were books Mom and Dad had bought for me.

Since they are lamentably not in my possession right now, rather than attempt a detailed breakdown of the books I’ll mention a few and briefly describe something they taught me.

First of all, the kitten that ran away from home turned me into a sentimental fool, but with good reason—home is important. The people at home love me and home is not only a place from which I shouldn’t run away, but it’s a place to which, as an adult, I can always return and still find love. No matter what I do—if, for instance, I flee to what I took to be Alaska and learn to ice skate—it is nothing without someone who loves me to enjoy it too.

The Berenstain Bears were monumental figures in my childhood. Their books were a shorthand morality for my sister and I. I learned to read from them, and remember many of their stories in blow-by-blow detail. But the books not only taught a great number of good moral lessons—don’t ever lie about a soccer ball-patterned bird breaking a lamp—their stories and illustrations gave me early lessons in plot and atmosphere that I haven’t forgotten. Anyone else remember every part of the spooky old tree?

The influence the series on historical figures had should be obvious. You know me. But I can’t overstate the sway under which these books held me. My favorites were Louis Pasteur—who cured the horrible rabies bite with a syringe full of bright-eyed soldiers—and the Wright brothers, who, because of my early fascination with flight, have always been important figures to me. Both of these books taught a similar lesson beyond the particular moral they were trying to preach—hard work regardless of criticism and failure.

I could dredge up more books and more instances of character traits imbued in me by them, but I’ll stop here. I want to reiterate, by the way, that I am hardly a believer in Freudian psychology. But I think it is unquestionably true that those stories that influence us as children are the most important stories. Here, then, you already have three important cogs in my mental and moral outlook—perseverance, artistic excellence, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Spring Reading 2009

This has been one of the best reading seasons I've yet had. Of the sixteen books I read between the end of January and the first weekend of May (which period, for the purposes of this blog, shall be defined "spring"), I disliked only one. I also got in a good mix of fiction and non-fiction this Spring, which was a nice change from my reading over the fall and winter.

Once again, hyperlinked titles will take you to my more detailed reviews at Amazon.com. A few more reviews are forthcoming. Hope I can help someone find something good to read for the summer.

The List:

Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell
The Return of Martin Guerre, by Natalie Zemon Davis
The Saga of the Jómsvíkings, trans. by Lee M. Hollander
The Last Kingdom, by Bernard Cornwell
The Face of Battle, by John Keegan
A Slobbering Love Affair, by Bernard Goldberg
The Pale Horseman, by Bernard Cornwell
The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty, by Frank Barlow

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning

Fallon, by Louis L’Amour
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, by Nathaniel Fick
Intelligence in War, by John Keegan
Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, by David Bentley Hart

Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

All Shall be Well; and All Shall be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall be Well, by Tod Wodicka

Best Read:

Though almost everything I read this Spring was good or excellent, David Bentley Hart's historical treatise Atheist Delusions, despite its polemical-sounding title, was easily the best book I read--both this Spring and in a long, long time. I'd have to go back to Carnage and Culture for another book that has so radically challenged and shaped me. Atheist Delusions is a brief history from which anyone would benefit--especially the author below.

Worst Read:

In a field of reading this good (in my private list I gave virtually everything As and high Bs), Dan Brown's Angels & Demons is an almost obscenely fat, easy target. It's bobbing there, waiting to be picked off like a weak, diseased gnu straggling behind the herd. But I'm not above taking cheap shots when a book is this insipid, misguided, inaccurate, poorly written, unjustifiably self-confident, and totally, brutally, criminally retarded. So there.

Second Thoughts Award:

Following several months of thought on The Return of Martin Guerre, I find that I was far, far too generous in my Amazon.com review. To be more to the point than in my review, this book is Marxist, feminist trash with a clever but overblown story.

Honorable Mentions:

It was the distinct misfortune of One Bullet Away to be read shortly before Atheist Delusions, because in any other seasonal reading list this would be the best read. The story of Nate Fick, a former Marine lieutenant in the invasion of Iraq, One Bullet Away was not only literate and exciting, but it challenged me to be a better person and a stronger leader. John Keegan's Intelligence in War was also a good non-fiction read, and is not only a great set of case studies in the usefulness and shortcomings of military intelligence (which many people seem to assume is flawless), but has given me a lot to consider for my master's thesis.

I've already finished four books since the end of my designated "spring" season. I'm sorry to say you'll have to wait to hear about those until September, though I can say that I liked every one of them. Until September, then, this is what I've read so far this summer:

What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carré

Lords of the North, by Bernard Cornwell

Religion and Semantics

The other day, in the class for which I take attendance, the professor spent most of the period showing the students a documentary on Tibet. While I mostly just enjoyed the images of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, I was amused at one point to hear a Buddhist theologian say, “Buddhism isn’t a religion, it’s an educational system.” I was amused because I’ve often heard similar things from Christians, who often claim something to the effect of “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.”
I have no patience with this kind of semantic game.
A good part of my aversion to such statements is my long experience of the catastrophic failure of fundamentalist semantics. One of my undergraduate professors at Bob Jones had a well-worn chestnut that the many rules (with which I had few problems, by and large) were not meant to isolate the students, no, but rather to insulate them from ungodly influences. The problem, I immediately thought, was that the root of insulate is the Latin for island, and the verb form insulate therefore means to make an island of—isolate.
Fail. And that was one of the more innocuous failures I’ve heard.
I also have to admit a certain amount of revulsion to the cuteness of statements like the one in question. It smacks of pop theology—Jesus music, “Christ followers,” and WWJD bracelets. It’s the kind of clever statement with no purpose but to provoke amens and nods from those who are already convinced of its truth. See also “Jesus is the reason for the season.”
But the biggest issue at stake here is the abuse of language inherent in this statement. For instance, in another incident this week, the subject of my Medieval Women class was “illicit sexuality”—in this case, homosexuality. Reading for the day was a journal article by the well-known feminist historian Judith Bennett. In her article, she proposed the adoption of a new term in medieval women’s studies—“lesbian-like.” The term as Bennett defined it would connote nothing about sexuality, but rather something about the relationship of "lesbian-like" women to societal norms.
Class discussion rapidly descended into chaos. The undergraduates couldn’t grasp that any portmanteau term including lesbian could or should be applied to non-lesbians. The graduates mostly sat, gaping.
Bennett made a mistake in using a loaded term—and few terms are as loaded as lesbian—to describe something which shared none of that term’s usual, defining characteristics. Lesbian is a concrete term referring to a specific kind of person or behavior. When Bennett sought to extend that term, as “lesbian-like” to unmarried brewsters and cloistered nuns, the issue was confused. Few—if any—of the students left convinced of the usefulness of the term “lesbian-like.”
This incident is fairly typical of postmodern destruction of language. Our era is the beneficiary of an incredibly well standardized written and spoken language. Seldom has a language as widely used as English been mutually understandable among speakers from different regions. Much of the work of movements like postmodernism—a strange bedfellow for Christians—has been to demolish concrete definitions. Words today are qualified, tweaked, redefined, and qualified again until they have lost virtually all meaning, and all this in the ostensible search for their actual meanings.
Words are important—Christians, worshipers of the logos himself, should be aware of this more than others. As the heir of a document-based history religion like Judaism, precision with the written and spoken word has historically been a top priority of the great theologians. It’s this trait that probably endears to me the few modern theologians still practicing careful use of language—men like C.S. Lewis, who never committed a wasted, imprecise word to paper, G.K. Chesterton, who so mastered language that he could make theology witty, and Peter Kreeft, who has written a number of books using the Socratic dialogue, itself built on meticulous definition of terms, as a vehicle of apologetics.
Christianity is a religion. Deal with it. Religion is a concrete term with a discrete definition. Relationship is too. The bait and switch some of my coreligionists pull with these terms cheapens both.

Why I Haven't Blogged Much Lately

I'm busy. Aren't we all.

I'm in my second semester of graduate school now and the thesis process is groaning into gear. It's difficult and discouraging at times, but being around the other graduate assistants is reassuring--I'm not alone.

So the foremost reason I haven't blogged in a while is school. I'm taking two 800-level seminars on historiography, both of which last nearly three hours one night a week and require hundreds of pages of reading a week. I'm also taking a 600-level class on medieval women, and a one-credit "prospectus workshop." The workshop is held on Monday afternoons, ensuring that I'll carry worrisome reminders of exactly how huge everything is the rest of the week.

As a TA, I'm also working for a professor. I take attendance, pass out and grade quizzes, and generally help maintain a penumbra of order in the 120-student class. This I do twice a week for about an hour and a half.

I work out every morning at 8:00. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I do bench press, pull-ups, butterflies, back extensions, crunches, curls, rows, and any number of other things that suit my fancy that day. Tuesday, Thursday, and most Saturdays I run and/or ride a stationary bike.

The rest of my mornings are usually taken up with homework or household stuff. I find I generate an unusual amount of garbage--a lot of milk jugs and peanut butter jars, actually. Afternoons I prepare for classes. Evenings are a toss-up. My seminars meet Tuesday and Thursday nights--sometimes until past 7:00 although both professors are good about letting us go as soon as we weary grads exhaust the material--and on other nights I'm either working on homework or spending some time with Amy.

My semi-weekly break is "The Office," which has had a spotty schedule lately. Mornings I watch "Cash Cab" while I finish up my workout. I have almost no time for movies. Whatever downtime I have is spent with either Amy or a novel (if you're looking for something to read, I recommend either Agincourt or The Terror).

I've begun my new novel, and the going is slow. I'm trying not to be disappointed already. If I can gain some momentum--any momentum--I'll be fine. But right now I feel like my wheels are spinning. At any rate, the research I do for my novel is, by and large, the same as that I'm doing for my thesis, so that saves some time an it guarantees I'll know the material for both inside-out.

Don't worry--I haven't forgotten my blog, or you, gentle reader. I'm just out of time.

Winter Reading 2008-2009

This winter, which for the purposes of this blog I have defined as December and January, I have read completely six books:

A History of Warfare, by John Keegan
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
Colossus, by Niall Ferguson
The Fall of Rome, by Michael Curtis Ford
Nations Divided, by Don Doyle
Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, by Christopher Butler

Best fictional read was The Terror, a 900-page brick of a book that nonetheless had me glued to it for days. Best non-fiction read was Keegan's History of Warfare. Worst read was easily The Fall of Rome, which is one of the most misguided, clumsily-written works of fiction I've yet come across. I had to force myself to finish it. But, on a side note, that is inspiring—if something like that can get published, so can I. I just have to stick with it.

I also read a goodly chunk of Women in Early Medieval Europe, which is a textbook for my Medieval Women and the Family class. I did not enjoy the book.

Currently reading Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell is not the best writer to take up a pen—he falls back on stereotyped characters and howling bad adverbs with astonishing aplomb—but his grasp of period, story, and character are so strong that I've been swept along in his book and am enjoying every minute of it.

2008 in Review

This has been an amazing year. I may as well make the requisite comment about not being able to believe it's over, so there—I can't believe 2008 is over, and that it's over so soon. New Year's Day 2008 I worked an auction and packed for a ski trip before falling to sleep in my room in Georgia, and now here I sit in my apartment in Clemson, awaiting the beginning of a new year and new semester.

Something that has especially helped me bring the year's events into focus is my diary—this is the first year in which I've kept one. I bought the Moleskine daily diary in Trier last summer and I've managed to write an entry, no matter how brief, for every day of this year. Looking back, it's amazing just how much things have changed. I have a job, I've finished my first semester of grad school (theoretically the first 25% of grad school), I completed my novel, started revision, got my own apartment and—mostly—paid my own way, and, most importantly, I have Amy.

Before I veer off into my own abundant sentimentality, I'll end this prologue and introduce my year-in-review. In it I'll include a few of the major events in my life and, at risk of trivializing my actual life, some of my favorite films and books from the past year.

—Major Events—

January 2-10—Trip with Dad, Greg and Joel Peters to Colorado

January 22—First solo date with Amy

February 14—Completed No Snakes in Iceland

March 3—Interview for grad school at Clemson University

March 21—Amy and I "make it official"

April 4—Receive offer of assistantship at Clemson

May 2-3—Trip to Greenville for Meredith's graduation

July 9—Sign a lease on my apartment

August 17—First night spent in the apartment

August 20—First day of classes

October 31—Halloween party at my apartment

December 12—Final exam, the end of my first semester

December 15—Christmas party at my apartment

—Musical Discoveries—

Muse, especially the albums Black Holes and Revelations and Absolution (special thanks to Chiafos)

Sixpence None the Richer (special thanks to Amy)

Megaherz

—Workout Stuff—

In January I was struggling with weights in the upper 190s, getting one rep of 200 lbs. every once in a while but mostly maxing out around 185 or 190 lbs. As of my last workout, I routinely bench two sets of ten at 185 , one set of five at 215 , and can usually get two reps of 225, sometimes three. I also branched out—thanks in part to Clemson's amazing gym—to a lot of other exercises. Not the kind of shocking progress you see on TV, but I have to say I'm happy with the slowly-realized results of hard work and patience. Here's hoping I can keep it up in the new year.

—Favorite Films—

To my astonishment, I've seen so few films this year that a top ten list would be almost self-defeating, since among the ten would be films that I wouldn't normally include in any kind of recommendation to anyone. So rather than list the usual ten, I'll just name the five favorite (not necessarily best) films I've seen this year and give a brief run-down why.

The Dark Knight—Combines all the best qualities of Batman Begins and the Michael Mann films Christopher Nolan strove to emulate—real-world psychological complexity, a densely-woven plot, hard-hitting action, and great performances. Throw in some probing moral quandaries and you've got a great motion picture.

There Will be Blood—It's a shame this had to go up against No Country for Old Men at the Oscars, since my love of Cormac McCarthy threw me down on one side of a call too close to make.

Iron Man—Great characters, thrilling action, and some really hilarious one-liners make this one of the most purely entertaining films in a long time. Some of its thunder—as a superhero movie, anyway—may have been stolen by The Dark Knight, but Iron Man is one for the ages.

Dark City—A real head-scratcher that becomes more complex with every viewing. Special thanks to Bean for introducing me to this one.

Zodiac—Dense, realistic, meticulously-recreated—quite possibly the best true-crime film ever committed to celluloid (or, in this case, HD video). Advertised as some kind of serial killer thriller, Zodiac is much more a series of character studies—of the investigators, the reporters, and, of course, the killer himself—and a procedural.

Honorable Mention: Get Smart—this movie is hilarious, one of the few genuinely funny comedies released in a long time.

—Ten Favorite Books (nonfiction)—

Carnage and Culture, by Victor Davis Hanson

City of God, by St. Augustine

The Killing of History, by Keith Windschuttle

A History of Warfare, by John Keegan

The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller

Christianity's Dangerous Idea, by Alister McGrath

The Double Helix, by James Watson

History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides

The Persian Expedition, by Xenophon

—Ten Favorite Books (fiction, poetry, etc.)—

Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis

Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis

Das Nibelungenlied, as translated by Burton Raffel

Godric, by Frederick Buechner

Killing Rommel, by Stephen Pressfield

Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy

Lancelot, by Chrétien de Troyes, as translated by Burton Raffel

King Solomon’s Mines, by H. Rider Haggard

Shiloh, by Shelby Foote

From Russia with Love, by Ian Fleming

I'll also include an honorable mention for The Terror, by Dan Simmons, a 950-page novel that I began this week and haven't been able to put down. I won't finish it in time to include it as a "best read" of 2008, but—barring a really lame ending—it'll definitely be in the top ten for 2009. Check it out.

And that's about it. I hope you've all had a great year and that the next one will be even better.

Fall Reading 2008

Grad school is a busy time. Much busier than I'd thought. I did a lot of reading, but I didn't really complete that many books. For instance, I read several hundred pages of Edward Gibbon (as mentioned here) but didn't come anywhere close to reading all of his Decline and Fall. (Reading 300 pages of Gibbon is like reading two or three books by most other authors. Except maybe Ayn Rand.)

In the past, my reading list has been made up of books that I've read in their entirety, and I don't want to compromise that. Big deal, I know. So I'm including with this list a list of books that I read huge portions of, even if not the whole thing.

As usual, a hyperlinked title will take you to you to my more extensive review at Amazon.com (or should--there seems to be something wrong with Blogger's hyperlink system). Here goes:

Fall 2008

Faces of History, by Donald Kelley
The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction, by John Blair
The Isle of Stone, by Nicholas Nicastro
The Double Helix, by James Watson
History: A Very Short Introduction, by John Arnold
From Russia With Love, by Ian Fleming
Doctor No, by Ian Fleming
The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction, by Christopher Tyerman
The Killing of History, by Keith Windschuttle

Books of which I read the majority or a good chunk:

A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett

A Monk's Confession, by Guibert of Nogent, translated by Paul J. Archambault

A Brief History of the Human Race, by Michael Cook

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

Books that I am currently reading:

A History of Warfare, by John Keegan

The War of the World, by Niall Ferguson

The Saga of the Vapnafjordings, translated by Gwyn Jones

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, by Athony Esolen

The Fall of Rome, by Michael Ford Curtis

Best Read of the Season: Keith Windschuttle's Killing of History, certainly. From Russia With Love was a good fictional escape but the ideas, arguments, and other food for thought in Windschuttle's book are still running through my mind and will be for some time to come. This will probably rank with Carnage and Culture among the formative books of my life.

Worst Read: Having stayed out of school for a year, reading only what I wanted, I'd forgotten exactly how much bad writing there is out there. Reading for classes this semester reminded me. The worst-written book I actually finished was Kelley's Faces of History, which is a 200-page brick of intellectual gobbledygook. (Read my Amazon review for a typically bad sentence.) It's a good thing I'd already read a lot of historiography because otherwise I'd have been lost. The worst book ideologically was probably Cook's Brief History of the Human Race, which was a postmodernist, anthropology-laden jog through geographical determinism. In other words, rubbish. And, though I hate to say it, I'm trying to make myself finish Curtis's Fall of Rome, a novel so clumsily written it's making me hate the period of history in which it takes place. Sad.

Unexpected Surprise: Check out Guibert of Nogent's Monk's Confession (not the original title) for an intriguing medieval memoir. Guibert was a monk, chronicler, and one of the very rare medieval people to tell the story of their own life on paper. Touching, funny, and moving in equal parts.

That's about it. I hope to recuperate with a lot--and I do mean a lot--of reading this winter.

Ode on History and a Dry Lake

I love history. History—and especially my sometimes inordinate love for it—has informed my thoughts and decisions for a long time. Even some of my earliest memories revolve around two things—true stories and historical stories. Truth and history. The first I could write about at length—Pontius Pilate and his “Quid est veritas?” has always touched a strange chord of sympathy with me—but it’s history for which I feel a more concrete love.
I went to the gym today to work out. My off days—Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday or Sunday—I dedicate to cardio workout, which used to mean running but, two pain-wracked knees later, means a long, sweaty ride on the stationary bike.
To reach campus from my apartment you have to cross Lake Hartwell, or what used to be Lake Hartwell. With drought and now winter approaching, the water level has dropped incredibly low. What is normally a beautiful piedmont lake is ringed with naked red clay banks sloping down to shallow water. The lakes back home have been no different—Hartwell, if anything, simply has a greater number of tree stumps exposed by the receding water—so during my time at Clemson so far, Hartwell has simply been another lake half-drained by drought.
But a few days ago I noticed something unusual. Crossing the Hartwell bridge on my way back from campus one day, I glanced at the lake and spotted another bridge—this one barely visible above the water. I slowed my car and watched it, and checked it out again when I returned to campus later. The bridge appears to be an old-fashioned concrete bridge, the two-lane kind common all over the South, the kind replaced more and more by simple concrete-and-rebar four-lane spans with high, closed guardrails and no view for a vehicle smaller than a semi. The bridge I cross to campus is one of the new kind—I can’t see the lake when I cross it, and so I’d missed the old bridge until now.
I don’t know how long it’s been exposed, but I’d like to think I’d have noticed it if it had been there a long time. At any rate, the water level has fallen and keeps on falling, so it’s not unthinkable that the bridge has returned to the world of sky and air only in the last few weeks.
Over subsequent trips back and forth to campus I’ve watched and appraised the bridge several more times. I noticed new things. There seemed to be another span of it nearby, perhaps just road since it has no guardrail, and a good length of road leading toward the bridge from the banks. I had noticed what I thought was a boat ramp on the shore before, so I had decided that the boat ramp was in fact the former road into campus or Clemson itself. I pointed the bridge out to Amy on one trip and talked about my curiosity.
Today it was too much. A beautiful Saturday and, aside from the trip to the gym, the threat of an entire day spent indoors, reading. And there was the bridge, mud-smeared in the middle of the lake. I’d go look at it. Now. It even occurred to me that I could wade or swim to the bridge from the spar of road jutting into the basin.
On the way home I pulled off the road and found a dead-end. A well-worn trail led around a barricade and through a thin stand of trees, so I climbed over, walked a few yards through the trees and found myself in what used to be a deep, stream-fed cove of Lake Hartwell.
The lake had receded to a shallow bay at the bottom of a muddy hollow, but the place where I stood was easily recognizable—a two-lane road, the dashed white lines still visible on the asphalt. The bridge was far off in the distance. I walked down the road until the scrub on the shoulder was thin enough for someone in shorts and a sweaty undershirt to pass through, and then tried to find a way across the inlet and over to the bridge.
The search failed. The recently-exposed lake bottom was still sodden and some alarmingly deep footprints from former explorers warned me off. I returned to the road and followed it downhill, toward the lake. Some distance on, I came across a pair of concrete ramps running uphill, perpendicular to the road itself. The ramps were just wide enough for a car’s tires and were open in between, where a profusion of dried-out weeds stood waist-high. This, I thought, could be a boat-ramp, added since the lake was flooded. I followed the concrete ramps and found something else entirely.
The ramp itself ended not far from the road, and very far from the tree-line. And running from either side of the concrete were two easily-distinguishable lines of bare sand, probably pulverized concrete, since nothing grew in it. This was no boat ramp.
On a whim, I followed one path. I ran several yards and abruptly turned left. I now stood on a confused patch of brick. I stared down at it for a while, trying to determine what this place had been. The ramps, I had thought for a minute, may have been part of an old garage grease-pit, now silted in. But now this sidewalk and the bricks—
It was a house. I was standing on the front stoop.
I looked around and made out the edges of the old foundation. Broken brick lay everywhere. The weeds didn’t grow as densely here as they did around the perimeter. The stoop itself was solid brick, an old staircase.
For a moment, I could see the house by the road, the old-style driveway and the sidewalk, garden, and brick steps. The road into town ran not far from the house itself. My head swimming with the vision I had of the old countryside, I walked back down to the road, back to my car at the dead end, and got in. I’d go look at the bridge now. I’d had a little taste of history, and then a big, juicy bite. Now I had to glut myself.
By history, of course, I mean something other than written history. Perhaps a better term would be the past, but for me that’s too vague. A past can be positive—“Our nation’s glorious past”—neutral—“Tell me a little something about your city’s past”—or negative—“She’s got a past, you know.” At the risk of obfuscating real history, Herodotus’s inquiry, I’ll stick with the term history for the time being.
There’s something intoxicating about feeling history around you. Old churches do it to me. Cemeteries do it. Ruins do it. A barren landscape with just a hint of human touch—a few rocks too neatly placed, a long flat strip that could only be a road bed—does it too.
When I hiked up several hundred yards of foggy mountainside above Heidelberg last summer and found, shrouded in mist, the ruins of a medieval monastery and cathedral, I felt some part of my brain tingling. I got excited. I couldn’t take in the sights fast enough, take enough photos, or view it from enough angles. I was drunk on history. And now I was again.
Add to it the undying childhood delight in scrambling over rocks, and I was a goner.
I drove back toward campus and found a spot better suited to exploring the shore and the bridge. Two cars were there ahead of me. I jumped a gate and ran through the forest—a purely nature-loving moment—and came out on near the new bridge. I picked my way through the tall, dry weeds and found a strip of beach to walk on between the soggy mud along the water and the weeds above. I walked up the shoreline and came to a steep drop-off from the trees to the water. The beach was almost uniformly covered in smooth scree. I plunked a good-sized one into the water and kept going.
Here and there were signs of non-human habitation—shallow caves hollowed out between the roots of trees and littered with clamshells—but the it was the bridge that drew me on.
I came close to the bridge and found more and more of the old human clues. There were, of course, the bottles and glass-shards dropped from boats long ago, and even an old potsherd, but there were also slabs of rock neatly arranged at the top of a hill. The road that ran out to the bridge was tilted hard to the left and covered in muck. The bridge itself seemed perfectly on kilter, well-engineered and lasting beyond anything its builders could have planned for it.
I found other things, too. What had to be another road bed, silted over but wide and flat enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic. It led down from the treeline and disappeared into the water, but I was certain it was the same road that reemerged and struck out across the water for the bridge. The neatly-stacked and aligned rocks must have belonged to an old home—in what function I don’t know, but, leaning over the sheer drop-off to the lake, I found a staircase half-fallen away, and the remains of a sidewalk, now a concrete shelf underwater.
I took pictures with my cell phone. I called Amy and told her about it. I went home.
Of course I thought, even while I was poking around the rocky lakebed, that I should find old maps, surveys, or photographs of the area. I called Dad and asked when Hartwell was flooded and if he’d ever seen anything underwater from the air. He said no, he hadn’t noticed anything underwater, but the lake was flooded in the 1950s—around 1955 probably. I did some research. Lake Hartwell was formed by Hartwell dam, built between 1955 and 1963 by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Little by little, I had started to reveal all the mysteries that had intoxicated me as I discovered history in the lake.
That initial discovery is something like the romance in a relationship—lots of heady excitement, the thrill of rushing along from one thing to another. And then comes the maturation—from the romance to the long-haul, from discovery to research. They’re two very different parts of the relationship between history you can see and feel and the kind that enlightens and informs, but, as with relationships, they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive—the romance should never completely die out.
For me, I doubt it will.