There are earnest people who recommend realistic reading for everyone because, they say, it prepares us for real life, and who would, if they could, forbid fairy-tales for children and romances for adults because they ‘give a false picture of life’—in other words, deceive their readers.

I trust that what has already been said about egoistic castle-building [i.e. the reader lives vicariously as the hero of the story] forearms us against this error. Those who wish to be deceived always demand in what they read at least a superficial or apparent realism of content. To be sure, the show of such realism which deceives the mere castle-builder would not deceive a literary reader. If he is to be deceived, a much subtler and closer resemblance to real life will be required. But without some degree of realism in content—a degree proportional to the reader’s intelligence—no deception will occur at all. No one can deceive you unless he makes you think he is telling the truth. The unblushingly romantic has far less power to deceive than the apparently realistic. Admitted fantasy is precisely the kind of literature which never deceives at all. Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines. None of us are deceived by the Odyssey, the Kalevala, Beowulf, or Malory. the real danger lurks in sober-faced novels where all appears to be very probable but all is in fact contrived to put across some social or ethical or religious or anti-religious ‘comment on life’. For some at least of such comments must be false. To be sure, no novel will deceive the best type of reader. He never mistakes art either for life or for philosophy. He can enter, while he reads, into each author’s point of view without either accepting or rejecting it, suspending when necessary his disbelief and (what is harder) his belief.

C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism 67-8

The last part makes it clear that he does think some literature is dangerous; but it’s dangerous in ways different from how many people imagine.

First, I rip from the CDROM to a wav file.

cdparanoia 1 prokofiev1.wav

cdparanoia lets me specify the input device, but I don’t need to, since the default—/dev/cdrom—is what I want. The line above just says to rip the first track to a wav file named prokofiev1.wav.

lame -h prokofiev1.wav prokofiev1.mp3

Encode the wav file to a mp3 file, in high quality (128 kb).

lltag --cddb prokofiev1.mp3

lltag helps me look up the CDDB data about the track and then add it to the mp3. I’m first prompted to make a CDDB query:

Enter CDDB query [q] (no default, h for help) ?

I’ve tried entering the hexadecimal strings I get from cd-discid, but I’ve never gotten it to return any results. Instead, I enter “prokofiev violinsonaten” verbatim from the CD’s title. I get one matching result, which I select, and then I choose the appropriate track and save the CDDB data.

id3ed -i prokofiev1.mp3 and id3v2 -l prokofiev1.mp3 let me verify that the data has been saved.

Now I’m all set to import the mp3 to Banshee and then to my iPod.

I decided to track down this supposed Plato quotation and found the following in A History of Western Music:

Furthermore, the foundations of music once established must not be changed, for lawlessness in art and education inevitably leads to licence in manners and anarchy in society. For Plato the saying “Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws” would have expressed a political maxim; more than that, it would have been a pun, as the word nomos, with the general meaning of “custom” or “law,” was used also to designate the melodic patterns of a certain type of lyric song.

Grout, Donald J. A History of Western Music, 1973. p. 8

Notice the ambiguous “would have”: “For Plato the saying . . . would have expressed a political maxim.” It is possible that Grout could have used “would have” in the sense of “did,” but none of the footnotes near the quotation (there is none for the quotation itself) points to such a passage. In fact, the relevant passages in the footnotes—from Plato’s Laws—actually seem to support the converse: Plato wants law to control the music. But somewhere along the line an ambitious musical-political theorist made it through page eight of A History and decided to resolve the ambiguity in his own favor.

Jewett had an odd fascination with her initials; she would carve them on random items, including the window pane of her room, which you can see in the photograph. Jewett’s house is interesting as a representative of Georgian architecture, especially its colorful wallpaper and the hand-carved wood of its central, slightly sagging, staircase. Inside, overlooking downtown South Berwick, we were told plausibly that not much of the view had changed in the last 150 years.

Nearby is the Nubble Lighthouse. Although termed a “savage rock” by one mariner in 1602, it took almost three hundred years (and at least one local wreck) before the United States constructed a lighthouse on Nubble Island, literally a stone’s throw from the mainland. Though only slightly removed in space, the picturesque lighthouse seems to be in a different age from the masses of people teeming along the opposing shoreline or sipping lemonade and grilling among the hundreds of RVs lined up just down the road. It fascinates me how something built as a matter of life and death is now one of the most popular postcard images. (Turning the profound into the mundane is common in New England: the Revolutionary Battle Road is now a bike trail; “Patriot” is as likely to be the name of a dry cleaners as anything else).

Without doing either, I’d like to register my concern at what the Washington Post describes as a growing trend: the dissemination and enjoyment of videos portraying real violence. The Post profiles a number of people including Blake Cater, who says “I’m not in any way a violent person,” but regularly records himself in “brutal” fights. And there’s Rogier Both, who picks fights with rival soccer fans, enjoying video replays:

“It’s like an addiction,” he adds. “You can’t leave it. When there is a good football fight, the best sex is not better. . . . People who have never been in football matches in Europe will never understand it, but it’s like a second life.”

His description reminded me of a friend of Augustine’s, who though having left enjoyment of the gladiatorial games was drawn back into it by his friends, at first against his will:

But he, closing the passage of his eyes, forbade his mind to range abroad after such evil; and would he had stopped his ears also! For in the fight, when one fell, a mighty cry of the whole people striking him strongly, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared to despise and be superior to it whatsoever it were, even when seen, he opened his eyes, and was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the other . . . .

For so soon as he saw that blood, he therewith drunk down savageness; nor turned away, but fixed his eye, drinking in frenzy, unawares, and was delighted with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came unto, yea, a true associate of theirs that brought him thither. Why say more? He beheld, shouted, kindled, carried thence with him the madness which should goad him to return not only with them who first drew him thither, but also before them, yea and to draw in others.

A few weeks ago I finished David McCullough’s Pulitzer prize-winning biography. I started the book mainly because I enjoyed McCullough’s history of the Brooklyn Bridge, and when I find an author I like I try to read his other books.

Even though I think some of Truman’s policies as President were misguided, and I despise some of his campaign tactics (I have in mind the egregious populist speeches during his presidential campaign), I still find myself liking him as a person.

For one thing, he genuinely cared about people. Truman’s whistle-stop campaign trips, which his staff found exhausting, never seemed to tire him because he so much loved being able to talk to people face-to-face. Truman was pioneering in pushing rights for minorities even when it was politically dangerous to do so (Strom Thurmond almost split apart the Democratic Party over race issues, running against Truman in 1948).

The 1948 campaign brought out another trait of Truman I admire: an imperturbable sense of optimism. Almost everyone including his own staff thought he would lose the 1948 election (you’ve probably seen that famous picture of Truman holding aloft the Chicago Tribune headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”). But Truman was convinced he would win, and he even had fairly accurate predications about how the electoral votes would go. More generally, he was optimistic about the democratic process even though he knew well how treacherous people can be. In other words, his knowledge of mankind’s sin nature didn’t make him a cynic; I wish I knew his formula.

Truman’s honesty and integrity are what great men of his time, such as Winston Churchill and George Marshall, admired about him. Unlike his predecessor, FDR, who would tell people whatever he thought that person should hear, Truman prided himself on his “straight-talk.” Often he did what he thought was right, though enormously unpopular. For example, Truman fired Douglas MacArthur when the rest of the country worshiped the man.

McCullough doesn’t try to hide Truman’s blemishes. Truman had a bad temper; usually he would vent by writing a long letter to the offending party and never sending it (something I’ve tried a couple of times now with email and with success). But in a famous incident he actually mailed a letter to a man who had unfavorably reviewed the professional singing of Truman’s daughter, a letter in which Truman threatened to beat up the reviewer. At first Truman’s daughter was certain that her father would not use such language.

I wish McCullough had better accounted for Truman’s campaign demagoguery. Uncharacteristically, he made personal attacks and played loose with the facts. Was it just an at-any-costs attempt to get votes? Or was he overly caught up in the spirit of competition?

I’d also like to better understand the cronyism of his early political career. Truman’s rise to the Senate occurred largely in thanks to Missouri Democratic machine boss Tom Pendergast, and all his life Truman had the idea that party loyalty should be rewarded with appointments. I wonder if that way of thinking was less objectionable during his time than ours.

I get the sense that McCullough thinks one’s religious beliefs are mostly incidental, as we get few glimpses of Truman’s. In his early married life he was an Episcopalian, but in Washington as President he attended a Baptist church. Was there any particular reason for the switch? Was religion important to Truman’s ethical thinking, or was it just a social event? McCullough doesn’t tell us.

Finally, I enjoyed reading about Truman’s friendship with Dean Acheson. The men were quite different with regards to education and personality, but they had a warm relationship even years after Truman was in office.

Many circumstances beyond Truman’s career brought him to the presidency: Pendergast’s anointing, the 1944 political landscape, and FDR’s death. But he was a Horatio Alger kind of president: mostly self-educated, from the Heartland, plain-spoken, and a man of integrity. It’s hard to imagine that any time soon his successors will be like him.

What actually happened was that Stephen Colbert, a comedian, recently delivered a speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (was it funny? imagine a junior higher having just learned about sarcasm, trying to insult someone).

Part of his speech contained these lines: “By the way, Senator McCain, it’s so wonderful to see you coming back into the Republican fold. I have a summer house in South Carolina; look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones University.” Folks, Colbert was making jokes, not reporting the news.

Sadly, it’s no surprise so many people who read The Da Vinci Code think they’re learning theology.

The press also applauded Hanks when he was asked if he had been under any pressure by the Greek Orthodox community, of which he and his wife Rita Wilson are members. “No, absolutely not,” he replied. “My heritage and that of my wife communicates that our sins have been taken away, not our brains.

“I view this film as I would any number of films,” he continued, “as a great opportunity to discuss and to perhaps clarify one’s own feelings about their place in the universe and the cosmos and the mind of God. This was just one of a great many pieces of fiction that could spur, I think, a better understanding of that for the individual.

I’m not sure how a mystery thriller is supposed to be “a great opportunity to discuss and to perhaps clarify one’s own feelings about their place in the universe and the cosmos and the mind of God,” but then again I’m among the half-dozen people that haven’t read the book or seen the movie.

What I have observed is a disproportionate amount of skepticism directed at orthodox Christianity, something Joseph Loconte addressed in today’s OpinionJournal (HT: SharperIron). I think he’s right: let’s spread the skepticism around.

[C. S.] Lewis, I suspect, would also point out that theories about massive coverups presented in fanciful works such as “The Da Vinci Code” ignore an elephant-sized fact: There are any number of people and events in the Bible that are frankly embarrassing to believers. Recall, for example, that the family tree of the Messiah includes a prostitute (Rahab), a king who commits adultery and murder (David) and another king who leads his nation headlong into religious idolatry (Manasseh). Yet the earliest Christians failed to excise these characters from their story.

The first “conspiracy theory” about Jesus, in fact, actually appears in the Gospel of Matthew. After the crucifixion, religious leaders ask Pontius Pilate to post a guard at the tomb of Jesus because they suspect his disciples “may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead.” Why keep a story about a possible conspiracy lodged at the heart of your sacred text if you’re determined to cover up a deception about the credibility of that text?

Here is the real harm of these modern conspiracy theories: They may appeal to our emotions, but they violate our common sense. They reject reason, just as surely as they reject revelation. “I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds,” Lewis explained. “I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.”

Sounds like good advice to moviegoers this week–for the skeptics as well as the faithful.

Are they saying that using Visa is like drinking spoiled milk?