January 24, 2003

what it means

"For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad times) to laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your kingdom."

Read that, subsititute "leader" for king, think on our current body politic, and weep. Somehow I don't think any of them have read The Horse and His Boy lately. I wonder who Lewis had in mind when he wrote those words, and whether he was intending satire -- though British leadership in WWII probably comes as close as any to those words, in modern times. ("Nothing to offer you, but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" .... "Now I can look the East End in the face.")

THaHB never used to be my favorite of the Narnia books, but I recently reread it (spurred on by an audiotape that abridged way too much of the story) and had to reevaluate. There's a lot more to it than I had realized, on how to run a life as well as how to run a country. I'm off next for a rereading of The Magician's Nephew and maybe The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, though I may not make it through the latter. It and The Last Battle are among the books I've read so often they're internalized. I don't need to reread them more than every decade or so now because their words are an irrevocable part of my internal dialogue.

I've also been reading Quiller-Couch, first On the Art of Writing, then his autobiography, and they also are growing experiences. Just on the most obvious level, it's the first nontechnical book I've read in since my teens that consistently kept introducing words I'd never heard, a bit of a blow to the old ego. ('Bewray' and 'pullulate' were the first two to send me to the dictionary.) There are phrases that struck me on first reading and good advice I'd seen quoted by those who learned from him. Considering that most writing I do is technical (and the rest is long-winded) I need to remember his definition of jargon, especially. (Not because he objects to technical words, but because meaningly phrases are so often used in corporate writing.) I can tell I'll be rereading Q until his ideas and phrases are in my brain and tongue for future use.

In the car, I'm listening to Maria Shriver reading her book, Ten Things I Wish I'd Known. Generally my idea of a self-help book is the aforementioned On the Art of Writing, but this one really is pretty good. I won't say there's much in there I didn't know, but there's a lot I learned the hard way, and there's some I needed to hear verbalized or to have repeated. Some of her choices were certainly not be mine -- not only am I not much interested in TV news, but I have no desire to have four kids. And she did the latter starting at age 34. (I admit, Arnold has his points. And he's aged well -- he's far more appealing now than his was in his youth when he never got to show a sense of humor.) But she reiterates her respect for those who make different decisions, and her advice to listen to your own gut on moral and life issues, not other people's rules. And she drives home some points with which I vehemently agree. For example, she says flat out that while she chose to scale back her career drastically when she had kids, that was her own choice, and that her husband has tailored his career to the kids' needs as well -- that both parents, not just the mother, need to plan lives around their kids, that men can't just assume their wives will take care of everything non-job-related. She's said a few things that make me think well of Arnold as well -- when he first told her not to expect him to make her happy, that she had to do it herself, she thought that he still didn't have his English quite right yet. Now it's one of the lessons she's passing on. I don't know this book would have been a life-changer even if I'd read it back in college, but like the Richard Bach books I occasioannly reread, it says some things I need to be reminded of now and then.

This weekend: rowing clinic with Xeno Muller, gold medalist at Atlanta and silver medalist at Sydney. Should be interesting. Posted by dichroic at January 24, 2003 04:59 PM

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