I’m a chronic magazine subscriber.

I currently subscribe to:

• Cook’s Illustrated
• The Atlantic Monthly
• Linux Journal
• Fine Cooking
• Orion
• Harper’s
• PC Magazine
• National Geographic
• Consumer Reports
• Entertainment Weekly
• Wired

I’ve dropped a half-dozen magazine subscriptions in the past year.

At one time, these magazine subscriptions were a good thing: I had the time and inclination to sit in the evening, leafing through Harper’s or National Review or Linux Journal. The magazines kept me well-informed, allowed me to read widely.

Over the past two years, however, I’ve retained my subscriptions merely out of habit. I rarely read the magazines that arrive each month and, as a result, my to-read pile grows and grows and grows.

Every few months I give up on this massive stack of words, and move the unread magazines to the storage shed. New magazines soon arrive, however, and the stack grows and grows and grows again.

Why don’t I read magazines any more? Two reasons:

• I haven’t the time. I’m too busy reading books or spending time with friends or working on the computer or playing games with Kris to find time to read magazines.
• More to the point: much of what I once obtained from magazines, I now find on the internet. A weekly news magazine? I’ve got USA Today and BBC News. Computer magazines? There are scores of computer-oriented web sites that are more up-to-date. Opinion pieces? I regularly read about 25 personal weblogs; I get my fill of opinion from these.

Weblogs—maligned by some as narcissistic and self-indulgent—are a revolutionary form of journalism, a type of personal journalism that, to me at least, is more compelling and more informative than traditional journalism (though, obviously, not subject to the same standards).

I’ll retain four subscriptions (Cook’s Illustrated, Harper’s, Orion, National Geographic), but I’m going to allow the others to lapse.

Two late nights recently:

• Last night was the MNF group’s annual sweetheart banquet (delayed this year from Valentine’s Day). Jeremy and Jennifer, with Jeff’s help, prepared a fantastic feast for sixteen. This is the fourth or fifth year the Gingeriches have been holding this event, and I think it was the most successful yet. The conversation was good, the food delicious, and the pace relaxed. We didn’t get to bed til one o’clock, though.
• Thursday we went to see a 10:20 showing of The Matrix with Joel and Aimee. The Matrix is a great film; the more I watch it, the more willing I am to forgive the sometimes gratuitous violence. I was impressed this time by the cinematography: some of the shots are beautiful. I wonder if the next two films can maintain the same level of quality. I didn’t get to bed until about two o’clock on Thursday night/Friday morning.

I was a zombie at work Friday. It was all I could do to stay awake. Apparently it was more than I could do: Jeff says that when he left the shop at about three, I was slumped back in my chair, slack-jawed and snoring.

Driving home after the movie, Joel made the statement: “All science fiction is about destruction.” I believe that science fiction is no more about destruction than any other form of narrative fiction, but my brain was too tired to put up a fight. Maybe I’ll write a rebuttal in the near future…

I had heard the book was about a boy shipwrecked on an island with a menagerie. So far it’s about a boy who a) dabbles in the three major religions and b) lives and plays in his father’s zoo in southern India.

Still, I like it.

The protagonist, Pi, is an intensely curious boy. He is surrounded by Hindus, Muslims, Christians. He even encounters atheists and agnostics:

�Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them — and then they leap.

I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Pi cannot choose one religion. He likes them all.

He is born Hindu:

I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one’s arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of arati lamps circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word — faith. I became loyal to these sense impressions even before I knew what they meant or what they were for�.

But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for. Here too I am a Hindu. The universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes. There is Brahman, the world soul, the sustaining frame upon which is woven, warp and weft, the cloth of being, with all its decorative elements of space and time. There is Brahman nirguna, without qualities, which lies beyond understanding, beyond description, beyond approach; with our poor words we sew a suit for it — One, Truth, Unity, Absolute, Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being — and we try to make it fit, but Brahman nigura always bursts the seams. We are left speechless. But there is also Brahman saguna, with qualities, where the suit fits. New we call it Shiva, Krishna, Shakti, Ganesha; we can approach it with some understanding; we can discern certain qualities — loving, merciful, frightening — and we feel the gentle pull of relationship. Brahman saguna is Brahman made manifest to our limited senses, Brahman expressed not only in gods but in humans, animals, trees, in a handful of earth, for everything has a trace of the divine in it.

Although Pi is born Hindu, he is drawn to other religions:

I was fourteen years old — and a well-contented Hindu — when I met Jesus Christ on a holiday.

[Father Martin] served me tea and biscuits in a tea set that tinkled and rattled with every touch; he treated me like a grown-up; and he told me a story. Or rather, since Christians or so fond of capital letters, a Story.

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”

“Yes, father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”

“Halleluhah, my son.”

“Hallelujay, father.”

What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.

The chapter in which Pi becomes a Christian is especially well-written and it is difficult to pick any one piece to excerpt; it all flows together in a beautiful, orderly manner, representing the thought process that leads him to add Christianity to his Hindu beliefs.

After becoming a Christian, Pi also becomes a Muslim:

[The baker] was explaining to me how the bread baked on these heated pebbles when the nasal call of the muezzin wafted through the air from the mosque. I knew it was a call to prayer, but I didn’t know what it entailed. I imagined it beckoned the Muslim faithful to the mosque, much like bells summoned us Christians to church. Not so. The baker interrupted himself mid-sentence and said, “Excuse me.” He ducked into the next room for a minute and returned with a rolled-up carpet, which he unfurled on the floor of his bakery, throwing up a small storm of flour. And right there before me, in the midst of his workplace, he prayed. It was incongruous, but it was I who felt out of place. Luckily, he prayed with his eyes closed.

He stood straight. He muttered in Arabic. He brought his hands next to his ears, thumbs touching the lobes, looking as if he were straining to hear Allah replying. He bent forward. He stood straight again. He fell to his knees and brought his hands and forehead to the floor. He sat up. He fell forward again. He stood. He started the whole thing again.

Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise, I thought. Hot-weather yoga for the Bedouins. Asanas without sweat, heaven without strain.

“What’s your religion about?” I asked.

His eyes lit up. “It is about the Beloved,” he replied.

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

The presence of God is the finest of rewards.

Eventually:

After the “Hellos” and the “Good days”, there was an awkward silence. The priest broke it when he said, with pride in his voice, “Piscine is a good Christian boy. I hope to see him join our choir soon.”

My parents, the pandit and the imam looked surprised.

“You must be mistaken. He’s a good Muslim boy. He comes without fail to Friday prayer, and his knowledge of the Holy Qur’an is coming along nicely.” So said the imam.

My parents, the priest and the pandit looked incredulous.

The pandit spoke. “You’re both wrong. He’s a good Hindu boy. I see him all the time at the temple coming for darshan and performing puja.”

My parents, the imam and priest looked astounded.

“There is no mistake,” said the priest. “I know this boy. He is Piscine Molitor Patel and he’s a Christian.”

“I know him too, and I tell you he’s a Muslim,” asserted the imam.

“Nonsense!” cried the pandit. “Piscene was born a Hindu, lives a Hindu and will die a Hindu!”

The three wise men stared at each other, breathless and disbelieving.

Lord, avert their eyes from me, I whispered in my soul.

All eyes fell upon me.

So: although has not yet provided the promised shipwreck with a menagerie of animals (is “menagerie of animals” redundant?), I like it. The book is well-written, entertaining and thoughtful.

Things you learn as an uncle:

When your nephew, in a fit of orneriness, spits all over your corn dog, the correct response is not to say, “Fuckin’ A!”

oops

Here is my favorite chapter (so far) from Moby Dick:

CHAPTER 23
The Lee Shore

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing- straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! Good stuff!

You can imagine how stunned I was to read this article by Pat Buchanan, a man I quite dislike, and yet agree with nearly every word. This is what I’ve been saying since September 11th. This is what I’ve been arguing about, standing in the office, shouting over Mike (who is shouting over me), explaining that the United States can’t stop terrorism by going to Afghanistan and blowing people up, can’t stop terrorism through a war of rhetoric, can’t stop terrorism at all unless it leaves the Middle East. That’s too simple for most people to understand: the Saudis (and other people in the Middle East) don’t hate us for our politics, our freedom, our wealth (though they don’t like these things), they hate us because of our Imperialistic attitudes, because of our presence on their sovreign soil, on their holy lands.

Pat Buchanan is absolutely right on this particular issue.

(From metafilter, my original source for this Buchanan story, comes this McLaughlin Group transcript which features a quote from Buchanan in which he displays not only his insight on this particular issue, but also his particular brand of charm that makes me hate him so: “I am talking about an interventionist policy in every darn country in the world that is Islamic, where crazies are, so they turn all their attention right to the United States of America. What is there over there that is worth a nuclear weapon in my hometown?”)

As promised, here is another excerpt from Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Angela’s Ashes:

The master, Mr. Benson, is very old. He roars and spits all over us every day. The boys in the front row hope he has no diseases for it’s the spit that carries all the diseases and he might be spreading consumption right and left. He tells us we have to know the catechism backwards, forwards and sideways. We have to know the Ten Commandments, the Seven Virtues, Divine and Moral, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Deadly Sins. We have to know by heart all the prayers, the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Confiteor, the Apostles’ Creed, the Act of Contrition, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We have to know them in Irish and English and if we forget an Irish word and use an English he goes into a rage and goes at us with the stick. If he had his way we’d be learning our religion in Latin, the language of the saints who communed intimately with God and His Holy Mother, the language of the early Christians, who huddled in the catacombs and went forth to die on rack and sword, who expired in the foaming jaws of the ravenous lion. Irish is fine for patriots, English for traitors and informers, but it’s the Latin in which the barbarians pulled out their nails and cut their skin off inch by inch. He tells us we’re a disgrace to Ireland and her long sad history, that we’d be better off in Africa praying to bush or tree. He tells us we’re hopeless, the worst class he ever had for First Communion but as sure as God made little apples he’ll make Catholics of us, he’ll beat the idler out of us and the Sanctifying Grace into us.

Brendan Quigley raises his hand. We call him Question Quigley because he’s always asking questions. He can’t help himself. Sir, he says, what’s Sanctifying Grace?

The master rolls his eyes to heaven. He’s going to kill Quigley. Instead he barks at him, Never mind what Sanctifying Grace, Quigley. That’s none of your business. You’re here to learn the catechism and do what you’re told. You’re not here to be asking questions. There are too many people wandering the world asking questions and that’s what has us in the state we’re in and if I find any boy in this class asking questions I won’t be responsible for what happens. Do you hear me, Quigley?

I do.

I do, what?

I do, sir.

He goes on with his speech, There are boys in this class who will never know the Sanctifying Grace. And why? Because of the greed. I have heard them abroad in the schoolyard talking about First Communion day, the happiest day of your life. Are they talking about the body and blood of Our Lord? Oh, no. Those greedy little balguards are talking about the money they’ll get, The Collection. They’ll go from house to house in their little suits like beggars for The Collection. And will they take any of that money and send it to the little black babies in Africa? Will they think of those little pagans doomed forever for lack of baptism and knowledge of the True Faith? Little black babies denied knowledge of the Mystical Body of Christ? Limbo is packed with little black babies flying around and crying for their mothers because they’ll never be admitted to the ineffable presence of Our Lord and the glorious company of saints, martyrs, virgins. Oh, no. It’s off to the cinemas, our First Communion boys run to wallow in the filth spewed across the world by the devil’s henchmen in Hollywood. Isn’t that right, McCourt?

‘Tis, sir.

Question Quigley raises his hand again. There are looks around the room and we wonder if it’s suicide he’s after.

What’s henchmen, sir?

The master’s face goes white, then red. His mouth tightens and opens and spits fire everywhere. He walks to Question and drags him from his seat. He snorts and stutters and his spit flies around the room. He flogs Question across the shoulders, the bottom, the legs. He grabs him by the collar and drags him to the front of the room.

Look at this specimen, he roars.

Question is shaking and crying. I’m sorry, sir.

The master mocks him. I’m sorry, sir. What are you sorry for?

I’m sorry I asked the question. I’ll never ask a question again, sir.

The day you do, Quigley, will be the day you wish God would take you to His bosom. What will you wish, Quigley?

That God will take me to His bosom, sir.

Go back to your seat, you omadhaun, you poltroon, you thing from the dark corner of a bog.

He sits down with the stick before him on the desk. He tells Question to stop whimpering and be a man. If he hears a single boy in this class asking foolish questions or talking about The Collection again he’ll flog that boy till the blood spurts.

What will I do, boys?

Flog the boy, sir.

Till?

Till the blood spurts, sir.

Now, Clohessy, what is the Sixth Commandment?

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not commit adultery what?

Thou shalt not commit adultery, sir.

And what is adultery, Clohessy?

Impure thoughts, impure words, impure deeds, sir.

Good, Clohessy. You’re a good boy. You may be slow and forgetful in the sir department and you may not have a shoe to your foot but you’re powerful with the Sixth Commandment and that will keep you pure.

My “now reading” box on the right has been lying for the past couple of weeks. I’ve actually been reading William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury. I’ve started Angela’s Ashes now, though, and so Faulkner will have to wait because after I finish this book I’m going to reread Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (fifth or sixth time for that one), then read The Journals of Lewis and Clark (as edited by John Bakeless), and then read Angle of Repose. Only after I’ve finished all of these will I be able to return to Benji and the rest of the messed-up gang in The Sound and the Fury.

I love books.

Mac and Pam had checked out the Angela’s Ashes DVD from the public library so I borrowed it the other day. When I started to watch it, however, I was angered by the gloss of the adaptation. The small segment that I saw gave short shrift to the beginning of the story. And stylistically, the film had a sheen, a lack of authenticity, seemed to be portraying the Hollywood version of the poor in 1930s Ireland instead of the poor as they actually existed. (Hell, we poor 1970s Oregonians had worse conditions than the film’s poor 1930s Irish!)

I stopped the film, ripped it to my hard drive for later viewing, and from my bookshelf I took the book upon which the film was based.

This book is a fine piece of work, destined to become a classic. This is only the second time that I’ve read it and I regret that it’s taken me five years to return to it.

Here is the second paragraph (which, by all rights, ought to be the first paragraph), the best-known passage from the book:

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

That paragraph is an apt summary of the book’s plot, but cannot begin to do justice to the range and degree of poverty that the author, Frank McCourt, experiences during his childhood.

Here is another great passage (and yet another will follow tomorrow):

Paddy Clohessy has no shoe on his foot, his mother shaves his head to keep the lice away, his eyes are red, his nose always snotty. The sores on his kneecaps never heal because he picks the scabs and puts them in his mouth. His clothes are rags he has to share with his six brothers and a sister and when he comes to school with a bloody nose or a black eye you know he had to fight over the clothes that morning. He hates school. He’s seven going on eight, the biggest and oldest boy in the class, and he can’t wait to grow up and join the English army and go to India where it’s nice and warm and he’ll live in a tent with a dark girl with the red dot on her forehead and he’ll be lying there eating figs, that’s what they eat in India, figs, and she’ll cook the curry day and night and plonk on a ukelele and when he has enough money he’ll send for the whole family and they’ll all live in the tent especially his poor father who’s at home coughing up great gobs of blood because of the consumption. When my mother sees Paddy on the street she says, Wisha, look at that poor child. He’s a skeleton with rags and if they were making a film about the famine they’d surely put him in the middle of it.

I think Paddy likes me because of the raisin and I feel a bit guilty because I wasn’t that generous in the first place. The master, Mr. Benson, said the government was going to give us the free lunch so we wouldn’t be going home in the freezing weather. He led us down to a cold room in the dungeons of Leamy’s School where the charwoman, Nellie Ahearn, was handing out the half pint of milk and the raisin bun. The milk was frozen in the bottles and we had to melt it between our thighs. The boys joked and said the bottles would freeze our things off and the master roared, Any more of that talk and I’ll warm the bottles on the backs of yeer heads. We all searched our raisin buns for a raisin but Nellie said they must have forgotten to put them in and she’d inquire form the man who delivered. We searched again every day till at last I found a raisin in my bun and held it up. The boys started grousing and said they wanted a raisin and Nellie said it wasn’t her fault. She’d ask the man again. Now the boys were begging me for the raisin and offering me everything, a slug of their milk, a pencil, a comic book. Toby Mackey said I could have his sister and Mr. Benson heard him and took him out to the hallway and knocked him around till he howled. I wanted the raisin for myself but I saw Paddy Clohessy standing in the corner with no shoes and the room was freezing and he was shivering like a dog that had been kicked and I always felt sad over kicked dogs so I walked over and gave Paddy the raisin because I didn’t know what else to do and all the boys yelled that I was a fool and a feckin’ eejit and I’d regret the day and after I handed the raisin to Paddy I longed for it but it was too late now because he pushed it right into his mouth and gulped it and looked at me and said nothing and I said in my head what kind of an eejit are you to be giving away your raisin.

Mr. Benson gave me a look and said nothing and Nellie Ahearn said, You’re a great oul’ Yankee, Frankie.

Great stuff.