Having
finished one book, I’m starting three.
Three books, three introductions.
Ursula
K. Le Guin’s opening paragraph to Buffalo
Gals and Other Animal Presences resonated with me. I, too, prefer to read the introduction after I’ve read the book, a behavior
I’ve never heard spoken of before. Any
one else do this?
Having done introductions before, I
have found that many readers loathe them,
reviewers sneer at them, and critics
dismiss them; and then they all tell
me so. As for myself, I rather like
introductions, but generally read them
after reading what they were supposed to introduce me to. Read as extra-ductions,
they are often interesting and useful.
But that won’t do. Ductions must be intro, and come first, like
salad in restaurants, a lot of cardboard
lettuce with bits of red wooden cabbage soaked in dressing, so that you’re disabled for the entrée.
Thomas
Cahill’s latest book in his Hinges of History series, Mysteries of the Middle Ages, The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art
from the Cults of Catholic Europe, is a lush, beautiful book. The type, sidebars, illustrations, yea, even
the paper announce: this book is special.
I’m unsure of his premises and am feeling a bit reserved about the book. But these words warmed me:
All across Europe,
a pilgrimage in company with others was a life-defining event and one of the
principal satisfactions of a well-tuned life. […] I invite
you on a pilgrimage, dear Reader. Come
along with me (and many others) to places
we have never seen before and to people we could otherwise never have expected to know. We are surely
sundry folk, as Chaucer would have
called us, and we shall meet sundry folk even more exotic than ourselves. “By
adventure”—by happenstance—we have fallen into
fellowship.
Barbara
Tuchman’s introduction to A Distant
Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century provided the best reason I’ve
ever read for learning historical dates– in one short sentence. Oh man, this revved my engine.
Dates may seem dull and pedantic to
some, but they are fundamental because
they establish sequence—what precedes and what follows—thereby leading toward an understanding of cause and effect.
Here’s a sequence I’ve pondered, one I’ve never seen mentioned in
print. What does The Fall of Constantinople
to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 have to do with
Luther’s Reformation of 1517? Have you
ever wondered why Martin Luther died from natural causes at the age of 62, when
many reformers/heretics were burned at the stake before and after him? Charles V wanted to deal with Luther, but the
Ottoman Turks were knocking at the door of Vienna.
Hmm. So the threat of Islam gave
the Reformation a small period of incubation.
I talked to a missionary to Turks living in Germany and posited this
theory. He nodded vigorously and said
that the connection is something many Moslems are aware of.
A Living Pencil 