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Three Children’s Classics

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The Prince’s name—Dolor, which means grief—sets the tone. When his nurse was carrying the infant she dropped him, causing him to be lame. Here is a tale with a fairy godmother, a wicked king and a magic cloak. There are no instant fixes. The godmother tells Prince Dolor “I cannot alter your lot in any way, but I can help you to bear it.”. Many children’s books from the Victorian era can be sickly sweet and cloying—treacle—or tediously preachy. This book, thankfully, was light on both counts.

The sense of the inevitable, as the grown-up people call it—that we cannot have things as we want them to be, but as they are, and that we must learn to bear them and make the best of them—this lesson, which everybody has to learn soon or late—came, alas! sadly soon, to the poor boy. He fought against it for a while, and then, quite overcome, turned and sobbed bitterly in this godmother’s arms.

Where Dinah Mulock sees the inevitable (Fate), I see divine providence. If I were reading this to a child, we would talk about the difference between fate and providence and how those differences would affect our responses.
 
When we see people suffering or unfortunate, we feel very sorry for them; but when we see them bravely bearing their sufferings, and making the best of their misfortunes, it is quite a different feeling. We respect, we admire them. One can respect and admire even a little child.

[My edition had two other stories by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. I found The Adventures of a Brownie, (a foot high old man who can only be seen by children) bland and blah. The lack of conflict or tension provided no hooks to hold my interest. Poor Prin was perhaps the ghastliest children’s story I have ever read. In those days an annual tax was levied on pet owners which the parents couldn’t pay. When a girl is instructed to take the dog to the landlord, she drowned the dog she loved to prevent him from going to a questionable home.  End of story. Ghastly, I tell you.]

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Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? The answer, Huck Finn tells us, is no. Instead of a good float down the Mississippi, Jim, Huck and Tom glide in hot air balloon across the Atlantic and over Africa. It’s a fun romp—it is supposedly a parody of Around the World in 80 Days—with laugh out loud humor. Don’t get your knickers all knotted because Twain puts tigers in Africa or the balloon’s fuel and food are never replenished. Some sections are dicey for younger ones: the mad (in all senses) inventor is pushed out of the balloon over the Atlantic; they come across dead bodies in the desert.

Jim begun to snore — soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones, like the last water sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a dipperful of loddanum in him, but can’t wake himself up although all that awful noise of his’n ain’t but three inches from his own ears.

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo…

“My goodness,” I says, “we’ll be as rich as Creosote, won’t we, Tom?”

They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn’t a Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn’t know it before.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne retells six Greek myths [The Gorgon’s Head, The Golden Touch, The Paradise for Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher and The Chimæra] in A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys. Eustace Bright, the gifted poetry-writing college-aged narrator who calls his cousins Primrose, Periwinkle, Cowslip, Clover, Sweet Fern, etc. tells the myths with humor, intelligence and grace.

Sit down, then, every soul of you and be all as still as so many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from the great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I shall bite the story short off between my teeth, and swallow the untold part.

Hawthorne writes an interlude chapter before and after each myth that responds to the previous story and introduces the next.  There isn’t enough material in these interludes to give me a sense of each child’s personality (it would have been easier for me if their given names—Susan, Peter, David and Sally—were used); nevertheless, I enjoyed these chapters as much as I did the myths.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For, one of the hardest things in this world is, to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones.

Oh, how heavily passes the time, while an adventurous youth is yearning to do his part in life, and to gather in the harvest of his renown! How hard a lesson it is to wait! Our life is brief, and how much of it is spent in teaching us only this!

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Eisenhower

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I am midway through a journey begun in 2008 to understand the 20th century.  The Great War took a year (of my time!); WWII about 15 months. Life circumstances slowed me down, but I’m cheerfully working through the post-war period and the Korean War.  One approach to history that I appreciate is studying the lives of key people. Voila, la bibliographie! [That is a private joke that only I understand: the first sentence I ever learned in French was “Chttt! Voila, la biblioteque!” translated: Be QUIET! There is the librarian! It was on a filmstrip (with accompanying vinyl album that had a bell signal to go to the next slide) we watched in French I.]

I wanted to know Eisenhower better. Stephen Ambrose admires his subject.  He begins, “Dwight Eisenhower was a great and a good man. He was one of the outstanding leaders of the Western World in this century.”  This is the first volume of a two-volume biography of Eisenhower. Anyone interested in leadership would benefit from reading Ike’s story.

Everyone brings a personal “grid” to their reading.  I was very interested in Eisenhower’s religious background. Much has been made of the fact that one of the world’s greatest generals was raised in a pacifist home. David and Ida Eisenhower were devout members of Brethren in Christ.  David’s nighttime reading was the Bible in Greek; Ida memorized 1325 Bible verses. And yet…

Nightly Bible reads, Milton said, were “a good way to get us to read the Bible mechanically.” They never discussed what they had read, never asked “Why?,” never explored the deep subtlety or rich symbolism of the Bible. It was the word of God, sufficient unto itself. The duty of mortals was not to explore it, investigate it, question it, think about it, but rather to accept it. 24

Two traits, ever helpful in his life, were manifest in young Ike’s life: intense curiosity and a remarkable ability to concentrate.  As an adult he had another remarkable ability: to shake a depression. Ambrose writes about his vitality:

That quality showed in his speech, in his mannerisms, his physical movements, most of all in his eyes. They were astonishingly expressive. As he listened to his deputies discuss future operations, his eyes moved quickly and inquisitively from face to face. His concentration was intense, almost a physical embrace. His eyes always showed his mood—they were icy blue when he was angry, warmly blue what he was pleased, sharp and demanding when he was concerned, glazed when he was bored. 272

As a general, Ike comprehended the sacrifice that both the soldiers and their families made.

Eisenhower wanted to let as many men as possible see him. He made certain that every soldier who was to go ashore on D-Day had the opportunity to at least look at the man who was sending him into battle. 294

He was the man who had to total up all the casualties. 293

…only Eisenhower had such a keen sense of family, of the way in which each casualty meant a grieving family back home. Eisenhower’s concern was of such depth and so genuine that it never left him. 293

It wasn’t until he was in his fifties, that Eisenhower received acclaim and notoriety, primarily as the Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord.  Eisenhower was also the NATO commander, president of Columbia University and president of the United States.  This volume ends with Eisenhower as President-Elect of the United States.

I found Ambrose’s book engaging and helpful. At no time did my interest lag. I was inspired by Eisenhower’s discipline, organizational skills and perception.

A fun coda: I have a habit of immersing myself in books on (relatively) obscure topics. I find myself wanting to discuss the ideas and events I have read about, but coming up short on conversation partners. Honestly, what would dampen a dinner party faster than, “I know, let’s talk about Truman and Eisenhower!”?  I discovered recently that among my acquaintances are a couple who were friends with Ike and Mamie Eisenhower during their retirement years in Gettysburg.  They were full of stories about the Eisenhowers. I lent them this book; Ray read it through in three days.  I’m looking forward to some great discussions.  An unexpected gift!

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Traveling with Truman

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I like roads. I like to move.
~ Harry S. Truman

It’s one thing to write an interesting piece on a fascinating subject.  But a skilled raconteur can insert bits of flavor into a basic vanilla story and serve up a delicious treat. The subject of  Matthew Algeo’s Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure is a June 1953 road trip former president Harry Truman and his wife Bess made.  I love road trips with my husband—some of the best conversations of our marriage have occurred in the car—but the thought of spinning a tale out of a drive down the turnpike makes my eyes go to half-mast and my chin bob.

In David McCullough’s exhaustive biography, Truman, the 17 day vacation gets less than two pages of print. The most remarkable thing about their adventure is that the Trumans, in their late sixties, traveled without Secret Service protection. Harry drove and Bess made sure he didn’t break the 50-mile-per-hour speed limit. They wanted to go incognito, but it was a rare exception when they were not recognized and approached by the public.  

Fifty some years later, Algeo retraces their route, wherever possible eating at the same diners and staying at the same hotels. (His lack of success in getting the “book rate”—for well-deserving but penny-pinching authors—at the Waldorf prevented a duplication of Truman’s itinerary.)

Algeo inserts quirky sidebars into the narrative (e.g. the economy of Decatur, the history of seatbelts, how Richmond, Indiana, treated Martin Van Buren) and notes changes in the places visited.  What Algeo brings to this book is humor; it is a fun and interesting read about an obscure topic.

Walking back to the limosine after lunch, Truman was mobbed outside the Capitol by tourists who had come to see the sights, never expecting to see one in the flesh. They crowded close to him, jostling for position, begging for an autograph or a handshake or a snapshot. As was his policy, he patiently obliged every request. Once, when asked how he coped with such onslaughts, Truman laughed and said he tried to put himself in other people’s shoes and imagine how he would feel “if some supposed big shop high-hatted me.”

After visiting Matt Algeo’s blog—the tagline is “America’s leading source for Grover Cleveland news”— I discovered that he has written a new book, The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth. Oh yes, I plan to read it.

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Converting to Metric?

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This is what a child (back then) needed to know about measurements. I don’t want to ponder on the method used to measure a mouthful. Eww!
Two mouthfuls are a jigger;
two jiggers are a jack;
two jacks are a jill;
two jills are a cup;
two cups are a pint;
two pints are a quart;
two quarts are a pottle;
two pottles are a gallon;
two gallons are a pail;
two pails are a peck;
two pecks are a bushel;
two bushels are a strike;
two strikes are a coomb;
two coombs are a cask;
two casks are a barrel;
two barrels are a hogshead;
two hogsheads are a pipe;
two pipes are a tun–
  and there my story is done!


The curious thing about reading S. Carl Hirsch’s 1973 Meter Means Measure is his assurance that the metric system would be ensconced by now into our society. His opening sentence:

A healthy American baby girl born in the year 2000 may tip the scales at exactly three kilograms–instead of 6.6 pounds. And her body temperature will undoubtedly read about 37 degrees–Celsius. At school age, when she is perhaps 100 centimeters tall and drinks a liter of milk a day, she may ask her father, “Daddy what was an inch?”

I found this history of measurement fascinating.  In the same way that working with different base numbers in mathematics takes you outside your comfort zone, thinking through different methods of measuring length, weight, time, and temperature boggles the mind.  Thomas Jefferson suggested this master plan for linear measurements:

10 points make 1 line
10 lines make 1 inch
10 inches make 1 foot
10 feet make 1 decad
10 decads make 1 rood
10 roods make 1 furlong
10 furlongs make 1 mile

Four questions illustrate the difficulty the English system of measurement.

How many acres in a square mile?
How many cubic inches in a bushel?
How long is each side of a square one-acre lot?
What is the weight of a quart of water?

Hirsch waxes eloquent on the superiority of the metric system. Yet there is great resistance to switching over. “Change,” Hirsch assets, “is strange.” It took Japan forty years to change over.  Great Britain did it in ten years. 

The United States, Myanmar, and Liberia are the only countries in the world not using the metric system. I admit that I was ambivalent about metrication before reading this book. We cling to what we know, how we were taught. Yet, I see the benefits of going metric. More on Metrication in the United States. And, just for comparison, Metrication in Canada.

What do you think?

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Wonderlust

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When I saw cover of Wonderlust, I felt a magnetic pull. Travel books charm me.  A Spiritual Travelogue for the Adventurous Soul appeared to be a valuable passport.

Vicki Kuyper has visited 40 countries. And she can write. But I found the format of this book off-putting. Each chapter, 4-5 pages, is a vignette about a particular place (Cambodia, California, Peru, China, etc.) with a spiritual lesson attached.  Each chapter begins with “A Journey to _______” (e.g. Self-Acceptance, Forgiveness, Wholeness, Identity) and ends with a list of questions (which I admit I skipped) intended, I suppose, to help the reader go deeper into her personal journey. The book seems to be a hybrid between a travel memoir and a devotional. The tidy faith lesson came abruptly and didn’t seem organic to the story.  It ends with a neat resolution.

Perhaps I rebel at this style because I tend toward it myself. Because I grew up reading and hearing engaging stories with a Bible lesson tacked on the end like a ruffle, I can slide effortlessly into this model. It’s didactic; it’s facile.

I would love to spend an evening over dinner listening to Vicki and Mark Kuyper’s stories. I suspect that I’d hear some of the lessons they learned, but they would be naturally woven into the stories. Frances Mayes’ A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller isn’t a spiritual travelogue; but it is better reading.

Here are some sample Wonderlust quotes:

[Describing a Grand Canyon sunset]
Never before, at least not in my experience, had silence so eloquently shouted God’s name. It came in a chorus of color, from soft ginger to warm butterscotch, burnt sienna, and flaming auburn. Tones of cappuccino swirled with espresso. Layers of ocher and amber–alive–fluidly changing shade and hue before my eyes. As the warm tones began to cool, tiers of cobalt and plum melted into velvet indigo. Shadows caught in a slow waltz danced to the music of light and rhythm of time.

[A Cambodian guide’s story]
“I was thirteen years old when everything changed,” Som said softly, a dramatic change from his usually vibrant, lighthearted tone. “First the Khmer Rouge killed the soldiers. Then those who were educated. Then the rich. Then anyone they wanted. I was pulled away from my family. They separated us into groups by age. The first lesson we learned is that we could no longer use the word my. No more my father, my mother, my brother…”

[St. Petersburg, Russia]
I’d heard that in Russia there are only two seasons: expectation and disappointment. After only one week, I discovered a third: resignation.

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German Boy

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I had already read stacks of Holocaust memoirs and was suffering “misery fatigue” when I bought German Boy. What compelled me to buy and read this book? Simply because it is written from the point of view of a German boy; other than Hitler’s Mein Kampf and All Quiet on the Western Front, I had not read a German narrative. Apparently, misery does not recognize boundaries. Once again I am astonished at the suffering a human being can survive.

Wolfgang Samuel’s story covers the time between his tenth birthday, January 1945, in Eastern Germany to January 1951 when Samuel, his mother and her new American husband leave Germany for America.  As the narrative begins, Wolfgang, his sister Ingrid and their Mutti  (German for “mom”) leave in the middle of the night to flee Russian troops entering their city. This is the first of many three-suitcase trips. The family of three lives with Mutti’s parents until they again travel west.  The formal end of hostilities did not bring an end of deprivation, an end of hunger, or an end of violence.  

An uncomfortable aspect of this story is the extent Mutti went to provide for her hungry family.  It is a sad story, delicately told, of a desperate woman who exchanges sex for soup. Mutti was a beautiful woman, estranged from her husband, who was used to flirting for favors.  In the flurry of packing up and leaving, Mutti dons a silk blouse, silk stockings, a black velvet jacket and makeup.  When her mother disapproves, she replies:

Mother, our only chance of escape is to be picked up by an army
truck heading west to the American lines. Do you think anyone is going
to stop and pick up a frumpy-looking woman with two children and an
old woman by her side? No. They’ll stop for a pretty, well-dressed woman,
if they stop at all. I am trying to look my very best. If we are lucky,
someone will have a heart and will take a look at me–and stop for us.

Amongst the multiple migrations searching for a safe place, the family takes a small room near the train station.  After months of dwindling food supply and no way to feed her family, Mutti does the unthinkable.  A Russian man starts to visit at night; in the morning a steaming two-liter can of soup sits on the windowsill.  Even so, Wolfgang protests: Mutti, you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing. Only Dad should sleep with you. It is a raw story, a poignant story. Almost every woman Wolfgang was associated with at this point in his life was raped by soldiers. 

Carnage caresses his life.  Besides daily bombings, Wolfgang lives through a strafing attack on a long column of refugees where people five feet from him were killed. He witnesses a school fellow’s drowning.  His father shows up and leads them in a night crossing, dodging Russian patrols, through a blizzard to the American zone. And yet, in the way a child focuses on the immediate things, he also remembers the loneliness of being ostracized by other German boys, the boredom of bad schools, the shame of ill-fitting clothes and the petty corruptions of life in a refugee barracks.  

Living next to RAF Fassberg, Wolfgang witnessed firsthand the continual air traffic of the Berlin airlift. When the Americans arrived, Sergeant Leo Ferguson made his entrance.  He fell in love and married the now-divorced Hedy (Mutti’s name); he was the means for Wolfgang and his Mutti to move to Colorado.  Wolfgang’s sister Ingrid remained with her father.  Enamored with pilots and airplanes, Wolfgang served in the U.S. Air Force for thirty years, retiring as a colonel.  In June 1998, Wolfgang Samuel was a speaker at a conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin airlift. His story arrested the attention of Stephen Ambrose, who encouraged Samuel to publish his book.

I cannot conceive of circumstances leading to the choices Hedy made.  I shuddered and recoiled as I read.  I have a relative who lived through post-war Austria.  In the past, when I have asked for this person’s story, the answer was always a silent shaking of the head, a polite refusal to revisit that period.  I still have no idea what that story would be, but after having read this book, I am inclined to never again ask that question.
    

String, Straightedge, and Shadow

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Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

—Robert McKee

Facts and theorems can be difficult to swallow.  They often get gunked up in the throat, remain lodged in the esophagus, useless for nourishment or growth.  But stories!  Stories get gulped down with eagerness and along with them much useful knowledge is digested.  Julia E. Diggins tells the compelling story of geometry in String, Straight-Edge, and Shadow.  Written for children, it would be beneficial to anyone interested in learning geometry. 

They used the string to trace a circle, to lay off a right angle, to stretch a straight line.
They used as a straightedge anything else with which they could draw a straight line.
They came to realize that shadows are the sun’s handwriting upon the earth to tell the
secrets of order in the universe.

Diggin’s story would be a great stand-alone read; individual chapters, however, could supplement studies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Babylon, or Greece.  The solutions that geometry offers are told in the context of the problems people faced.  In the question of ancient property rights and surveying farmer’s fields, boundaries could not be casually (by freehand) drawn.  They needed to know how to trace an accurate right-angle corner.  The answer is in roper-stretchers, knotted rope, stakes…and the 3-4-5 right triangle.  Corydon Bell’s illustrations make geometry easier to understand.  What a pleasant introduction to Thales, Pythagorus, Eudoxus, Archimedes and Eratosthenes. 

 

You can read sections of the book here,  here and here.  I leave with you the opening quote of this book, from Plato.

But by beauty of shape
I want you to understand
not what the multitude generally
means by this expression,
like the beauty of living beings
or of paintings representing them,
but
something alternatively rectilinear and circular,
and the surfaces and solids
which one can produce
from the rectilinear and circular
with compass, set square, and rule.
For these things are not like the others,
conditionally beautiful,
but are beautiful in themselves.

~ Plato

A Godward Life

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John Piper’s A Godward Life: Book Two  reads like a blog.

His keen interest in life brings a wide variety of topics to the table: poetry, ethical dilemmas, reflections on his parents, letter to his wife, vignettes of people in his life, meditations on suffering, mental health tips, and commentary on current events. He reaches back to Augustine, Bunyan, and Luther, reflects on David Brainerd, and writes about contemporary heroes like Josef Tson. 

Each reading is close to three pages; this is a book which can be read in small sips or large gulps. 

Piper brings perfect pitch to his writing.  It is not smarmy or cheesy; dry and dusty; or heavy and didactic.  His exuberance for God’s glory brings a patina of grace on each page.  His humility keeps him from self-focus while maintaining a personal and genuine voice.  Above all, John Piper is a pastor. He teaches us how to pray, how to think and how to live.

Life, well lived, is like writing a poem. And therefore it is hard, very hard. A sloppy prose or an unintelligible, free verse life would not be as hard. And the effect would not be as great. God is beautiful, and the life that expresses his glory should be beautiful…Beauty and truth and compelling depth come by painstaking thinking and trial and praying and self-correcting.

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My New Favorite Book

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P.G. Wodehouse meets Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Mix two parts E. Nesbit with three parts Jerome K. Jerome. 

Here is a diamond of a book! 

I want to wave down readers and persuade them to read this gem.

Auntie Robbo is a rollicking tale of an orphaned boy, Hector Murdoch (11), and his great-grand-aunt and guardian, Robina Sketheway (81). They got on as well together as any two people possibly could.

Their idyllic whimsical life at Nethermuir, twelve miles from Edinburgh, is threatened when Hector’s step-mother, Merlissa Benck, a woman he has never before met, visits with the aim of adopting Hector.  She sniffs around and is appalled at the the lifestyle of this unusual pair.

“But what about … Hector, wait for me … What about other subjects?”

“Oh, Auntie Robbo knows all about them. Sometimes we do sums. We keep account books, and history—lots of history; then afterwards we ride over the battlefields and go and look at the castles where the murders were done.”

“I dare say,” said Merlissa Benck shortly. “But I should have thought British history would have been more suitable for a boy of your age, indispensable in my opinion. England’s story is a very great and noble one.”

“Yes,” said Hector. “But then we couldn’t ride to the battlefields, could we? I mean they were mostly fighting in places that didn’t belong to them, weren’t they?”

 
Hector is smart enough to apprehend the intent of Merlissa Benck: how easily she could “prove” dear unconventional Auntie Robbo was mad, stake her claim and clap the lad into dreaded public school.  So Hector and Auntie Robbo slip away at night.  On the train from Edinburgh they pick up three waifs: a brother, sister and cousin.  Fugitives, they live in a tinker’s cart, traveling through Scotland.   

And when the fresh curling trout had been eaten, with a mound of scones and butter, they lay late round the fire, swilling cocoa, arguing again about stags and cows, telling stories, and looking back on yet another well-spent perfect day.

Auntie Robbo is magnificent: a hale and hearty woman, opinionated, kind, an octogenarian who hikes hills and understands boys.  No morality tale here, no treacle, no dour Scottish frowns, just a thumping good read.

My journey to Auntie Robbo was through Russell Kirk’s autobiography.  While studying at St. Andrews, Kirk became friends with the widower George Scott-Moncrieff.  One phrase intrigued me: his wife Ann, who wrote inimitable children’s books… 

A search on her name introduced me to Auntie Robbo, which is printed in full at Gutenberg.  I dare you to read the first chapter.  I had to decide whether to buy the book (which involved waiting at least ten days), print the book (115 pages) or read it online.  I opened my laptop, used “Control +” to increase the font size and read all 22 chapters in one sitting.

Here is a buffet of Scott-Moncrieff’s delectable sentences:

He slipped out of questions like a mackerel fry through a herring net.

There was a spluttering of laughter like geese being chased across a field.

And the sea, deep and green as oil silk, swayed and sucked about the feet of these cliffs, growling with hunger, like an old lion who paws a gristly piece of meat and wonders if it’s worth a broken tooth and a belly-ache.

She thought she had slipped into her dotage….Years ago, round about seventy, she had accepted such things as inevitable, much as children accept that they will one day be grown up; but by this time she was eighty-one, she had forgotten about dotage and death again, and it was very unpleasant to be confronted by one of them suddenly.

This is a book I plan to read at least once a year until I slip into my dotage.  I laughed aloud; I disrupted my husband’s concentration, intruding with quotes. I have plans for read alouds with the grands.  I’m baffled why Auntie Robbo has remained unknown to me before now.


Auntie Robbo would make a fantastic full-length feature film.

Picture a madcap Maggie Smith with laughter and twinkling eyes, and you’ve got Auntie Robbo.

If I knew an ounce about writing a screenplay, I’d do it myself.

The Sword of Imagination

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When I picked up Sword Of Imagination: Memoirs Half Century Literary Conflict I respected Russell Kirk.  By the time I finished the book I was quite fond of this charming articulate author. 

Kirk’s name doesn’t have the recognition that William F. Buckley Jr.’s does but they are closely connected.  In 1953 Kirk wrote The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, a book which had a great influence on Buckley’s thinking.  Like Buckley, Kirk was a cheerful conservative.  Like Buckley, Kirk was an excellent writer.  Unlike Buckley, Kirk came from modest means.
 
Kirk warns the reader in the preface:

Enthusiasts for modernity, the global village, the end of history, the gross national product, emancipation from moral inhibitions, abstract rights without concomitant duties, and what Samuel Johnson called “the lust for innovation”–why, such folk may be little pleased by my fulminations and vaticinations.

Dr. Kirk had an antiquated vocation: man of letters, an intellectual devoted to literary activities.  (An aside: To be a woman of letters is my ideal occupation: to read and write all day, all week, all year!)  Writing his memoirs in the third person,

Kirk believed that his political function it was to work upon the body politic by endeavoring to rouse the political and moral imagination among the shapers of public opinion — that large category including political leaders; opinion makers of serious journals, the mass media, the academy, and the church; and that unknowable crowd of individuals who, as Dicey points out, influence their neighbors by the strength of their convictions. By talent, he was a writer, a speaker, an editor. In the long run, conceivably he might demolish some molehills, if not move mountains. The only weapon with which he was skilled was the sword of imagination.

In this highly detailed autobiography Kirk outlines how he moved from a boy living next to the railroad yards to a nationally regarded intellectual. His peregrinations took him to Michigan State College, the Salt Lake desert, Duke University, St. Andrews, throughout the United States and Europe. 

The book reads like a popular history of the second half of the twentieth century.  Kirk writes engagingly of his encounters with many leaders: Richard Weaver, Donald Davidson, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Barry Goldwater, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hoover, McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II.  Never bland in his opinions, he writes generously of both of his convivial and and his adversarial relationships.

Kirk’s writing is both erudite and highly personal.  The winning of his young wife, Annette, is the kind of romance I enjoy reading.  Together they build a family (four daughters) and a community of scholarship and fellowship.  Kirk writes of his wife, “Openhanded, glowing with life, and discerningly compassionate, Annette Courtemanche Kirk turned the shadowy old house, without altering its character, into a center of charitable and intellectual undertakings, so that it was crowded with people of all sorts and conditions.” A young visitor paid the Kirks a supreme compliment calling their place the Last Homely House, a reference to Elrond’s Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings.   

One thing I found uncomfortable was Kirk’s love of ghost stories, haunted houses and his dabbling in things uncanny. 

I know a book was worth reading when the reading of Book A makes me want to read Book B,C,D,E and F.  I finished Sword Of Imagination with a renewed desire to read several books already on my shelves: Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered, Ideas Have Consequences, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (really, all things Flannery), T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (I need to become acquainted with Eliot), and a book on economics that Dr. Kirk wrote Economics: Work and Prosperity.