Knight's Reading List XIV: February 2008

Reading List:

Bodian, Stephen. Meditation for Dummies, 2nd edition.
Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants.
Kugel, James L. How to Read the Bible.
Rich, Adrienne, editor. The Best American Poetry 1996.

Non-Fiction:

Bodian, Stephen. Meditation for Dummies, 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2006. xxii + 360 pages. Index. If you’re considering taking up meditation, this is a good place to start. Bodian comes across as credulous, and I tended to ignore the more “spritual” aspects of the book. The techniques are well-described, and the attached CD is a helpful aide to a variety of meditative procedures. The main problem with a book on meditation is that looking over at the book to see what to do next interrupts the rhythm of meditating. Still, Bodian does know what he’s talking about, even if he does attribute more meaning to it than the subject will support.

Kugel, James L. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2007. xiv + 819 pages. Picture Credits. A Note to the Reader. Notes. Subject Index. Verses Cited. James Kugel, in contrast to Stephen Bodian, has taken up a subject that has plenty of meaning to support a variety of interpretative superstructures. And that is, in fact, Kugel’s subject: The Bible, as it has come down to us, has come down with a body of interpretation and interpolation that stands between us and the plain text. Thus, anyone who tries to derive the meaning of the text will be at odds with any of the existing religious traditions.

In particular, Kugel formulates four assumptions which were common to all of the ancient interpretations of the Bible. One will see immediately that some Christians and Jews still hold these assumptions about the Bible, and that much of the conflict over religious thought in our time is between those who make these assumptions, and those who do not. One of the difficulties is that these are assumptions, and are often not made explicit by those who hold them. The assumptions are:

“1. They assumed that the Bible was a fundamentally cryptic text: that is, when it said A, often it might really mean B. …
“2. Interpreters also assumed that the Bible was a book of lessons directed to readers in their own day. …
“3. Interpreters also assumed that the Bible contained no contradictions or mistakes. …
“4. Lastly, they believed that the entire Bible is essentially a divinely given text, a book in which God speaks directly or through His prophets.” (Pages 14-15, et seq.)

Most of the book consists of Kugel retelling stories from the Bible, providing an interpretation of each story according to the ancient assumptions, and then re-interpreting the story in accordance with modern Biblical scholarship. This is a fascinating and informative book. One thing that struck me was how apt these interpretative assumptions are for explaining how the ancient Greeks saw the Iliad and the Odyssey as sacred texts.

One of the funniest episodes in the book is when Kugel, in talking about interpretations of the Song of Songs, applies traditional Biblical interpretation to that other fine old song, "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes." See pages 514-518 for this tour de force. On the other hand, Kugel's conclusion is rather touching. If you keep to this method of interpretation, you know that you're putting meaning into the Bible that wasn't there initially. But if, after all, you don't share at least part of this traditional way of interpreting the Bible, why would you want to read it?
Fiction:

Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2006. 335 pages. Author’s Note.

This is a comic and touching novel about a young man who, having lost his family and position, takes up the duties of caring for the animals in a traveling circus. One of the nice touches are the illustrative photographs from real circuses. I could recommend this one to almost anyone.

Poetry:

Rich, Adrienne, editor. The Best American Poetry 1996. New York: Scribner’s, 1996. 318 pages.

The folks who put out the various volumes of The Best American … have stopped doing a volume of the best American poetry. This book amply demonstrates why that was a good decision. Adrienne Rich, a well-known Lesbian poet and editor, makes a sincere effort to find poems by as diverse a population as possible. I suppose it’s nice to know that African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, gays, and revolutionaries write poetry, but most of the poems in this collection that are actually readable are by white, college-educated, middle-class poets like Reynolds Price. Selecting poems according to the ethnicity of the poet isn’t the best way to obtain a lot of excellent poems. In my personal opinion, when your criteria for collection are not related to the qualities of the object being collected, your have corrupted the selection process. But, then, I don’t think diversity is a good enough reason to let unqualified students into universities, either.