It's Veteran's Day.
I'm still with How to Train a Fox, and I do want to finish it, even though it's dry and I haven't picked it up much lately. Jane Eyre is going to take me a while (am I kidding myself? all books take me a while), since it's so fat; I have read it before, but I recently went back to an earlier podcast of Close Reads where they had a great conversation about it, and I determined to first watch all the modern versions of it I could get, which was pretty easy, since we have four at the library! (wasn't it Hemingway who wrote over-long sentences? I haven't read Hemingway yet, but I know that sentence was too long.) While I was in the midst of this, somebody dropped off unwanted books and this paperback was there for my taking.
The Year of Our Lord 1943 is subtitled Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, and I've only just started it. The author is talking about the failure of the churches to hold back the decline of society, their failure to be enough of an influence on young people. Then he (Alan Jacobs) mentions a book published in that year by Amy Buller, Darkness Over Germany, and she says: "I record these stories (of conversations with young Germans) to emphasize the need for youth and those who plan the training of youth to consider carefully the full significance of the tragedy of a whole generation of German youth, who, having no faith, made Nazism their religion." Then Alan Jacobs says: "But Buller insists that even this wholesale ecclesiastical collapse would not have been sufficient to ruin almost the whole of German youth if the universities had not been equally complicit in the Nazification of the country." This, I fear, is happening all over again.
I'm also working on a skirt, with a bit of light blue corduroy that Cyndi gave me long ago. I'm using Amy Butler's (not the above-mentioned Amy Buller - funny!) Barcelona skirt pattern.
It has layers, but not gathered, and they have raw edges - so, we'll see how that looks in corduroy. I do like my frayed edges.
I thought Hemingway was known for short sentences. St Paul was known for long ones, for sure!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to read Jane Eyre again. It seems like the most leisurely activity, to reread a long novel -- in print, it must be hard copy! -- instead of starting one more new book.
I feel that I read somewhere about a sentence he wrote that went on practically a whole page - if it's true, then maybe it was the only time. Otherwise, I may be thinking of James Joyce? :D (how could one confuse the two?)
Deletehttp://www.stefanieposavec.com/the-longest-sentence-pt-1/
ReplyDeleteYou are right!
I never thought about the length of St. Paul's sentences! As for Joyce, I have actually read a short story of his, when I never thought I'd read anything by him - this is what happens when one participates in a book discussion or read along. :) Thank you for the link!
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