Summer

I like summer.  It makes me happy.  It makes me feel alive and optimistic for the future.  I don’t get sad in the summer.  I don’t get lonely.  I am not, usually, depressed by the warm air, the gorgeous breezes, the sun-dappled water, or the grand mountains.  Summer here is an amalgam of childhood’s memories and later-life remembrances.  I am all at once ten and then thirty-something.  My soul lives here; it haunts the side streets and corner benches of small towns along the line.  It grows old at the soda fountain.  It rests by the stream.  I need not grandeur nor renown; I have the summer.

More Scott

All right, so I finished The Beautiful and Damned last night.  Wow, what an ending!  If you haven’t read the book, I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say I was stunned.  The last two pages sort of redeem the entire book for me (if I had any major complaints to begin with).  For the first time in his albeit-short literary career, F. Scott Fitzgerald has managed to pull the rug out from under the reader and take his breath away—a talent he would deftly master in his next book, The Great Gatsby.

Speaking of Gatsby, it is with undeniable pleasure and anticipated delight that I will take to it again next.  This will complete my revue of Fitzgerald’s trifecta, and I must admit a certain satisfaction that I have accomplished what I pledged to do some two years ago.

Anyway, more happy reading.

MBH

Et Cetera

My cat, Austin, died yesterday.  He was fifteen, a ripe-old age for a feline, but it makes his departure no less difficult to comprehend.  As of Sunday he was fine; then, yesterday afternoon, he was gone.  I miss him terribly, so much so if I write any more it will get to me.  At any rate, changes are inevitable in life, and this is just one more. 

In other news, I’m almost done with The Beautiful and Damned, which I think is a much better book than Paradise Lost.  You can see Scott Fitzgerald’s literary talent blossom, especially in the second half (once Anthony and Gloria get married, for those of you familiar with the book).  Nonetheless, I think it’s an incredible literary leap from Beautiful to The Great Gatsby–some strike of genius must have seized Scott between the two to make him write such a masterful work.  All I know is I can’t wait to get to Gatsby again.

Well, here’s to my dear old friend.  Rest in peace.

MBH

Bibliophile

Sure, it may have taken me a couple of years, but I have finally gotten under way with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise.  Not too sure about it yet, after the exhausting introductory essay, but I’m doggedly at it (a rare thing for me) and time will tell.

Happy reading!

MBH 

* * *

I have finished my read of This Side of Paradise.  Quite truthfully, I was not terribly impressed by Scott Fitzgerald’s first attempt at literary note.  Sure, Paradise is full of (too much?) detail, and Amory Blaine is, I suppose, at some level a likeable character.  But I could not help but find myself, unavoidably, comparing Paradise to Scott’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby—written just five years later; the two seemed as disparate as having come from two entirely different authors. 

The thing that strikes me now is that Paradise is supposedly highly-autobiographical, even more than Gatsby.  If that is the case, I certainly would not have regretted not knowing Scott during his college days.   

At any rate, it was, I guess, a good read, something to say I in fact took in.

Next up:  The Beautiful and Damned.

Remaining Faithful in the Quieter Times

Not always will we be on the mountaintop, experiencing to the fullest degree the near-tangible presence of God.  We cannot humanly muster the strength, nor the sheer determination of will, to prolong that experience any further than God Himself intends.

And so we find ourselves faced with the challenge—and it is, definitely, a challenge—to remain faithful to God and full of His spirit during the “normal days” of our existence.  Certainly, Christ still loves us, and he is no farther from us than when we felt closest to him.  But the milieu of life gets in the way and we neglect that fact.  Soon it seems as if the ardor of our faith were some distant memory of younger times.  We are eaten up by the world and its distractions, consumed by worry and fear about things indefinitely beyond our control but fully seized by our conscience.  We search for God and strive for faith, but find ourselves weak and empty.  The days are dark and gloomy, even in the bright sun, and the only thing that gets us through is the still-small voice of hope that beats in our breast.

But then, as some sweet little melody that gets stuck in our head, the realization of God’s love returns—be it in a gorgeous moonlit sky or the fullest breeze on our back.  It overwhelms and beckons us back to the blissful faith we first knew when Christ claimed our lives.  Everywhere we look we see God—in each place and every face.  And His voice tells us that He has never been away, never been farther than the hairs on our head.  Just as sure as summer and right as rain, God returns His faithfulness to us.  

By experiencing God’s presence anew, we are restored to the truth of who Christ is.  It is inescapable and unavoidable that Jesus Christ loves us, a fact we must own up to—even though it is much easier to believe otherwise.  It pains us to think that Christ could love us, given who we are and what we have done; yet this is precisely why he loves us.  Christ’s unconditional love for us breaks us, and it must.  Only then can we truly live in him.

This does not mean that we will not be faced with seasons of spiritual darkness.  As Christ was sent into the wilderness, so too will we.  But just as he went before us, Christ also goes with us into that wilderness; his love carries us.  No matter what the wilderness is that we face—the “normal days” of our jobs, our responsibilities, our debts and our dues—we no longer have to face those challenges alone:  the Lord Jesus is with us at every moment. 

If we are faced with solitude, let us celebrate the time we can focus on our relationship with Christ.  If we are enveloped by chaos, let us thank our God that Christ guides our footsteps through the storm.  And if we are given time with the people we adore, let us only love them more in the way Christ has taught us.  So then will our daily, “normal” lives become a faithful response to Christ’s love. 

Amen.

(–inspired by C.S. Lewis)

Life

Life is entirely about giving.  Life is entirely about faithfully responding to God’s mercies by selflessly and ceaselessly loving and serving others.  If we have not sacrificed all of ourselves, we have not lived.

The Life of James Gatz

There are, in my opinion, very few novels in the English language worth reading.  This, however, is one of them, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s immortal Great Gatsby.  If my blog inspires you to do only one thing, let it be to read this book.

First of all, don’t rent the movie:  Scott Fitzgerald’s words live on his pages.  Gatsby comes brilliantly to life in one’s mind, far more elegant, and sad, than a film could ever hope to portray.  Every aspect of the novel is a masterpiece—from the dust jacket cover to the last line of its text.  From the moment I met the effortless and conflicted Jordan Baker—with that perfectly-balanced head—I was totally engaged.  And the latest edition is particularly helpful, meticulous and faithful in its restoration of Fitzgerald’s intended text.

Second, be forewarned, The Great Gatsby will fool you.  On first read, it comes across as a nice—if not somewhat convoluted—tale of star-crossed lovers.  Only when you substitute the author for the title character does the picture get a little darker.  Here is Jay Gatsby, wooing Daisy before the first world war; it might as well be Scott Fitzgerald sitting in that white roadster opposite young Zelda Sayre.  Except, of course, that Fitzgerald didn’t have Gatsby’s luck nor his style:  he wasn’t cut down in the prime of his life; he died lonely and destitute long after his name had faded.  Like any good book, you can return to Gatsby again and again, distilling more of its meaning with each pass.  

Then again, maybe not.  Maybe Gatsby is just a novel, an engaging tale, in and of itself.  Maybe the story is as sly as the smile on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s face, never really showing its entire hand, always leaving you unsure as to what may be lurking in the background.

You’ll have to read it to find out for yourself.   

(originally published 1/ 2006; revised 9/ 2009)