A Nice Endorsement

From a fine poet (with a note on verbal paradoxes and amphibologies)

A paradox common to just about all languages, but especially to those with natural compound forms, is that words whose etymologies can be traced back to a synonymy can become, in the course of cultural traditions of usage, practically antonymous. Hence, for instance, “wonderful” and “awful” were in their origins words for the same experiential quality, whereas now we use them to mean, in the former case, something very very good and, in the latter, something very very bad. Another such paradox, however, is of the opposite kind: two words that are antonyms etymologically becoming synonyms or, at any rate, proximate in meaning in actual usage. For instance, to say that a man has behaved “shamelessly” and to say that he has behaved “shamefully” are to say more or less one and the same thing about him. Here, of course, the issue can be traced back to a certain amphibology in the substantive root of both words, as “shame” can be understood as at once an objective condition and a subjective feeling, so the absence of the latter in a man is as often as not a sign or a cause of the presence of the former.

All of which I say as prefatory to the confession that I am sometimes shamefully shameless about promoting my own books (those bills aren’t going to pay themselves, after all). The very fine poet, critic, and essayist Norman Finkelstein has just posted a very generous endorsement of Roland In Moonlight on his Facebook page and has sent the text along to me, with permission to share it here. This is particularly pleasing to me because I have taken great pleasure from many of Norman’s works (particularly one very fine poem about “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” chapter from The Wind in the Willows, which for some of us is sacred writ, and several recent volumes of verse with distinctly “gnostical” themes).

I will be posting my next proper article or column in a day or two—a Q & A piece, I think—but I cannot forbear to send this out now. And, anyway, Roland should get most of the credit for that book, so it all ultimately redounds to that noble soul’s glory.

I don’t usually say much on Facebook about the books I’ve been reading, but I want to make an exception for one which I just finished: Roland In Moonlight, by the prolific, dazzling David Bentley Hart. Hart is an essayist, theologian, novelist and cultural critic—and one of the best prose stylists I have encountered in a long time. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that he is one of the most intelligent, wide ranging, and passionate writers I have encountered in a long time. Roland In Moonlight is not only a good introduction to his thought and style, it is, I think, a book that many of us truly need at this moment, without our knowing it. This is one of the most civilized of books, and I use the term to mean all of the best human virtues. It is part memoir, part philosophical dialogue, part fantasy novel, part satire…and probably other genres that I can’t at the moment name. At the heart of the work is David’s complex relationship to his dog Roland, one of the wisest and most compassionate beings one is likely to meet, in or out of a book. David’s moonlight conversations with Roland range over many subjects, including the nature of consciousness, quantum physics (I couldn’t follow that one very well), comparative religions, the experience of perception (especially olfactory perception), and the psychological and spiritual aspects of the imagination. The writing in these conversations can be erudite and allusive, charming and whimsical, lucid and boldly critical, and really all these qualities at once. Roland reveals to his human companion that he is editing the papers of David’s great-uncle Aloysius, who was a pagan, a pantheist, a worshiper of the Greek gods. He was also an unpublished poet, and from the samples of his verse which Roland shows David, a truly formidable one in the classic style. Roland is there for David through some harrowing passages in his life; I would venture to say that if he “represents” anything other than himself, it is David’s better self or what Freud (who gets knocked about in the book) would call his ego ideal. But between the dog and the man, ultimately, is a great bond of love, which expands into family, the natural world, and the cosmos. I repeat: you may need this book without your knowing it, even if (what?!) you don’t particularly like dogs. Roland is a wonderful pedagogue. I urge you to take in a few of his lessons.

I hope all of you are well.