Today in my History of the Book class we talked about textual criticism, particularly that of the Book of Mormon (my professor, Royal Skousen, is the one doing the critical text of the Book of Mormon). I’d expected it to be dry and boring, but to my surprise I found it quite fascinating. Definitely something I’m going to have to look more into. (Part of my interest has to do with Riverglen Press and its future — I’d love to do editions of texts which I’ve actually edited, in a scholarly manner. ) And now I find myself with a desire to make a learner’s edition of the Latin Vulgate (which would work in perfectly with my class next fall). The Vulgate’s got to be public domain, but the trick is finding a public domain text of it (preferably without having to type it all in by hand, but I’ve done that before and I’ll do it again).

As for Riverglen Press, I’m going to see if I can copy the fonts I use (Minion, Myriad, etc.) to my flash drive and temporarily install them on these Macs when I use InDesign. In theory it should work, and if it does, I can start working on texts immediately. (And if it doesn’t, then when we get the iMac at work, I can come in before or after hours and use that. If I get InDesign installed on it, that is…)

I’ve started reading Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and it’s good (though it seems to have a slightly different tone from Alice in Wonderland — I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I like it). The absurdity is very well-done, in a Chestertonian fashion. With things absurd you have to be very careful, because it’s easy to blow it and come out as just stupid. But when it’s done right, it’s hilarious, and it makes you think. I love all the wordplays, by the way. So far there aren’t as many in Looking-Glass as in Wonderland, but that’s okay.

As far as the title of this post goes, we visited Tryst Press (a local fine printing shop here in Provo, though the website appears to be rather out-of-date) on Tuesday for my History of the Book class, and one of the books we got to see was a small edition of “Jabberwocky.” Quite cool. While reading it last night, I got a hankering to make my own edition, illustrated and all. We’ll see… Speaking of which, I’ve got to get started with some Riverglen Press editions. Having my laptop break has been a temporary obstacle, but I think I’ll still be able to make things happen.

Ran across this quote from C.S. Lewis in Letters to an American Lady:

“How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible.”

Yesterday one of my colleagues[1] returned from South Africa and brought a box of Turkish delight with her. Now, I’ve been off sweets (candy, cakes, cookies, ice cream, doughnuts, soda, etc.) for over a month now, and nothing has been able to make me bend. Until now. I’d never had Turkish delight, and it’s associated with Narnia in my mind (for obvious reasons), and I couldn’t resist it on literary grounds, so I gave in. It was decently good. Not something I’d consider selling my soul to a witch for, granted, but tasty enough. Afterwards I smelled baby powder in my nose — so now we know what that “powdered sugar” really is.

[1] Can I say that? “One of my co-workers” or “one of my friends at work” feel more appropriate in my context, being a college student working at a university lab. “Colleagues” is for professors. But the OED’s definition is “one who is associated with another (or others) in office, or special employment; strictly, said of those who stand in the same relationship to their electors, or to the office which they jointly discharge. (Not applied to partners in trade or manufacture.)” Does this lab count as an office? I guess not. So there we have it.

Yesterday before General Conference started, I noticed a small blue pamphlet on my bookshelves entitled “The BYU Experience,” which I think I received when I got accepted to BYU. Turns out it’s from a devotional address by President Hinckley back in 1997. After the morning session, I picked it up and started reading. At the end I came across this gem, talking about President Hinckley’s father:

He was a great reader with a wonderful library. He was an excellent speaker and writer. Almost to the time he died, just short of the age of 94, he read and wrote and contemplated the knowledge that had come to him.

I discovered that when he sat on the wall, hours at a time on a warm day, he would reflect on the things he had read from his library.

I think he grew old gracefully and wonderfully. He had his books with the precious treasures they contained of the thoughts of great men and women of all the ages of time. He never ceased to learn. As he sat on the wall he thought deeply of what he had read the night before. He acquired the habit as a student here under Dr. Maeser. It was part of his BYU experience.

At times I almost envy him: time to read and time to ponder. What a blessing.

And as I read that I felt inexplicably compelled to start reading Emerson. I don’t know why Emerson in particular, other than that I’ve been impressed with what I’ve heard about him. And I wasn’t even entirely sure that I had a copy of Emerson — I knew I had Walden by Thoreau, and Thoreau and Emerson seem to occupy roughly the same geographic area in my mind, but they’re obviously not the same person. A quick perusal of my bookshelves produced, to my delight, a Modern Library College edition of Emerson’s essays and other writings.

I began reading Nature, the first item in the anthology, and was taken aback by the depth of thinking and beauty of language. After finishing the first chapter, I skipped back to the table of contents to see what else was tucked away within those pages. The next item (I say item because some were books — like Nature — and some were essays) was “The American Scholar,” an address Emerson gave to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 1837. It was a good read.

He talks a lot about “Man Thinking” as opposed to “mere thinkers,” and he’s got a point. Among the three influences on a scholar that he brings up, the second is “the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed,” and he continues on to say that “books are the best type of the influence of the past.”

And then things took an unexpected turn:

The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

It makes sense, of course, and now that I’ve read it and thought over it some more, I agree. I hadn’t expected what felt like an attack on books, but it was an appropriate warning and came at the perfect time. Truth be told, I’ve been so excited to start reading lately that I’ve felt like soaking up everything I read, drinking it in wholesale. But in retrospect that’s the same kind of attitude that TV engenders in us: passive reception. And that’s not “Man Thinking,” but rather automaton or vegetable. Not good. In all that we do, we need to be active thinkers, using the brains God has given us to make the world a better place. And merely absorbing the ideas of others without grappling with them, without making them prove their worth and fight for their plot of land on the terrain of our mind, without confronting them from every angle and subjecting them to intense scrutiny, is emphatically not what I think God intended.

Returning to Emerson:

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, — when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, “A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful.”

The sentence that really hit me in there was this: “When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.” That’s incredible, but all too true. It reminds me of Joseph Smith’s statement, “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you could possibly [on the relations of God and angels in a future state] by reading all that ever was written on the subject.” Reality trumps reading. (But of course I still love books and will continue to read.)

Finally. I’m still not 100% satisfied with it but it’s much better than the last one. I got the photograph off stock.xchng, and the title font is Adobe Garamond Pro.