Re-enchanting the world.

While I do not consider myself to be a literary critic or snob or anything of the sort, I must admit that I rarely find a book that truly delights me. I read a lot of books that I find "interesting" or "thought-provoking" but little that stirs something inside of me. However, today I did finish one that quite delighted me.

I took a class my senior year at Wheaton called Modern Mythology with Alan Jacobs. We read The Lord of the Rings and The Princess and Curdie and a crazy book by Charles Williams called All Hallow's Eve. One book we didn't read, but which was recommended to us, was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Dr. Jacobs said that this book was a cross between Jane Austen and Harry Potter. I'm not a Harry Potter fan (and I found that if most of your HP knowledge comes from Wikipedia, don't mention this to a room full of people discussing the end of the seventh book.) but I do enjoy Jane Austen to a high degree. I probably would have forgotten about the book had I not found a used copy for $1. Hence I bought it and brought it along with me to Mexico.

I can't remember when I started reading the book - probably in November, but I finished it this morning. The paperback is a 1006 pages of closely set type and several pages have digressive footnotes that can take up half the room on the page. The story, which wasn't at all dull to begin with, began to pick up steam halfway through as numerous different story threads started to weave together. I thought it was quite addictive and read the last 500 pages or so just this week. At the end I wished it continued, to keep me in the world.

The basic plot is of two English magicians, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The story begins in the early part of the 19th century and covers a time of about 10 years. It interweaves true British history with an additional, magical past. An extremely powerful English Magician, known mainly as the Raven King, ruled a kingdom in Northern England for 300 years but in the past half millennium English magic had slowly fallen asleep. Norrell and Strange wish to wake it up.

Clarke creates a host of characters, Englishmen, Fairies, day-to-day and enchanted, and the story darts back and forth among them. Plotting her novel in the midst of one winter after another (skipping summers) gives the magic a cold feeling, and the tone is quite matter-of-fact, tongue-in-cheek at some points. this, I think, succeeds in keeping the novel from being a little over the top.

One of the things that fantasy novels do for us is re-enchant the world. When I was a young girl I played Fairies with my sister every season - like the Fantasia fairies that brown the leaves and skate frost upon pond. We had a huge, tree-covered yard and when I went to college I realize how enchanting my childhood had been. Overgrown woods full of unexplored haunts and mystical vistas. Scope for the imagination and room to believe that the world is more than scientifically-explainable processes. I think many of us lose this as we grow, but fantasy brings it back. It reminds us that the world is a big, beautiful, hard place and returns a sense of wonder to us.

Jonathan Strange has brought a sense of that wonder back - visions of stones speaking to water and trees greeting a returning king. A world in which much is possible and mundane things may in fact have an incredibly important significance.

Actually, I missed some stuff because it seemed so mundane at the time. However, because the book was so large I had trouble going back and finding it so that I could read it again. I do not know if the book will end up being a long-time favorite, but, whether it was the story or the world or the ideas that drew me, I can truly say that I have not enjoyed a book like this in quite a long time.

an exercise in humility

I am currently applying for graduate programs in sociology. Actually, I'm about finished, with only two due dates ahead of me and my active roles all completed. I am applying to nine Ph.D. sociology programs and have already received notice that I have been accepted into one program (as I haven't heard from any others, that makes it 1 for 1, I guess).

When I came down here to Mexico it was for several reasons, but one was that I wanted to practice trusting God, if that makes sense. I wanted to leave my comfortable and under-control life and let God lead me with cultural struggles, raising money, unsureness about the future. Looking back on my journal through the past year I can see that I have grown in how I trust God, but I still don't trust him completely, as these applications have shown. I was a little bundle of intrusive worries - worries that would subside as I focused on my work or my friends, but which surfaced with pinches of awareness in how I still had to finish this and send that off and oh no! I don't think I changed that information before I attached it to the email!

Currently, as I have finished my part, these worries surface when the online status updater lacks my GRE scores or my transcript. What in tarnation? That should have been there since October. I have to stop and tell God again that I want him to be in control. I place this application in his hands. There's not much I can do, but I want to practice trusting.

I also have to practice humility. I didn't start off needing to, as I didn't have much confidence in being accepted (I thought I had weak research experience.) There was a huge difference once I heard from the first school, though. It began with a grateful acknowledgement that now I have an open door to receive a Ph.D. But before long I was thinking "ah, this personal statement is fine. It's already gotten me into grad school," and expecting to hear positively from all of my other schools as well. Is there such a thing as gluttony of schools? I can only attend one at a time, but I want to be accepted into all of them.

Oddly, I think often of the people with whom I attended high school, thinking how I will increase in their estimation. People for whose opinion I have cared little, but over whom I still desire superiority. Odd the workings of our human nature, hm?

Isaiah 26: 12 - Lord you establish peace for us. All that we have accomplished, you have done for us.




I shall also have to be careful in my social life, for, as Jane Austen says "A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." (Northanger Abbey)