WRB—May 15, 2024

“normal and happy”

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the Washington Review of Books, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

N.B.:

The next WRB x Liberties salon will take place on May 18. If you would like to come discuss the topic “Should you like your friends?” please contact Chris or Celeste Marcus.

Links:

• In Liberties,

  Daniel Lavery
  on siblings fighting in Genesis:

  This is the last time Esau will receive anything in surplus; later, when Jacob siphons away his paternal blessing as well as his birthright, Esau cries out, “Bless me, even me also, my father! Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me? Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” But Isaac has held nothing in reserve. Only Rebekah and Jacob anticipate the future and develop a strategy for it; Isaac and Esau lose, forget, misunderstand, and fail to see. They do not hear prophecies, they do not consider contingencies, they do not develop backup plans. Isaac wants to maintain the conditions of his placid ignorance, Rebekah wants to undermine her husband on behalf of her favorite child, and in that sense they are both able to help one another make a success of parenting.

  [I must confess to being baffled that a piece on this subject cuts out with Jacob and Esau and makes no mention of Jacob’s children—surely Isaac and Rebekah, being parents, said to him at one point “you’ll understand when you have kids,” and one of the running ideas of Genesis is all the things you can do instead of understanding. Joseph’s dealings with his brothers while vizier of Egypt provide a version of reconciliation more hopeful, if less simple, than that of Jacob and Esau. The world is big, but only so big, and divine providence is bigger. —Steve]

• In First Things, Valerie Stivers on converting to Catholicism:

  For my column I’m always looking for books in translation, written by authors who represent different food cultures. In spring of 2021, a few months after—finally—making the formal separation from my husband, I came across Kristin Lavransdatter, a novel set in the Middle Ages and published in the 1920s. Its author, the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, was an adult convert to Catholicism, and the book reflects her religious concerns. That part wasn’t important to me—my youthful interest in the subject had long been abandoned—but I found the book to be an absolute masterpiece. Undset responds to Joyce and modernism while commenting on feminism and womanhood—all in a medieval tale. I came up through women’s studies programs. I read endless iterations of A Room of One’s Own and “The Yellow Wallpaper” and other rejections of the stultifying roles of women, at the same time that my teachers and fellow students decried the lack of women’s voices and women’s experiences in literature. For any of these courses, Kristin Lavransdatter, which leans into, not out of, women’s biological reality, should have been a foundational text. Among its many other virtues, it is the only great work of literature I’ve come across that makes the ghastly mess of sequential childbearing a pillar of the narrative.

• In Longreads, Ayla Samli, descended from musicians, buys a dulcimer:

  While speaking about string instruments, [my father] told me that his grandmother had been a virtuoso on the kanun, a plucked string instrument in the zither family, an old-world auntie to the Appalachian dulcimer. Just as I wished my grandmothers had been able to see my daughter play the stick dulcimer, he said that he wished I had been around to hear his grandmother play because it was impressive. I imagined my Turkish great-grandmother—whose photograph I’ve never seen because she believed that photography would tarnish her soul—who memorized the entire Koran when she was a little girl but refused to recite it until she was given a little lamb. Consigned to an arranged marriage in Istanbul, she was subject to the hard domestic roles of wife and mother of six children. I imagine the pleasure and power she felt when she exerted her virtuosity into her music, bringing grace and control to her sounds. Playing music, like cooking, was a process in which she had agency—and through which she made beauty. Given my father’s stinginess with accolades, my great-grandmother must have been quite an adept musician.

  [I’ll skip the Abyssinian maids (or Saskatchewanian) here, dear to my heart as they are, for “Lady Jane.” If it’s not representative of the folk tradition employing dulcimers, it puts the dulcimer in a context where a relentless desire to experiment and push music forward led to pseudo-Tudorism. One foot in the past, one foot in the future, none in the present. (A lot of the more neglected instruments have this quality.) Few of the Stones’ songs are more of their time, or more timeless. —Steve] 

[Behind the paywall: Steve comes full circle from the note on Genesis with a note on Revelation, the bells of Notre-Dame, travel writing, Ella Fitzgerald, memory, orcas, Merleau-Ponty, clout, and more links, reviews, news items, and commentary carefully selected for you, just like on Saturdays. If you like what you see, why not sign up for a paid subscription? The WRB is for you, and your support helps keep us going.]