"best"
? how to judge a book as "best" - - maybe you do this too: sometimes I become so absorbed in a book as to actually BE there, so join and blend into what's happening that when I put it down for a moment to go sacrifice to Father Nature, I'm stunned to realize that it's just a story I'm reading, it was all in my mind, I'm really here not there, and even resent, momentarily and irrationally angry, being back in wake awareness flesh and blood. We find escape in a book. Sometimes I do that in dreams at night. Or the memories that are daydreams. Have you been there?
Sometimes I've been so anxious that a magical story not end, that I delay, read a little, lay it aside for a while, a day or so. Sometimes I've delayed for weeks or even months, then come back to it as if stepping into Star Trek's transporter room, beaming down to somewhere in the mind, never ready to say Beam me up, Scotty.
Mark Helprin's "A Soldier of the Great War" was that to me, a story within a story, in which an old man tells his gripping story to a young man with whom life casts him at its ending: Alessandro has a story bursting to be set free, and Helprin does it with writing skill and exquisite detail that I've only otherwise found in Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children". Stories that long to be told. In life, I've known how that is, stuffed into crevices of the brain, memories tugging at restraint, but no one to trust. After the 2016 election, "Soldier" was perhaps the "best" of several books into which I escaped real life on my sabbatical. As life turns out, I am thankful to have lived beyond all that and into 2021, but I wasn't so sure at the Time, and the nightmare turned even darker than I imagined.
We live in a unique republic that's only held up by honor, integrity, and trust. Not law, not constitution, just honor, integrity, and the people's trust. A metaphor? fiat currency, paper money that stands for gold or silver: if the government falls and fails and all trust is lost, who's going to accept a wheelbarrow load of dollar bills in exchange for a precious loaf of bread. A republic's foundation is the people's trust in their elected leaders' honor, integrity, and devotion to the system. It's all in our mind.
Which brings me to "best" ->
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isa. 5:20.)
It might not be for you, but Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is turning out to be that kind of best story for me, although I'm reading it slowly and deliberately (free online), laying it aside and picking it back up, and am only about halfway through. For one, the story's setting, where Owen and John were (John's the narrator), the Time and place, era and its horror, it's all familiar. I was there too, starting about a decade earlier in American history. In fact Irving's narrator with his bitter cynicism rings true, as in the middle of my twenty years I did a Navy tour at sea with a fellow officer, a commander, whom next I met when I was an embassy advisor and he was a Pentagon rear admiral, at a reception in the Australian Embassy in Washington. Working with Rear Admiral John Poindexter, he had been part of the Iran Contra scandal that Irving's narrator keeps coming back to despairingly; but my friend and colleague eventually was a fleet commander as vice admiral, and later to my sadness died of cancer not far from where we had lived in Pennsylvania.
Anyway, this morning I read Irving's scenario that gave his novel its title, "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and watched karma have the last word. I also heard and remembered and joined in singing along with their rousing chapel hymn that morning,
"The Son of God goes forth to war, A kingly crown to gain: His blood-red banner streams afar: Who follows in his train?
"Who best can drink his cup of woe, Triumphant over pain; Who patient bears his cross below, He follows in his train."
and I remembered all our singing that hymn, raising the roof with enthusiastic and lusty vigor all my growing up years as an Episcopalian, and it occurred to me, "I've not heard that hymn in, seemingly, centuries - - I wonder if it's still in our hymnal, was it brought over from the 1940 Hymnal into The Hymnal 1982?" Suspicious, I got out my copy and searched: nope, of course not, excised. Who is so alphabet c.s. selfrighteously p.c. as to delete "The Son of God goes forth to war" from its hymnody. No question mark: just another rhetorical question.
Breakfast this morning (logging this so as to keep myself on report). Black coffee. Aleve pill. Large mug ice coffee. Wait about an hour. Quarter-pounder patty of grass-fed ground beef seared on both sides, fried egg on top. Protein. All working to prevent the PPH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lphmMYUUSeM
1 The Son of God goes forth to war,
a kingly crown to gain;
his blood-red banner streams afar:
who follows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
triumphant over pain,
who patient bears his cross below,
he follows in his train.
2 The martyr first, whose eagle eye
could pierce beyond the grave,
who saw his Master in the sky
and called on him to save:
like him, with pardon on his tongue
in midst of mortal pain,
he prayed for them that did the wrong:
who follows in his train?
3 A glorious band, the chosen few
on whom the Spirit came,
twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
and mocked the cross and flame:
they met the tyrant's brandished steel,
the lion's gory mane;
they bowed their necks the death to feel:
who follows in their train?
4 A noble army, men and boys,
the matron and the maid,
around the Savior's throne rejoice,
in robes of light arrayed:
they climbed the steep ascent of heav'n
through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be giv'n
to follow in their train.
