Journey into History

On March 14, 1958, I had the privilege of standing in Cave Four at Qumran, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. (The location is misspelled on the picture at the top of this post.) I was barely seven years old at the time, so I didn’t understand it’s significance then. And although the archeologists and Jewish and Biblical scholars of the time knew the Dead Sea Scrolls were an important discovery, most of the work on the scrolls came later, so even they probably didn’t know how big a find it was. If they had, would they have let a family with three children visit it?

Qumran was in Jordan at the time, and, according to a March 17, 1958 letter from my mother to her parents, “We had to go through an army camp to get there and had permission from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities for this purpose.” I don’t know how Daddy obtained permission, but I’m not surprised that he did. He taught at the Bishop’s School in Amman, Jordan in 1946 and 47 and was teaching there again during our sojourn in 1957–58. Many of the Bishop’s School’s students went on to hold influential governmental positions, so one of them may have secured the pass. In any event, Daddy was both shrewd and determined, and he knew how to get permission to visit the places he wanted to see.

Why am I thinking about this now? I just began listening to a series of Great Courses lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are taught by Dr. Gary Rendsburg. And it struck me again how much I owe Daddy for immersing me in history.

When I was a child, I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to be my father’s daughter. Daddy loved his family and could be very generous in the right circumstances, but he was also thrifty and strict and too much of a scholar for my tastes. Now, of course, I see things differently. We traveled the world because he loved traveling and learning, but he also because he wanted his children to have those experiences.

And I’m grateful.

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The picture at the top of this page is from a color slide taken by my father, Oliver S. Page, in 1958. The caption was added by my mother many years later when she had the slide turned into a print. Unfortunately, the digitized version looks better in black and white.

Jane Austin and Deep POV

As I take my regular walks, I listen to lectures from the Great Courses. Right now I am doing a series called “The English Novel,” and Friday’s lectures were on Jane Austin.

During the second lecture, Professor Timothy Spurgin talked about how Austin improved on the novelists of her day by finding a way to combine emotional immediacy with narrative control. By having her narrator use a central character’s speech patterns and vocabulary, the narrator remains on the scene without crowding the character out.

Professor Spurgin called the technique “free indirect discourse” or “free indirect speech,” but it sounds a lot like what many writers call “deep POV.”

Austin did not use deep POV all the time. She moved between distances frequently within a scene and sometimes within the same paragraph. They weren’t large leaps, but they were there. And if she did it, that gives me permission to do it as well.

I won’t use the same passage that Professor Spurgin used to demonstrate the technique, because that might be a spoiler for someone who hasn’t read Emma but intends to. So instead I’ll use two passages from around the middle of Northanger Abbey

The protagonist, Catherine Morland, is an avid reader of gothic novels. When she is invited to the Tilney’s country home, her imagination turns it into a mysterious mansion with a dangerous secret. Alone in her room, she spots a chest that seems out-of-place. Notice how this passage starts inside her thoughts but attributes them to her by the use of quotation marks, moves outside while still acknowledging her presence by the use of “Catherine” and “she,” and then ends with a totally unattributed sentence that comes from within.

“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this!—An immense heavy chest!—What can it hold?—Why should it be placed here?—Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it—cost me what it may. I will look into it—and directly too—by day-light.—If I stay till evening my candle may go out.” She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cypher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish any thing with certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be any thing else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?

When Catherine finally has a chance to look inside, the chest contains nothing but ordinary bedding. So then she turns her attention to an old-fashioned black cabinet that fights her attempts to open it. When she finally does get it open, drawer after drawer is empty. Except one. Back in a corner, as if shoved out of sight, is a roll of paper. Events intervene and keep her from reading it until the following morning. But when she does . . . well, here’s what happens.

Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false?—An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! . . . She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom?

Again, we go seamlessly from outside to inside within a single paragraph.

To some people, Jane Austin was just another romance writer. To me, she was an innovator whose novels are timeless, whose techniques are still in use today, and whose writing teaches me how to improve my own.

Thank you, Jane.      

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The picture is a watercolor and pencil drawing of Jane Austin by her sister, Cassandra Austin, around 1810. The picture and the quoted passages are in the public domain because of their age.

Wasting Money on Learning?

No, I'm not talking about the Chicago teachers' strike. In fact, this post isn't about formal education at all, so I guess the picture is a little misleading.

When we moved to the condo, I had to change my exercise routine, and it was no longer convenient to time my exercise by the length of a 30-minute TV show. Yes, I've heard about the old-fashioned invention called a "watch," and I wear one constantly. But if I have to keep looking at it to see how many minutes have passed, time seems to drag and my exercising becomes extra boring. ("I still have 15 minutes left?" Groan.)

I do have an I-Pod so I can listen to music or books or lectures while exercising, and that helps. But I still need to be able to time it. Listening to the same music gets repetitive after a while, and audio books have a different problem. They vary in length so I still have to look at my watch, and what if I am in the middle of a chapter or a short story when my time is up? I would probably stop exercising but continue listening, which would mess up my schedule.

So I purchased some of the Great Courses from The Teaching Company. Each course is a series of lectures that are either 30 minutes or 45 minutes long. The 30 minute lectures are perfect for timing my climb up and down the condo stairwell, and the 45 minute lectures keep me entertained on my morning walk. Since I started, I have listened to lectures about C.S. Lewis, the origin and development of the English language, and classical mythology. I am in the middle of a series on understanding and appreciating great music.

Audio books would be cheaper because I could borrow a digital copy from the library, but they wouldn't satisfy my timing needs. Besides, I'm learning a lot from listening to the Great Courses.

As with anything else, some teaching tools are more cost-effective than others, and your choices may depend on your resources. If money is an issue, the library is a good solution.

But money spent on learning is never wasted.