The Infinities by John Banville (London: Picador, 2009)

Of the things we fashioned for them that they might b e comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day. What a silence falls upon us then, the sad silence of our envy. Many of them sleep on, of course, careless of our cousin Aurora's charming matutinal trick, but there are always the insomniacs, the restless ill, the lovelorn tossing on their solitary beds, or just the early risers, the busy ones with their knee-bends and their cold showers and their fussy little cups of black ambrosia. Yes, all who witness it greet the dawn with joy, more or less k, except of course the condemned man, for whom first light will be the last, on earth.

--p.3

Grief is the shape of an enormous globe that has been thrust unceremoniously into his arms; he totters under the unmanageable, greasy weight of it.

--p.123

Such a hush reigns here, at once tense and dreamy, as if some sound that had been expected long ago, some call or cry, had not come, and would not, now. All feels liquid under this densely matted canopy. The air is damply cool, and among the moss there are black rocks flecked with mica that gleam wetly, and something somewhere is making a steady, reverberant drip.   

--p.255

Words are so friendly, so accommodating, so loosely adaptable, not like numbers, with their tiresome insistece on meaning only what they mean and nothing more. But what they have that words have not is rigour, and rigour was what seduced me from the start, the promise of one firm thing in an infirm world.

--p.262

Trust His Heart

All things work for our good
Though sometimes we don't see how they could
Struggles that break our hearts in two
Sometimes blind us to the truth
Our Father knows what's best for us
His ways are not our own
So when your pathway grows dim
And you just can't see Him
Remember you're never alone

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart

He sees the master plan
And He holds our future in His hand
So don't live as those who have no hope
All our hope is found in Him
We see the present clearly
But He sees the first and the last
And like a tapestry
He's weaving you and me
To someday be just like Him

He alone is faithful and true
He alone knows what is best for you
So when you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart

--

A most apt and timely reminder.

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter by William Deresiewicz (New York: Penguin, 2011)

As for history, the ultimate in "serious" reading, this was how Catherine, explaining why she hated it, described what it involved: "The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all." It was a great line, that second half, but Austen also intended something deeper by it, a sly reference to her own project. "Hardly any women at all": in other words---since women had essentially no role in public affairs---nothing about private life, nothing about personal life. Whereas the novel, the great genre of private life, was almost always, in Austen's day, about women and almost always by women---two of the main reasons that people were so quick to put it down.

--115

[My students] suddenly seemed really smart and interesting---because I was letting them be, instead of having to suppress their talents in order to maintain my fragile sense of intellectual authority. They seemed to start to like me, too, began to come to talk to me, even confide in me. Best of all, a few of them became my friends in that special way that can happen between a student and a teacher [...].

--117

Did Edmund really care about [Fanny's] brothers and sisters? Probably not. But he cared about her, and she cared about them, and that was enough for him. To listen to a person's stories, he understood, is to learn their feelings and experiences and values and habits of mind, and to learn them all at once and all together. Austen was not a novelist for nothing: she knew that our stories are what makes us human, and that listening to someone else's stories---entering into their feelings, validating their experiences---is the highest way of acknowledging their humanity, the sweetest form of usefulness. [...] Most of all, I practiced sitting still and listening---really listening. To friends, to students, even just to people I met, as their stories came stumbling out in the awkward, unpolished way that people have when you give them the freedom to speak from the heart. People's stories are the most personal thing they have and paying attention to those stories is just about te most important thing you can do for them.

--161, 163

We talked about social justice and social action, idealism and identity, being Jewish and being human. We talked, until we could barely keep our eyes open, just to have an excuse to stay up together, just to feel each other nearby. We were going to change the world, but along the way, without even noticing it, we changed ourselves. It was the place where I made my closest friends, found my voice, and learned to think about the world, Where I kissed my first girl one summer and lost my virginity a couple of summers after that. Where I felt more at home than I did in my actual home.

--167

Now I saw that community, in the modern world, would never be a structure you could put your hands on---something regular or stable or permanent. It would not resemble a kibbutz or a commune [...]. Nor would it resemble a youth movement [...]. The modern world, I began to understand, was far too unstable for anything like that, modern relationships too fluid. For adults today, it seemed to me now, community can only be a circle of friends.

--181

Putting your friend's welfare before your own: that was Austen's idea of true friendship. That means admitting when you're wrong, but even more importantly, it means being willing to tell your friend when they are. [...] True friendship, we think, means unconditional acceptance and support. [...] But Austen didn't believe that. For her, being happy means becoming a better person, and becoming a better person means having your mistakes pointed out to you in a way that you can't ignore. Yes, the true friend wants you to be happy, but being happy and feeling good about yourself are not the same things. In fact, they can sometimes be diametrically opposed. True friends do not shield you from your mistakes, they tell you about them: even at the risk of losing your friendship---which means, even at the risk of being unhappy themselves.

--194

For [Austen], I saw, love is not something that happens to you, suddenly or otherwise; it's something you have to prepare yourself for. [...] [B]efore you can fall in love with someone else, you have to come to know yourself. In other words, you have to grow up. Love isn't going to magically transform you, make you into a better or even a different person---another myth that I'd bought into---it can only work with what you already are.

--220

There are such beings in the World perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature You & I should think perfection, where Grace & Spirit are united to Worth, where the Manners are equal to the Heart & Understanding, but such a person may not come in your way.

In choosing a mate, [Austen] was telling her niece, the most important thing is character. Grace and spirit and manners---the kinds of qualities that attracted Marianne to Willoughby---are wonderful to have, but they are no substitute for the Edward-like attributes of worth and heart and understanding. [...] You shouldn't marry someone because of his character; you should marry him because of the emotions that his character inspires. "Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection," Austen reminded her niece, "and nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love."

--225

If love begins in friendship, [...] it has to adhere to the principles of friendship as Austen understood them. The lover's highest role, like the friend's, is to help you to become a better person: push you, if necessary, even at the risk of wounded feelings. Austen's lovers challenged each other: to be less selfish, more aware, kinder, more considerate---not only toward each other but to everyone around them. [...] Love, for Austen, is not about remaining forever young. It's about becoming an adult.

[...] [M]aking a mature decision, patiently feeling and thinking your way toward mutual respect and esteem, accepting the responsibility of challenging and being challenged, refusing both the comforts of fantasy and the cynicism of calculation---that is the really radical, the really original, the really heroic move. That is the true freedom [...].

True love takes you by surprise, [...] and if it's really worth something, it continues to take you by surprise. [...] True love, for Austen, means a never-ending clash of opinions and perspectives. If your lover's already just like you, then neither one of you has anywhere to go. Their character matters not only because you're going to have to live with it, but because it's going to shape the person you become.

--235-237