books

Undset, or Three Things to Love About the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment


Blogger’s Note: Several years ago, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I continue to press forward, this being number 12 of 15, and at this point 15 Classics in 15 Years seems quite doable…

Last week I finally finished Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. This series came highly recommended by two trusted friends; the author, Sigrid Undset, was the daughter of Norwegian atheists, a Catholic convert, and a Nobel Prize winner. The books are tremendous, insightful, and often achingly beautiful.


However, these are not easy reads. Although written in the 20th century, my translation, at least, has a voice and vocabulary hearkening to the Middle Ages, with both Norwegian and Latin scattered throughout. The author’s knowledge and love of her country’s geography and culture shines throughout the books, but could overwhelm or disorient the reader.

It can also be challenging for a man to characterize or recommend these books to others — the covers of the edition I have (pictured above) do not inspire masculine interest, nor do the titles or cover summaries:

  • “Volume I, The Bridal Wreath, describes young Kristin’s stormy romance with the dashing Erlend Nikulasson, a young man perhaps overly fond of women, of whom her father strongly disapproves.”
  • “Volume II, The Mistress of Husaby, tells of Kristin’s troubled and eventful married life on the great estate of Husaby, to which her husband has taken her.”
  • “Volume III, The Cross, shows Kristin still indomitable, reconstructing her world after the devastation of the Black Death and the loss of almost everything that she has loved.”

That said, within the past month, The Catholic Gentleman website posted an article entitled, “Kristin Lavransdatter and Your Nordic Catholic Medieval Heart,” which makes a solid (if hyperbolic) case for why every Catholic man, at least, should read these books.* Men, take this as a challenge!

Now, without further ado, Three Things to Love about the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy:

  • Everyday Catholicism: This series is as Catholic as the day is long, although Catholicism is not what it’s “about.” I’ve never read a book in which Catholic prayers and blessings, sin and penance, were so effortlessly present and pervasive, reflecting the daily lives of the characters. If you want a glimpse into the everyday lives of the faithful during the Middle Ages, this is your ticket — this is what Christendom looked like.
  • Historical Fantasy: Although painstakingly researched and historically accurate, the style and storytelling recall great fairy tales and epic fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings. High mountains and dark forests. Fertile valleys and fortified cities. Stories and visions of elves and trolls. Swordcraft and witchcraft. It’s all there for those brave enough to venture forth.
  • The Challenge of Marriage and Family: This, to me, is the real wealth of these tales. The story is told primarily, but not exclusively, through Kristin’s eyes, providing deep insight into love, marriage, masculinity, and motherhood from a woman’s perspective — but every character is richly drawn and complex, living with each other as best they can given their individual virtues and flaws, assumptions and knowledge. Even among those we love, there is so much we don’t know — which makes true love not as fleeting as feeling, but, ultimately, an act of the will.
I’ve got three more slots in my seemingly interminable quest to read 15 classics, and it has taken so long that my interests have changed. I think my final three books will be Dante’s Divine Comedy, Flannery O’Connor’s Collected Works, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Not sure on the order yet — I’m reading something else in the interim!

* * * * *

* The comments below the post also suggest that translations other than the one pictured, by Archer and Scott, may be better or easier reads.

Book Break: Story of a Soul

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

One of the great blessings of surgery has been time to read; as a result, I’ve now finished three books that lay on my nightstand, long overdue. The first was the the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul. The Little Flower had been much on my mind and had shown up time and again in my prayers and study this past winter, so much so that I decided she must be trying to tell me something. I found her biography in our parish lending library, and finished in late last week.

Autobiographies, especially those that weren’t expressly written for publication, can be challenging to read, and this is no exception. St. Therese is writing out of obedience, fulfilling requests of three different prioresses to record the memories of her life. Her style is emotional, sentimental, somewhat meandering, and acutely self-aware — in fact, she acknowledges throughout the book, with good humor, that she has drifted far from the main point, but that she is writing because she was asked to, and if her work is found lacking and destroyed, it will be of no great loss to her.

It does not take long to realize this is the story of an exceptional soul from an exceptional family. From her earliest days in 19th-century France, the Martin family’s life revolved around their Catholic faith, prayer, and the sacraments. The first thing that struck me (and I believe this was one thing the little saint wished to tell me) was that in her childhood, preparation for receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for the first time was the most important and most exciting thing that could happen. She understood the mystery of the Real Presence early on and longed for the sacrament with her whole being; her entire family — parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, everyone — helped her to prepare, encouraging and instructing her, helping her to make a mature first Confession, even sending this little girl on retreat to prayerfully prepare for her first Communion. We fall far short of this today, and that must change!

From an early age, St. Therese longed for the religious life of a Carmelite sister. The persistence of her vocation also struck me: she prayed long and hard on this beginning in childhood and was so strongly minded that, on a pilgrimage to Rome, she pulled rank on her local priests and bishop and cried to the Pope to let her honor him by entering Carmel at age 15. He told her she would enter if God willed it, and a short time later, the local church authorities relented.

The religious life was not without struggles for St. Therese, and it was there that she perfected her “Little Way,” which has made her so beloved the world over. She wanted to do great things for God, but was confined to a convent, young and of poor health. She could not be a priest, and would not be a missionary or a martyr. She was just a little flower on the forest floor — but the little things she did, she could do with great love. As a result she began to bite her tongue when accused or  provoked, to seek out the sisters who were avoided by others and look for ways to serve them, and to seek the good for others in every situation, regardless of the cost to herself. She began to love as God loves.

St. Therese was extraordinary, but blazed a trail that ordinary Catholics can follow, perhaps, more easily than that of the spiritual powerhouses of the Church. And I think that was another thing she wanted to tell me. This is a beautiful story of a great soul, and while it’s not a traditional page-turner, I highly recommend it.

On a related note: during the same time period as I was reading this book, a colleague gave me a booklet called “40 Days of Preparation for First Communion with St.Therese of the Child Jesus.” It is a booklet of very short daily prayers and exercises for children, based on the prayers and exercises St. Therese undertook as a girl under her family’s guidance. Unbeknownst to me, my colleague Kathy was given the same booklet by one of our priests to consider for use with this year’s First Communicants. It’s a baby step toward what our First Communion preparation ought to be. St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for us!

Go Ahead: Be a Stick In the Mud

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I watched the Super Bowl last night with my bride and, at times, my kids. They came and went as it held their interest, and I spent the second half contemplating why we consume this (or why it consumes us) year after year.

The game was exciting to the finish, marred at the end by an odd play call that sealed the victory for the Patriots, followed by a borderline brawl as the Seahawks saw the championship slipping away. But the halftime show and commercials were what really sparked my thinking. Unlike past years, last night there were only a couple of commercials that made me happy the younger kids had already gone downstairs to play — unfortunately, one was a movie promo, which means not only will we be seeing it for months, but there’s a feature-length version somewhere. The halftime show, on the other hand, once again had me talking to my three teens about what’s wrong with the world. It was a short, pointed conversation, since halfway through the performance, my eldest went downstairs to practice his bass and the other two voiced their agreement with my rant and tuned out (from the show, and likely me, as well).


I try to stay somewhat familiar with popular music to know what my kids are exposed to, so I watched the whole thing. Afterward I watched Facebook to see what friends, family, and the general public thought. As expected, opinion was polarized between fans of Katy Perry and Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot (the female rapper who joined Perry onstage) and people who don’t like their styles of music. But I was struck by the number of comments in the middle — people offering some variation on the theme, “At least this year it was kid-friendly.”

Really?

Call me a prude if you wish, but Perry’s lyrics, antics, and outfits are not kid-friendly. Consider just the songs we heard last night: “This was never the way I planned, not my intention. I got so brave, drink in hand, lost my discretion. It’s not what I’m used to, just wanna try you on. I’m curious for you, caught my attention” (I Kissed a Girl). Or “We drove to Cali and got drunk on the beach. Got a motel and built a fort out of sheets. … Let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans. Be your teenage dream tonight” (Teenage Dream).

Of course, these pale in comparison to Missy Elliot’s Work It lyrics, which I will not post here. Elliot’s verbal dexterity is such that I couldn’t make out most of what she said last night, but I’d like to assume that her halftime rendering of her hit song was substantially edited to even make it on the broadcast.

“Well, it could have been worse…at least she was fully clothed and not dancing suggestively, like in years past.”

Modesty comes in many forms, but crouching like an animal in a minidress, snarling, “I kissed a girl and I liked it!” is not one of them. And as I shared with the teenage boys I spoke to at the church on Wednesday, “It could be worse” is a pretty low bar.

Perry’s performance was only relatively kid-friendly, as compared to shows in years past — and that underscores the problem with relativism. This is how we lose the practice, or even the recognition, of virtue: by allowing ourselves to slip so far down the slope that a half-step back toward the top seems like innocence regained. And the entertainment industry knows their target market well. They don’t care if a 40-year-old dad enjoys the show — they want to hook my offspring, and in that respect, it’s probably better if I don’t like it. The gleaming space lion, the cutesy cartoon beach sequence, and the sandwiching of Perry’s more provocative songs between hits Roar and Firework, which even turn up in grade-school music concerts — the whole production is meant to keep the kids in the room.

Folks, like it or not, they are selling sex to your children — and not the life-giving kind. Last night’s post from the Practical Catholic Junto blog summarizes my concerns in two brief quotes:

It reaches the extremes of its destructive and eradicating power when it builds itself a world according to its own image and likeness: when it surrounds itself with the restlessness of a perpetual moving picture of meaningless shows, and with the literally deafening noise of impressions and sensations breathlessly rushing past the windows of the senses.  …

Only the combination of the intemperateness of lustfulness with the lazy inertia incapable of generating anger is the sign of complete and virtually hopeless degeneration. It appears whenever a caste, a people, or a whole civilization is ripe for its decline and fall.

— from Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues

When we say, “It could have been worse,” we are too comfortable. We have lost the capacity for righteous anger that could set the world straight. We’re giving in.

Late yesterday morning, I was talking to one of our deacons, who was shaking his head at the fact that families might skip religion classes to get an early start on the Super Bowl extravaganza. “I’m an old stick-in-the-mud,” he said, half-apologetically. “I’m not watching any of it. Not the game. Not the commercials. None of it.”

I suppose I’m becoming a stick in the mud, too. But perhaps such sticks will be the only thing people can grab onto to slow our descent.

Next year, I think we’ll watch Groundhog Day instead.

Unbroken

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Blogger’s Note: There are both book and movie spoilers below. You have been warned.

We finally saw Unbroken last week. The book version of the story — Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 biography of Olympic athlete and WWII veteran Louis Zamperini — is a spell-binding, white-knuckled page-turner. It’s well researched, lovingly crafted, and unflinching in its portrayal of the danger and brutality endured by Zamperini and his comrades during 47 days adrift in a life raft after their plane crashes into the Pacific and two and a half years in Japanese prison camps.

I know many people now, men and women alike, who have read this book, and every single one has loved it. When I finished it, I told Jodi this man had four or five movies worth of material happen to him in his lifetime, and I blogged that “the fact that all of them really happened to one man is almost too much to be believed.“

Zamperini died just this past summer at age 97. When I heard the news on the radio, I choked up. What an amazing man.


Perhaps it was too much to expect a single film could carry the weight of Zamperini’s story alone. I liked it well enough, I suppose, primarily because it reminded me of the book — but unlike the book, it had no lasting impact for me. I’ve heard both critics and friends offer two reasons for this (Note: Spoiler alert!):

  • Some have said that it’s overly sanitized — that a PG-13 version of an R-rated book simply can’t convey the horrors experienced by Japan’s POWs. Some have suggested that it’s a “Golden Age of Hollywood” sort of movie, well done but too beautiful, without the real grit we’ve come to expect in newer war movies.
  • Others blame director Angelina Jolie for leaving out the book’s final act, which showed both the dreadful toll Zamperini’s years in captivity took on his mental and emotional health, and the path to forgiveness and healing he found in Jesus Christ.
Although I remain disappointed with the pat ending, which relegates Zamperini’s conversion story and personal forgiveness of his captors to an end note, I’m closer in opinion to the “overly sanitized” argument. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad that teens may get the chance to see this movie and learn about the man — and the violence is plenty real. What’s missing, from my perspective, is the moment-to-moment tension and suspense of the book: the arbitrary, madness-inducing, constant fear of violence and death that make Zamperini’s survival and redemption so incredible and uplifting. 

For example, in the film, when Louie and his two companions are adrift on the Pacific, they are hungry, thirsty, sunburnt, circled and attacked by sharks, and strafed by Japanese warplanes, just like in the book…except that in the book, these dangers weighed on the men constantly. While the movie plays up a single shark attack for a scare moment, the book portrays the sharks as an ever-present fear, constantly testing the integrity of the raft and the resolve of the men. In the book, the rubber life raft is shot full of holes more than once, and pumping and patching to stay afloat and alive is steady work. In the book, faced with malnutrition, disease, parasites, and torture, the POWs are constantly struggling to stay healthy enough to endure daily hard labor — and the “victories” that Louie wins over his antagonizer, the Bird, are moral victories only, and fleeting. He wakes the next morning with new injuries and new challenges, still malnourished and still under the Bird’s oppressive thumb.
Of course, great books are rarely matched by the films based on them — but if a magical, whimsical book like The Hobbit can be expanded into three dark and swarming action movies of three hours a piece, perhaps we could have given a little more time to Zamperini. The TV miniseries (think Roots or Lonesome Dove) seems to be a fading form — perhaps that would have been a better choice for Unbroken?

Book Break: Your Life In the Holy Spirit

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: I reserve the right to re-read this book and revise this review as what I’ve read continues to sink in. I wanted to write about it soon, but honestly, my head is spinning!

If you’re like most Catholics, the concept of the Holy Trinity — three persons; one God — is one of the mysteries of our faith that is most difficult to grasp. The best explanation I’ve heard uses marriage to teach us about the Trinity, and vice versa:

  • God is a loving communion of persons.
  • Just as God the Father loves God the Son, and God the Son reflects that love back to God the Father, so to with husbands and wives: the two are united in love so completely they are inseparable and become one person.
  • Just as that shared love between husband and wife can become so powerful, life-giving, and tangible that it results in a new person and is given a name, the shared love between God the Father and God the Son is so abundant and powerfully life-giving that it takes on a life of its own and becomes a third person, God the Holy Spirit — who, in the Nicene Creed each Sunday, we call “the Lord, the Giver of Life.”

This explanation helps me to conceive of the Three-In-One, but the ability to relate to the Holy Spirit as a person remains elusive to me. I recently found up a copy of Alan Schreck’s Your Life in the Holy Spirit and decided to read it, in hopes that it would relieve this difficulty and help my devotion to the Holy Spirit as a person, rather than some mysterious force that helps me understand the Father and the Son. Schreck is a theology professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville and a contributor to Catholic Answers — so he seems like a good source on the topic.

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