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I'm behind again on work, and RL, and DW posts, comments, and replies. Why does everything take so much longer than I think it will? Anyway, here is this week's reading:
What I Finished Reading This Week
Looking For The Hidden Folk – Nancy Marie Brown
Early in this book, Brown writes:
Walking the Maze – Loren Cruden
Brown's book motivated me to pick this volume, which also blends travel vignettes with the author's spiritual musings, back up. Walking the Maze was published during the tail end of the '90s New Age boom, and it is very much an artifact of its time. To its credit, it tries harder for historical accuracy than books by other contemporary authors (e.g., D.J. Conway or Etain McCoy). Nonetheless, at the end of the day, this is Cruden's personal origin myth built in service to a "search for roots and a sense of belonging" in the "rich and profound" traditions and rituals of Cruden's Scottish and/or pan-Celtic ancestors, painted in a veneer of history. Cruden handpicks historical fact to argue that the "Celts" possessed whatever ideal trait or value she's discussing, in contrast to others (who could be the Romans, the English, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Japanese, modern day Americans, or whatever group she's holding up in comparison). She doesn't acknowledge that premodern Celts did not see themselves as a unified group and, for much of history, neither did Scots or Irish. She doesn't acknowledge that all of these groups fought amongst themselves as often as they fought against the Romans or the English. She studiously ignores the less savory aspects of premodern Celtic culture(s). (For instance, Cruden makes much of the codification of law in premodern Ireland but ignores entirely that per those laws, the injured party in a lawsuit could be made whole by a payment of slaves equivalent to his or her honor price.)
Instead, we learn, Celts were "rugged, land-loving individualists, fierce and free in their expression, gracious to all, answerable directly to the Spirit but responsible for the entire community" and that they had much in common with Native Americans (which Native Americans? Who knows. They are all the same!) You could replace "Celt" or "Scot" in virtually any of Cruden's sweeping statements about these groups' love of music, art, or nature, and so on, with the name of any other ethnic or cultural group and still have a true statement.
I could keep going with more broad issues and individual examples, but by now you should have the general idea.
TL;DR - If it's good, Cruden says it's inherently "Celtic," if it isn't, it's evidence of external or modern corruption, or is a trait that belongs to a different ethnic or cultural group. And while it feels a bit unfair to criticize Cruden for constructing a personal myth to give meaning and context to her existence, and for her obvious and earnest desire that this idealized myth be true, she's still put these sweeping generalizations and cherrypicked facts out into the world claiming they're fact, when they aren't. When I was able to ignore all this, I enjoyed the book's travel descriptions and utopian vision of a once-and-future ideal human society; when I couldn't, boy did it grate.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Star Factory – Ciaran Carson
Rereading because, after Brown and Cruden, I am still in the mood for wide-ranging interweavings of personal history with broader cultural, spiritual, and scientific topics.
The Burning Swift – Joseph Elliott
I picked this back up and read one chapter last night, and boy, was that a plot twist.
Cyber Persistence Theory – Michael Fishenkeller, Emily Goldman, & Richard Harknett
This is a very dense book typeset in a very small font, but very readable all the same.
What I’m Reading Next
I acquired no new books this week.
これで以上です。
What I Finished Reading This Week
Looking For The Hidden Folk – Nancy Marie Brown
Early in this book, Brown writes:
Ragnhildur’s question—"Now do you believe in elves?"—grew to obsess me. I found myself wondering. Then I found myself wandering through history, religion, folklore, and art, circling back to explore theology, literary criticism, mythology, and philosophy, stopping along the way to dip my toes into cognitive science, psychology, anthropology, biology, volcanology, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. Each discipline, I found, defines and redefines what is real and unreal, natural and supernatural, demonstrated and theoretical, alive and inert. Each has its own way of perceiving and valuing (or not) the world around us.This passage is the entirety of the book in a nutshell. Brown is not the first person to question who gets to define what is real and valuable; nor is her exploration of this question the most profound. But it's enjoyable to read as she interweaves that exploration with vignettes of her repeated travels to Iceland. The book is meditative and meandering rather than tightly structured and argued, but provided you're in the mood for the former, it's a good read.
Walking the Maze – Loren Cruden
Brown's book motivated me to pick this volume, which also blends travel vignettes with the author's spiritual musings, back up. Walking the Maze was published during the tail end of the '90s New Age boom, and it is very much an artifact of its time. To its credit, it tries harder for historical accuracy than books by other contemporary authors (e.g., D.J. Conway or Etain McCoy). Nonetheless, at the end of the day, this is Cruden's personal origin myth built in service to a "search for roots and a sense of belonging" in the "rich and profound" traditions and rituals of Cruden's Scottish and/or pan-Celtic ancestors, painted in a veneer of history. Cruden handpicks historical fact to argue that the "Celts" possessed whatever ideal trait or value she's discussing, in contrast to others (who could be the Romans, the English, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Japanese, modern day Americans, or whatever group she's holding up in comparison). She doesn't acknowledge that premodern Celts did not see themselves as a unified group and, for much of history, neither did Scots or Irish. She doesn't acknowledge that all of these groups fought amongst themselves as often as they fought against the Romans or the English. She studiously ignores the less savory aspects of premodern Celtic culture(s). (For instance, Cruden makes much of the codification of law in premodern Ireland but ignores entirely that per those laws, the injured party in a lawsuit could be made whole by a payment of slaves equivalent to his or her honor price.)
Instead, we learn, Celts were "rugged, land-loving individualists, fierce and free in their expression, gracious to all, answerable directly to the Spirit but responsible for the entire community" and that they had much in common with Native Americans (which Native Americans? Who knows. They are all the same!) You could replace "Celt" or "Scot" in virtually any of Cruden's sweeping statements about these groups' love of music, art, or nature, and so on, with the name of any other ethnic or cultural group and still have a true statement.
I could keep going with more broad issues and individual examples, but by now you should have the general idea.
TL;DR - If it's good, Cruden says it's inherently "Celtic," if it isn't, it's evidence of external or modern corruption, or is a trait that belongs to a different ethnic or cultural group. And while it feels a bit unfair to criticize Cruden for constructing a personal myth to give meaning and context to her existence, and for her obvious and earnest desire that this idealized myth be true, she's still put these sweeping generalizations and cherrypicked facts out into the world claiming they're fact, when they aren't. When I was able to ignore all this, I enjoyed the book's travel descriptions and utopian vision of a once-and-future ideal human society; when I couldn't, boy did it grate.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Star Factory – Ciaran Carson
Rereading because, after Brown and Cruden, I am still in the mood for wide-ranging interweavings of personal history with broader cultural, spiritual, and scientific topics.
The Burning Swift – Joseph Elliott
I picked this back up and read one chapter last night, and boy, was that a plot twist.
Cyber Persistence Theory – Michael Fishenkeller, Emily Goldman, & Richard Harknett
This is a very dense book typeset in a very small font, but very readable all the same.
What I’m Reading Next
I acquired no new books this week.
これで以上です。
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