A Literary Vision

 

 Last night Professor Tolkien, Oxford philologist and epic literary genre creator, appeared to me in a dream. “Hopper,” he addressed me through a cloud of pipe smoke, at ease before an old English hillside, “see this man?” 

And an image appeared before me:

 

“Y-yes,” I said, still amazed at the vision of the Professor in front of me and not really focusing on this newer image.

 

“Look!”

 

This time I did look. “Who is it?”

 

“This is Edward Gibbon. He lived from 1737 until 1794.”

 

I did a quick calculation. “56! That’s my age! … my God, do I look like that?”

 

Tolkien blew a ring of smoke and the Gibbon image faded. “Do you know this man?”

 

Gibbon … Gibbon … Yes! “Yes! He wrote about the Roman Empire. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire – ”

 

“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” he casually corrected me with a trace of a grin. “You have this book in your collection.”

 

I thought a moment, then – yes! – in my Great Books of the Western World collection, currently housed in the storage space under the staircase along with all the Christmas decorations recently put away.

 

“I read that book … twenty years ago.”

 

The Professor raised his eyebrows.

 

“Well,” I back-pedaled, “I started to read it. Maybe got a hundred pages in.” I thought further, scanning my memories. “It was in Cape Cod. My wife and I were first dating, on our first weekend away together, and I picked it up in a bookstore there.”

 

“Indeed you did, but you never finished it.”

 

What he said was true. But where was this going?

 

As if he could read my thoughts, he put aside his pipe and stared into my eyes. “Hopper, I appreciate your plan to delve back into my works, in a certain ‘internally chronologic way’ as you put it. Tell me, how many times have you read my works?”

 

“Many times, sir.”

 

“More than once?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“More than twice?”

 

“Yes.” Where was this heading? “I’ve read your works since I was ten or so. The Hobbit. Then The Lord of the Rings, as a twelve or thirteen-year-old. I stumbled a bit through The Silmarillion the next year, but then I took a twenty year hiatus until I re-read them all. This spring will be my fifth go around – ”

 

“And how many times has your daughter gone to Italy?”

 

I froze, jaw agape. I think I knew where this was going.

 

Tolkien started to meander down a muddy lane that just happened to materialize. Bales of hay dotted the fields past a wooden fence. “Your daughter is going to Italy, perhaps the heart of Western Civilization. She is going there to study philosophy, art, and architecture, and, let us not forget, literature. You’ve always did some sort of sympathetic reading with her, no?”

 

“Yes. When she was assigned The Divine Comedy freshman year I read it too. Then, on her recommendation, I started The Aeneid, but, to be honest, I never finished it.”

 

He paused in consideration. “How long will she be gone?”

 

“Four months.”

 

“I think you should take up a work related to Italy that would take you about four months to journey through.”

 

The light went off, and he smiled at me as we said, together, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!”

 

He chuckled. “Plus, if I know you as well as I think I do, Hopper, it’s also a work on your bucket list?”

 

“Yes! Yes it is!”

 

Then a hearty laugh, and he reached in to his inner jacket pocket for a pinch of tobacco and relit his pipe. “Hopper, I grant you permission to set aside a fifth re-reading of my works to spiritually walk the streets of ancient Rome as your daughter walks the modern ones, and cross another item off your list.”

 

I was enlightened. “Thank you, master!”

 

“There is but one master,” the devout Catholic said to me, “and I am not He.”

 

And as I was about to reply in affirmation, the vision faded and I woke nestled and comfortable in my bed.

The Founding Fathers

 

So my oldest daughter, Little One, bought me a couple books this Christmas, books on “a historical era that I know you haven’t read before.” And what she said was true. She gifted me one of the Very Short Introduction books, The Founding Fathers and a non-VSI but still very short book, The Jacksonian Era. Roughly the first 50 years of the existence of the United States. She was correct. Over the past dozen years I’ve read hundreds of pages on the Civil War, World War II, and the Napoleonic Wars, but this section of history I haven’t plumbed since taking Brother Lawrence’s US History class sophomore year of high school in the early 80s.

 

Well, I just finished the VSI The Founding Fathers, and I am fascinated. Now, not fascinated enough to devote additional time and effort to the subject – unless I was either a) a lawyer, b) a politician, c) a pundit, or d) financially independent. Other more pressing issues are, er, pressing upon me. But it was an extremely interesting diversion over a couple of hours over a couple of days.

 

The book was not too in depth – it couldn’t be, being a Very Short Introduction book, but the subject itself is difficult to summarize. That’s what struck me so hard reading this. The magnitude of all that falls under the umbrella term, the founding fathers. I almost wish I read this book thirty or forty years ago. Indeed, any young person looking to pursue a career in either a, b, or c, above, should spend many months delving this subject. One image I had was the book covering the first three or four inches of Mount Everest.

 

What do I mean?

 

Immediately my mind went to making lists.

 

If one wanted to truly study the Founding Fathers, one would have to pursue many branches. So a second image presented itself to me: a massive tree with a big fat trunk in which someone looking like Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer etched “The Founding Fathers” with a pocketknife. And what follows? This –

 

Thick, twisting roots burrowing deep in the ground. Some labeled “The Roman Republic” and “Greek Democracy”, others “Classical Literature” and “Greek” and “Roman” languages. A larger, stronger segment would be called “The Enlightenment,” with offshoots titled “Locke” and “Hume.” The confluence of all these roots grew to push the beliefs and philosophies of the Founding Fathers up through the ground into the sunlight.

 

There would be numerous branches reaching upward, spreading out thickly in smaller and smaller subdivisions. The main branch, erupting immediately from the trunk, would be, of course, “The Constitution.” Then, in no particular order but grouped according to genus, many other limbs would sprout, limbs with names such as:

 

   - The Fathers themselves: Writings, Autobiographies, Biographies

 

   - The History of the Founding of America: The Colonies, the Deteriorating Relation with England, the Continental Congress(es), the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation

 

   - The first presidencies

 

   - Federalism versus Republicanism

 

   - Originalist Interpretation versus the “Living Document”

 

   - The Bill of Rights, further Amendments and the Amendment Process

 

   - The growth and development of the federal government: The Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch

 

   - The inner workings of government, the life cycle of bills and laws, etc., sausage-factory analogy notwithstanding

 

   - Legal challenges faced by the early American government, especially the three-fifths compromise, Marbury v. Madison and the Dred Scott decision

 

   - The faults or shortfalls, perceived or not, of the Constitution at its creation and over its history

 

One could spend four solid years, I believe, prepping himself in this vast, fruitful vineyard, and indeed many do, I suppose, those of whom aspire to be political science majors. Were I to have read this book in high school, and was more of an ENTP than an INTP, I’d definitely immerse myself in a full three-months of summertime excavation before taking up studies in the American political process, as first envisioned and shaped by the Founding Fathers.

Happy Birthday J.R.R.

 

The Master would have been 132 today. Funny to think that when he was my age Truman was president, the Cold War was in its infancy, the atom bomb was still just an American weapon, and his antithesis, the anti-Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, was a newborn babe. And he’d still be six years away from publishing his magnum opus.

 

(By the way, these R.R.’s in authorial pen names fascinate me to no end.)

 

Anyway, since Tolkien was a dedicated if not devout Catholic, I do not think he would mind too much if I delayed my 2024 Tolkien Reading Plan a couple of weeks while I make my way through the books my loved ones have given me this Christmas – slim volumes on the founding fathers, the Jacksonian era of American History, and the Alamo. Once done the Silmarillion gets opened and Ilúvatar creates Middle-earth, and the quest begins ...

 

Happy birthday, and happy readings!