Indiana Jones + the translation of the Iliad: October 2023 Essay Recommendations
An unexpected religious adventure, a satanist surprise, and the last invention of humanity... all in a month's reads.
Are we falling forward to the end of the year or what? Here’s some cool stuff I read in October…
the power of God or something holy
Indiana Jones isn’t much associated with a religious journey, but in an excellent piece for Plough, Hannah Long talks about the professor-adventurer’s halting dance with the fear of the Lord. In Indiana Jones and the Weight of Glory, she writes:
In Hebrew, the word for wisdom means something more like applied knowledge. When Indy stands on the edge of the chasm, hesitant, he has knowledge. When he jumps, he shows wisdom.
And this wisdom Indy has learned because, following the fifth commandment, he has begun to honor his father. Understanding why “only the penitent man shall pass” is the result of years of patient study and faith—more the effort of Henry Jones Sr., than of Indy himself, and (the camerawork implies) communicated between them through an almost supernatural father-son connection. Indy proves himself the sort of person who perceives what manner of cup a humble carpenter would possess, largely because he has reconciled with the father who can teach him that lesson.
missing in translation
I really enjoyed this insightful review of a new translation of Homer’s Iliad. Despite being titled What Emily Wilson’s Iliad Misses, this piece sheds light on the struggle of getting an ancient text (and language) into another audience’s language while preserving as much context and meaning as possible.
…translation is a game of two languages, and… “the translator is in constant danger of inventing a third that lies between.” By this standard—and avoiding invention is more demanding than it sounds—Wilson is a prodigy. Her characters speak not like orotund Shakespeare imitators but like people talking in their native languages and registers. Wilson’s language does not challenge anyone’s idea of what English can be. When she is given a chance to coin a new and unusual phrase and free into English a word hitherto trapped in the amber of Greek, she unfailingly chooses the ordinary and imperfect English word.
Words, I love them!
a house divided
I’m sharing this mostly because I think it’s hilarious that the live without rules people have found they just can’t. In her Atlantic piece, A Satanic Rebellion, Helen Lewis takes account of how the Satanist Temple is facing up to new-leftist social justice ideas. Essentially, the organization that rebels against all rules, norms, organized religion, etc., is having the carpet pulled out from under its goat feet by its own people. Apparently, the satanist crowd isn’t woke enough.
Over the past few years, I’ve heard similar stories from charities, museums, theaters, media outlets, and political groups—about evolving ideas of “harm” and the difficulty of managing rank-and-file revolts that manifest as social-justice blowups. But this stuff was happening to Satanists now? That surprised me. It was a full-scale uprising, with Lucien Greaves cast as God—dictatorial, unbending, authoritarian—and the rebels as a phalanx of would-be Lucifers.
Lewis draws a parallel between what’s happening with The Satanic Temple now and what happened with the New Atheist movement a few years ago. A split is developing between those who just want to be satanist and those who want to be satanist with all the “correct” political and social views too. I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
humanity’s last invention??
While I think artificial intelligence is extremely dangerous on several accounts, I don’t think it’s the world-killer some people cast it as. I don’t think a program is going to get hold of the nuclear codes while simultaneously deciding humans are the problem and need to be wiped out. AI represents a threat to the spiritual and moral core of the human race; it’s a fast track to successive generations of “men without chests.” We cannot feed on the soulless regurgitations of the machine.
But I digress. Someone shared this Vanity Fair piece with me: Artificial Intelligence May Be Humanity’s Most Ingenious Invention—And Its Last? I read it. It didn’t make me more sad or more concerned about the spread of AI than I already am. But I think it’s a good collation of how people are actually wrestling with what should be the limits (or lack thereof) of this insidious technology.
haunting ourselves
The New Yorker has a curious little profile of electronic producer and composer Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, aka OPN. Never heard of him? Me either. But he’s produced for The Weeknd, FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek, and the Safdie brothers. He’s the guy pop stars call when they need a little more pop to their stars.
The Emotionally Haunted Electronic Music of Oneohtrix Point Never scratched my itch for reading about artist processes, artist development, and good writing about music and its impact on culture. Daniel Lopatin also has some interesting things to say about “the human instinct to preserve and to document the past while it’s falling to rubble…”
A little bit of mystery is central to the project. It’s not so much that Lopatin wants to be enigmatic as it is that he doesn’t believe in the sanctity of fixed narratives. A photograph, an interview, a memory, an Instagram post—it’s all a little bit unstable, a little bit untrue. He is more drawn to an ethos of transubstantiation, in which things can become other things.
✌️
Other cool stuff!
Fieldmoot is happening right now! It’s a free, live-ish, online conference for artists and the artistically-minded who are pondering questions at the intersection of faith, art, and daily living. Really good things are in store thru Sunday, 5 November, and I was privileged to lend my meagre skills to help the team pull it off once again.
I recently rewatched Tenet (for the fourth time, I think) and I just wanted to shout out The Joys of Not Understanding ‘Tenet’. Because you don’t have to understand a thing to love and enjoy it.
Finally, take a trip via
’s Hunt for Halloween. I’m not so sure about the Catholic church trying to turn Odin into Santa Claus, but this piece explores the multi-variant status of ancient myths and how the austere and terrific magic of history’s tales comes down to us today.
Programming note
I’m a little past the half-way mark of another semester, and research activities and assignment deadlines are coming hot-and-heavy among other things. So I’ll be publishing infrequently here in the waning weeks of the year. Not sure exactly what that will look like, but we’ll find out together. There are (what I think of as) some really cool explorations planned for the future.