What are we reading?

Here’s what I’ve read lately:

Fiction:  Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby, published in 1981, is set between the U.S. and a Caribbean island. While the book has that timeless quality a writer strives for, it is also a period piece, depicting and plumbing the evolution of race relations between Black and Caucasian in the early 1980s. I found the writing as well as the story provocative and imaginative. Strong, vivid images appearing in the characters’ psyches, called up by what is going on around them, add an intriguing touch. I will venture a criticism by saying that the ending seemed too light for the weight of the rest. The awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Morrison recently prompted me to read; now, I am eager to read her more recent works, A Mercy and Home. What a remarkable and inspiring woman, as you can see at the website of the Toni Morrisson Society.

Biography:  Charles and Emma about Charles Darwin and his intriguing, high-spirited wife. Using minute details from family writings, Deborah Heiligman has intertwined the story of Darwin’s well researched and formulated scientific findings with the strong, enduring love story of husband and wife. She portrays (to the point of over-repetition, perhaps) Emma’s concern that she would not be re-united with Charles in an after-life because of his doubts about the existence of God. Darwin did, in fact, put off the publication of his theories for decades because of his apprehensions of how negatively they would be received by the religious community; this surprised me.

    

I felt close to Darwin when I read this quotation: “[I am] hard at work dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin’s head {a barnacle}…and I could spend another month and daily see more beautiful structure.” Yes, my soul resonates, contemplating the amazing wonder of every atom.

I related to him as a parent, too. He was a doting, adoring father to ten children, three of whom died young, sending both Emma and Charles into deep grief, clinging to each other to cope.

A few more highlight quotations:

·        “By 1856 Charles was breeding his own pigeons…” Somehow this surprised me, too, his hands-on research.

·        “…when strangers wrote to him asking what he believed about God…He said that theologians should answer questions about religion, scientists about science."

·        to one of his daughters about Emma  “…dear old mother, who, as you know well, is as good as twice refined gold.”

·        Emma:  “I sometimes feel it very odd that anyone belonging to me should be making such a noise in the world.”

·        “His theory will continue to evolve. The debate between evolution and religion continues, too. He and Emma would certainly say that people from both worlds should keep talking to each other."

Reading about the origins of Darwin’s Origin of Species makes me think of the Scopes trial in Dayton TN in 1925. Several years ago I saw the annual reenactment of the trial which takes place in the courthouse where it happened. Fascinating. The dramatic presentation will take place next week.

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