Flaubert on ancient warfare

I am just about finished with Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo on Project Gutenberg. It is an amazing recreation of a past that never existed. And yet ... and yet ... Flaubert loads his work with so much convincing detail that you begin to believe. Consider this little snippet from his description of the preparations among the Carthaginians for the last battle. I don't know if it bears any resemblance to the actual event, and I've never heard of a military historian noting these little details. But once you read them, you realize that they ought to be true.

The Carthaginians arrived first in the plain. They rubbed the edges of their shields with oil to make the arrows glide off them easily; the foot-soldiers who wore long hair took the precaution of cutting it on the forehead; and Hamilcar ordered all bowls to be inverted from the fifth hour, knowing that it is disadvantageous to fight with the stomach too full.

What a writer, to make it all seem real.

Penmanship

Or perhaps I should say 'handwriting.' What good is teaching it, since every kid is now wired into a keyboard almost from birth?

As it turns out, quite a bit, according to Newsweek (via Andrew Sullivan). And as many of us have always suspected, it should still be taught, and more intently than the less than 10 minutes a school day at best that is now devoted to it.

Hand-writing. It's not just for fountain pen fanatics.

Madeleine L'Engle

The author of A Wrinkle in Time is dead at the age of 88. She wrote many other books, some for children, some for adults, on many subjects, but it is Wrinkle that everyone remembers. Carmen, who is on a young adult lit tear now that she works at the library, introduced me to a recorded version of it last year. I liked it, and remembered that some friends of mine at the University of Santa Barbara had patiently and lovingly translated it into Latin. I still have my Latin edition, right next to Winnie ille Pu.

John Podhoretz lived in the same apartment building with her when he was a child and writes a wonderful remembrance of her on NRO. Here is a taste of it:

Then, when I was 9 or 10, I read A Wrinkle in Time and my sister Naomi told me offhandedly that she was its author.

I wrote her the first fan letter of my life and, heart pounding, rode the elevator to 9 and slipped it under her door. Within hours a package was left at our door with an inscribed copy of its recently published sequel, A Wind at the Door, a box of baked chocolate chip cookies, and a response that was so appreciative I could hardly believe it, it was so gracious and thoughtful. I had grown up with writers whose friends were all writers and one thing I had learned even at that ludicrously tender age is that saying anything to any author about his or her work is to enter into an emotional minefield.

Madeleine had sold more copies of her work than any of my parents' friends, and probably had received more fan mail than any of them, but her letter had a tone of delight to it that not only suggested she understood how to write to a child, but also that she had about her an almost supernatural grace — suitable to someone who was a very serious churchgoing Episcopalian and the author of several novels for adults about the difficulties and joys of faith.

Quite a legacy for a person to leave behind as they move on.