A Reader on Reading

You will remember that God had caused a plant to grow from the bare soil to shade Jonah from the heat, and that this charitable gesture of God’s made Jonah once again thankful, after which God withered the plant back into the dust and Jonah found himself roasting in the sun for a second time. We don’t know whether God’s trick with the plant — first placing it there to shade Jonah from the sun, and then killing it off—was a lesson meant to convince Jonah of God’s good intentions. Perhaps Jonah saw in the gesture an allegory of the funds first given to him and then withdrawn after the cuts by the Nineveh Arts Council—a gesture that left him to fry unprotected in the midday sun. I suppose he understood that in times of difficulty—in times when the poor are poorer and the rich can barely keep in the million-dollar tax bracket — God wasn’t going to concern Himself with questions of artistic merit. Being an Author Himself, God had no doubt some sympathy with Jonah’s predicament: wanting time to work on his thoughts without having to think about his bread and butter; wanting his prophecies to appear on the Nineveh Times best-seller list and yet not wanting to be confused with the authors of potboilers and tearjerkers; wanting to stir the crowds with his searing words, but to stir them into revolt, not submission; wanting Nineveh to look deep into its soul and recognize that its strength, its wisdom, its very life lay not in the piles of coins growing daily like funeral pyramids on the financiers’ desks but in the work of its artists and the words of its poets, and in the visionary rage of its prophets, whose job it was to keep the boat rocking in order to keep the citizens awake. All this the Lord understood, as He understood Jonah’s anger, because it isn’t impossible to imagine that God Himself sometimes learns something from His artists.

However, though God could draw water from a stone and cause the people of Nineveh to repent, He still could not make them think. The cattle, incapable of thought, He could pity. But speaking to Jonah as Creator to creator, as Artist to artist, what was God to do with a people who, as He said with such divine irony, “don’t know their right hand from their left”?

At this, I imagine, Jonah nodded and was silent.

The Legend of the Dodos

“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 3

IN LE MONDE OF 23 MARCH 2007, I read that Francis Esmenard, president of the commercial publisher Albin Michel, declared, at the Salon du Livre of Paris, that “there are too many small publishers” and that they “clutter the shelves of our bookstores.” To which Antoine Gallimard, president of the venerable publishing company that bears his name, added that small publishers “are responsible for the surplus production of books.” These interesting comments reminded me of an old Mauritanian legend:

A long time ago, the dodos, flightless birds with enormous appetites, discovered that on a certain island, which was the nesting ground of the local tits, pumpkins grew to a colossal size. Delighted with the prospect of a gargantuan meal, the dodos built a small raft and crossed the narrow strait that separated them from the island. There they feasted for days on the pumpkins (which were indeed huge, and very stodgy and sweet), trampling carelessly on the small berries and grains, too delicate for their large beaks, which they left to the tits, who, with patience and care, planted some in the ground and carried others off to their nests to feed their young. After only a few weeks, there were no more pumpkins left, and the dodos decided to return home. Barely able to walk after all they had eaten, they dragged their fat bellies onto the raft and pushed off to sea. A few moments later, quantities of water began to wash over the deck. “I think we’ve eaten too many pumpkins,” said one of the younger dodos in a quaking voice. “I’m afraid we’re sinking.” The eldest dodo pointed an angry feather at the top of the mast where a tiny tit had settled with a red berry in its beak. “That’s the culprit,” shouted the dodo. “He’s much too heavy for the raft. There’s not enough room for all of us. Get rid of him at once!”

And they all started jumping up and down to frighten it away. Hearing all the noise, the tit flew off towards the land, and the raft sank in the shark-infested waters.

And that is how the dodos became extinct.

PART SEVEN

Crime and Punishment

“There’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now,

being punished: and the trial doesn’t even begin till next

Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.”

“Suppose he never commits the crime?” said Alice.

“That would be all the better, wouldn’t it?” the Queen said.

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 5

In Memoriam

“I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was.”