LLT180L4.doc 1. interesting topic. I don t think that would be my pastime. We re trying to make fun. The

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1 LLT180L4.doc 1 We had stopped when we were talking about collecting fumets, not a particularly interesting topic. I don t think that would be my pastime. We re trying to make fun. The idea is that questing while it s an important aspect of being a knight is not supposed to be particularly attractive. He s questing after these Glatisant. They are on page 23. You should remember Glatisant s name. One of the things that come up later is that finally the questing beast only stays healthy and alive as long as Pellinore s questing after him. Otherwise, it fades away and dies. So, to me I can t help but think of the Peter, Paul and Mary song puff the magic dragon, and how that is the same idea. I think what s important here is that the quest is almost like a dream. So, unless maybe we nurture our dreams if this is trying to tell us something as we read through this unless we nurture our dreams, unless we nurture our ideals that they fade away and die. So, we have to pay attention to them. You can sit a lot with this and look up vocabulary. Just to prove that I do they describe the questing beast toward the bottom of page 23. They say this beast about maybe 12 lines from the bottom has the head of a serpent and the body of a libbard. What the crud is a libbard? It s an old spelling variation actually of leopard. It s a body of a leopard. The haunches of a lion and he is footed like a heart. A heart is actually the male of a red deer. I m not going to ask you to draw this on the test even though it might be interesting. He has a large, white dog that s helping him pursue the best. All of this is just kind of silly funniness. Pellinore certainly does not make questing sound like fun. It s kind of an arduous thing. Remember he s been about this for seventeen years, about as long as all of you have been about anything. It s been eight months since he s even seen the questing beast. We read here at the bottom of page 24 the poor fellow s voice had

2 LLT180L4.doc 2 grown sadder and sadder since the beginning of the conversation. Now, he definitely began to snuffle. So, he is sad. This is not fun. It is the curse of the Pellinore. So, who can find the questing beast? Only the Pellinores. It is their family quest; it is their family beast. After wandering about after that beastly beast what on earth use is she anyway? So, the questing beast is a female. It seems suitable. I m trying to be funny. First you have to stop to unwind a bracket, referring to his dog. Then, your visor falls down. Then, you can t see through your spectacles. Nowhere to sleep, never know where you are, rheumatism or sun stroke in the summer, all this horrid armor that takes hours to put on, which will be the case when we practice doing it. So, really what he s like on page 25 is a bed. If he could have a bed it would be a wonderful experience. So, if he were rich. Again, remember this is Arthur s first view of what it s like to be a knight, a knight on a quest. A lot of times as I read through this and try to think of clever, critical things to say simply on the side of the text I write ha, ha. Like this is just the silliest stuff. For example, we get in Pellinore just the opposite view of what we think a great heroic knight would be. The point here is he fell off his horse with a tremendous clang. When we see the tape on knights and armor they re going to make the point that to be a great knight the most important attribute was not to be necessarily a great athlete. You had to be able to control your horse. So, the first thing almost as early as people could walk who were going to become knights they learned horsemanship. The modern remnant of that are competitions in dressage, in other words being able to control your horse, teach them so they walk sideways, backwards, do different movements because these could be important in battle.

3 LLT180L4.doc 3 So, the end of this chapter the point of this is to puncture our traditional image of how great a knight is. Wart now is in the woods. He awakens late. He s fallen asleep. He s going to find of course Merlin. We re going to meet Merlin. Merlin is going to become his tutor. He finds Merlin, an old man in a cottage. We quickly recognize Merlin when he is described for us at the bottom of page 28. So, all the traditional getup that we would expect of a magician and later the point is made there are a lot of magicians. So, it s hard for us to imagine, it s like if you read tales that the brothers grim collected. You notice that all these tales are of princes and princesses and things of that nature. When you think of Germany in the middle of the early 1800s there were like 365 self-governing entities. So, if we started thinking of Europe in olden times there were a lot more small areas. So, you might be in line at Albertson s and there s a princess in front of you and a duke behind you. Then, behind the duke there is a magician or a court jester. So, a lot more of these people simply existed in society than we might ever think of in modern society. So, Merlin is described on the bottom of 28 and the top of 29. How does Arthur react? I mean Arthur s going to have a lot of unique experiences. What is his basic response when he meets Merlin? Is he frightened? Yeah, he s curious. He doesn t ever seem how does he react to magic? How does he react to the strange stuff at Merlin s cottage? How would he be different from Kay? Kay would be freaked out by it. He s just like entranced by it. He s like this is neat stuff. So, he doesn t seem particularly scared of magic. It seems like this is kind of an ordinary world for him. Stuff that would bug me, for example after he meets Merlin what is the first thing Merlin says to him on page 29 about line 15? The aged gentleman put down his bucket and looked at him. Merlin s

4 LLT180L4.doc 4 been muttering about having to haul up water and do all this stuff. We re going to find out later he s living according to White. He s living his life backwards. He says your name would be the Wart. So, here we are in the middle of nowhere and you run into somebody and they know your name. I m gone; I m far-gone. I m running down the forest path. How does he respond? Yes, sir. He identifies himself. My name said the old man is Merlin. Now, if Merlin is living life backwards he s going to do what? He s going to keep becoming younger as the book progresses. They go to Merlin s place. Everything s marvelous in the sense of miraculous, unbelievable, magical. So, it is in the middle of page 30 here s the most marvelous room that he had ever been in. They described the contents in some great detail. We also have an owl. An owl traditionally is symbol of wisdom. The owl is going to be an important character again an aid and education for Arthur, which is important. The owl can talk. Its name is Archimedes. This magic world we read on about on 33 is just everywhere where Merlin is. Again, this idea is that he was expecting somebody. Later in the book I think it stated that Merlin was sent for Arthur. He was sent for Arthur s education. He has special magic for Arthur. He has special magic that he can only use to help educate Arthur. I ve read this book more than once. It s very unclear. I think an interesting question when we get toward that part is well, if he has this special magic from whom does he have it. Who sent him? Why is Merlin here? I mean if you go back and believe in the divine right of kings did God did she send him? That is something to think about when we get to that point. Another thing, so he knew Wart s name and the breakfast table is already set for two. He knew Wart was coming. Now, that makes sense if Merlin is living life backwards. He knew what was going to happen. So, he could

5 LLT180L4.doc 5 expect Wart. It gets kind of confusing in here and Merlin makes the good point about that. Why? In great big letters you see I wrote on the facing page why is Merlin here on page 34? What impresses Wart? About line six he said that Wart was so much impressed by the kindness of the old man and particularly by the lovely things which he possessed that he hardly liked to ask him personal questions. He finally does though. So, Wart feels comfortable. One of the things he s going to say is he feels comfortable with Merlin because Merlin treats him like an adult, like a person. He says about 14 lines down on 34 would you mind if I ask you a question. What s Merlin s response? It is what I am for. So, his function for Arthur is to answer those questions. Remember we re constantly here talking about education. Everything, whether it becomes a fish, hawk whatever he does, whatever Arthur is undergoing as we go through this first part of the book especially we re writing on him. We re developing him. We re making clear who he is. Merlin then explains why he s often confused. Merlin is going to be both a magical figure and a comic figure. He s always getting his incantations screwed up. He s transporting himself to the Bahamas or he s changing himself into a condor. He s always practicing his incantations and not doing very well. He is living life backwards we read on page 35. He says ah, yes how did I know to set the breakfast for two? That was why I showed you the looking glass. Now, ordinary people are born forwards in time. If you understand what I mean and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. That makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a w if you were allowed to look at them forwards instead of backwards and inside out. So, Merlin is trying to

6 LLT180L4.doc 6 explain why he doesn t have Prozac with his cereal in the morning. He s just a little loony because he s confused. He just like has too much information so he can t remember if he s told somebody this. I don t think White does an exceedingly good job with being true to this idea of if we tried to apply that Merlin s living life backwards, how confused he would be. That s the premise he takes. I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time. So, thus he is often confused. He makes a point which when I read this sentence I become confused. I don t know why he wrote this sentence with the idea that you read it six times and you d still be confused. So, you d say okay, I get it. I m confused. The paragraph that starts you see about 2/3 of the way down on 35. He said, if you know what s going to happen to people and not what has happened to them it makes it difficult to prevent it happening if you want it to have happened. Now, that makes sense. In other words, you know you don t want that outcome but since you only know the outcome you don t know what caused the outcome. How can you prevent what will bring about the outcome. It s one of those things you read and think I better stop reading for tonight. Obviously my brain is fried. I ve done too much homework. It s time for pizza and doing something else. Talk more about the owl that deserves respect and then they make their way to Arthur s. Merlin tells him I am going to be your tutor. So, that s the purpose of this whole chapter. Now, if you remember early on Hector said I guess I m going to have to have a quest for a tutor. What basically happens here Arthur has been on this quest. This is his first quest so to speak. It s a quest to find a tutor. So, questions? So, they are back at Hector s in four. Merlin is introduced to Hector. They talk about white magic. Now, on top of page 39 this is one of the points that I think is

7 LLT180L4.doc 7 confusing as far as if White s trying to be consistent with this idea that Merlin is living time backwards. So, when he has these recommendations who are the recommendations by on top of 39? One is by Aristotle. So, if he s living life backwards why shouldn t his recommendations be by Einstein by people who would make no sense if they were genuine recommendations? So, we have to assume they then were trying to make logic sense out of what White s done that Merlin s just produced these. They are not really genuine in any way. He s just fulfilling what Hector wants. He does some magic. Hector does hire him. Kay never gets anything. The proper son, the real son of Hector he s okay but he s just you know. Later in the book they ll have a conversation about can birds speak. They get in this involved discussion about do birds have language. It turns out that they say they have social structure and language and everything. After they have this really meaningful conversation with Arthur and Merlin and Archimedes. At the very end of that chapter Kay comes in and he s all excited because he just shot some birds. So, he s just kind of always a little bit out of sink with the rest of the book. They say about Kay they tried to put him in perspective kind of a nasty statement. I hope nobody ever writes this about anybody in a letter of recommendation. At the very end of chapter 4 on page 40 about 7 lines from the end he says referring to Kay. He says he was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it. Gosh, that s pretty harsh, pretty sad commentary. What is the present like as we move into chapter 5? Again following the death of Uther we re going to have might is right. That s what the whole first transformation into a fish is about. We re showing what a supreme despite is like, showing what society can be like. So, here out in the boonies and this is truly the boonies

8 LLT180L4.doc 8 we have the castle of the forest savage. This story it says what at the beginning of the five deals with dealt trouble times. As Arthur is growing up he is insolated from this chaos. He is insulated from what s going on by the fact that he lives in the boonies. However, they do come there. The bad times come. Everybody who is subject to Sir Hector comes into the castle. They describe this castle. I don t know. It seems to be a great popular thing to do. Last spring from the gifted center in Springfield after I had the suit of armor they were doing a feature thing on medieval days. So, stupid Larry they called me up. They said would you come and bring your armor. I said oh, sure. They said well, how many days will you come? I said what do you mean. They said well, we bring different classes in from Springfield. So, actually it d be great if you could come in four days in a row. They said what a lot of people do is they come one day. They film it. Then we show the film to other people. Having kids myself I thought that kind of stinks. That means the same kids always get to see the live presentation. Everybody else always gets to see the films. So, stupidly I said oh, I ll come four days in a row. I think that s just fair. What was interesting about that when she called me up. She asked me what I needed. She said she was going to give me directions on how to get to the classroom. She said what kind of learner are you? I thought that is really weird that you want to start categorizing people based on what kind of learner they are. Anyway, when I read something like this I start playing mental games with myself about can you draw this. So, obviously they start off and they said the exterior of the castle has twelve towers. You don t have to do this on the test. So, if you think about that works really well if you re drawing it. There are four corners, not they ll be just like this. This is some math

9 LLT180L4.doc 9 puzzle for grade one. So, if you have four your can just fill in four more. It s a big castle. The castles are in the middle of the walls. Then, there s a moat out here. Then, there s an interior castle within the exterior walls, which again has a series of round walls. This would be a later castle. This wouldn t be like a castle in the early medieval times or Hector won the lottery or something. This is way too nice. It s very elaborate. They use terms and of course there s a drawbridge. So, there s a moat. They re going to talk about the moat. So, across the moat there s a drawbridge. Then, there s always that gate where you can trap people and pour bowling oil on them or put trap doors on them or crush them with logs whatever you want to do with them that we re going to read about later too especially in Erik. When they use the term keep when we talked before about what the early medieval castles look like. You have seen Braveheart. A lot of you have seen Braveheart. The castle at the beginning of Braveheart where they killed after Mel s honey gets her throat slit. Mel comes back and kicks butt. Then, they go on to the castle the regional big dude. When they get to it what does it look like? It looks like Fort Apache or something. I mean it s a wood fort. That was what early castles were like unless somebody was someplace for a long time. If you remember once they broke through the outer defenses they went to this elevate area. There was wooded in again. That would be your keep. So, your keep was the area where the lord would stay. So, it was just an area within the exterior part of the castle. So, some of this terminology I m not going to ask you about. You might leaf through your dictionary some. The typical warfare in medieval times was siege warfare. Again, going back to Braveheart if you remember after the initial military victories if you saw the movie some of you went just to see a movie I m sure. After the original victories what were they

10 LLT180L4.doc 10 doing? They were laying siege to York. Then, after they won the siege the city surrendered. What did they do? They killed like Longshanks nephew or whoever was there and cut off his head and sent it back to Longshanks. So, usually when you took someplace by siege you just kill everybody. So, this castle just to tell you how great it was had never been breached but it had been lost by siege. A castle is a cool place for a kid. All this little trash in here all this little stuff that seems unimportant like this stuff about Wat and the Dog Boy, all these things that come up these different characters. You have to make some effort to remember them because White integrates some. They keep popping up in the story. They are not real, real important except you wonder where that character come from. It was somebody who was mentioned earlier. So, Wat is the idiot guy from town. He bit off. Kids used to ridicule him. He bit off one of the kids nose. That kid is now the Dog Boy. That s what happens when you do drugs for breakfast. He is referred to as the Dog Boy. It s because he lives with a dog. It s the idea of how you raise dogs at that time even though my wife would say that s my view now. So, these characters will keep popping up. What is Wart, what s his feeling toward Dog Boy? Well, he likes him with his abilities. What does the Dog Boy feel about Wart? He s kind of intimidated the fact that the guy could read. So, what are we seeing in Wart in general? As opposed to Kay, he s a peasant. The hawk belongs to me anyway. Kay is just kind of this idiot whereas Arthur likes everybody, whether it s the Dog Boy or whether it s Hob. He has respect of people. I think we see that in Sir Hector. So, it s kind of strange that it s not in his son because certainly Sir Hector is fairly egalitarian and Wart is too. Wart also, likes Merlin. I think I just alluded to this a few minutes ago. We read on page 44 a little below the middle of the

11 LLT180L4.doc 11 page paragraph starts the Wart. The Wart did not know what Merlin was talking about but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him but the ones who went on talking in their usual way. When my daughters were growing up it was really funny because I never thought about it. I always talked to them as adults. Aren t they? They are just like little adults. I have a lot of people who would make the comment not to me directly but it would come back to me about how strange it was that I just talked to my daughters as if they were people. I never thought about it. I think kind of the opposite is true. It s kind of strange that you talk to your kids as if they weren t people. Maybe I m screwed in the head. Well, that s probably true. It seems how are people supposed to learn if you always talk down to them. I was going to bring today it s kind of interesting one of the things that was always a tradition in our family when I was growing up. You always got a book for Christmas. That s part of what you got. I thought that was kind of neat. So, when my daughters were growing up I always gave them a book for Christmas. Now, you can use this system to your advantage. When I was about your age my birthday is in the summer. I was home on vacation and my mother said what do you want for your birthday? I d been kind of wanting because of some stuff that was going on at school a Webster s third world international dictionary, which are fairly expensive. Or, at least they used to be. I think books like that have gotten a lot cheaper. I said well, this was more than you spend. This is what I like. My parents were so impressed that I actually wanted a book that I got it. I figured I d come on to something. This is cool. I can get more than what I deserve by having something my parents think oh my gosh Larry actually wants a book. We ve done something right after all these years. Books are nice to give.

12 LLT180L4.doc 12 So, he likes Merlin. Merlin treats him like an adult. It s always back to lessons. Now, Wart thinks it is too hot to study. It s kind of appropriate for today. He wants to become a fish. What s going to happen between now and him pulling the sword out of the stone is he s going to be repeatedly transformed into different things. Now, we re only going to see some of these things. They are going to tell us later that he undergoes countless other transformations. Some of you probably are much more astute when you read. I m kind of in different modes when I read. Sometimes I m just kind of reading along and other times I m trying to read. I think it was the 2 nd or 3 rd time I read this before I stupidly because I come to this gobbly gook where he does the incantation. I just skip over it. I didn t read it. So, about the 3 rd time I think I actually looked at it I went well, duh. About 70% of the way down on page 45 if we look at this it s written backwards. It says Merlin s compliments to Neptune and will he kindly accept this boy as a fish. See, that was my reaction too. I went well, duh because I had probably taught this course once or twice before I went oh. I always figure it takes about three times to teach a course before you begin to feel like you really know what you re doing. Whether that s true or not it takes a few times to kind of figure stuff out. Neptune appears and he is going to be changed. What kind of fish? If you read as far as I asked today which we re probably not going to get that far. Oh, I meant to mention with the armor this is armor wax. You can see it s like paraffin. So, you have to like put it in a microwave and it s a hassle. I didn t know what I was getting myself into. It s special armor wax. What kind of fish does he ask to be? A perch. Why? He doesn t want to be a silly roach. He doesn t want to be a sucker down in Nixa and get fried up for sucker day. He doesn t want to be a bottom dweller. It is kind of a cool fish. What type

13 LLT180L4.doc 13 fish is the evil presence in the moat? A pike. So, he doesn t want to be the bad guy. He never picks like when he picks what kind of bird he s going to become. He doesn t pick to be the biggest, baddest bird. He always picks something that s kind of attractive but not the big evil one. Sometime I m going to read this book and I m going to start a checklist and mark how many times I say education or how many times the book says education because they just beat this up. Finally, it s going to be a very different outcome. How does Arthur like you mentioned Disney s Sword and the Stone. Why does Arthur get to pull the sword out of the stone in Disney s? Why Arthur? It s his fate. He s fated to be that way. Our book is kind of interesting. I always talk about this because I find words are interesting. Our book tends to use the word destiny to a certain extent. Do you make any differentiation between the word fate and destiny? There s an old rock and roll song Oh, Destiny, I mean really old. On an everyday basis, if something happens you say oh, it s fate. I m not saying the dictionary says this. Don t get me wrong because the dictionary doesn t say this. The dictionary says basically they are synonyms. I think I use them differently. I think a lot of people do. I think we tend to use fate more negatively. It was fate that state trooper was going to be there when I was doing 103. You don t say that was my destiny. I was destined to get that $195 speeding ticket. I tend to use it negatively whereas destiny it s my destiny. We use a new sense of developing America s Manifest Destiny. We don t say Manifest Fate. It just doesn t ring, doesn t do anything. I think destiny tends to be more positive. It was my destiny to meet Ms. Right. He comes back to this education thing on top of 46. It says about line 6 education is experience and the essence of experience is self-reliance. I don t think we have any

14 LLT180L4.doc 14 freshman in here do we. Do you guys remember a year ago some of you a couple years ago especially if you are from out of this region. If you came down from St. Louis or Kansas City or someplace else and were dropped off at school. Do you remember that experience? I can remember being left if you want to use that term, left at school in Virginia. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I can remember taking both my daughters to school. I can remember taking my older daughter to school. It s always easier with second kids and going back and sitting in the car and crying. She said she went and cried. She said you know dad. She told me like 7, 8 years later. She said if you call me anytime that first semester I would have come home in a minute. She said that s the best thing you ever did for me. It gets back to what he s saying self-reliance. It s hard being a parent. Some of you will learn that. Some of you won t. The hardest thing and this is what Merlin s doing. One of the hardest things you can do is let your kids grow up. It s easy not to let your kids grow up. I wanted to let mine grow up so they could make a lot of money and support me in my old age in the way I wish to be accustomed. They re doing a pretty good job. I m just not sure they think they owe any of it back to me. Not that I think so either. So, self-reliance. He has to learn to swim. They describe his experience. Merlin helps his six fish. We always have with Merlin like over on page 49 he has this incantation to cure mother roach. After you figure out the first thing that s written backwards. Then you start becoming suspicious of everything you see. It s like is there something simple here. Should I be seeing something or is this just gibberish. Most of what Merlin says is gibberish. So, don t think you ll be lucky or at least if you found out some great cleverness please tell me. They explore around a little bit. An important point

15 LLT180L4.doc 15 we get on to page 51. This is some general stuff here. When we get to 51 they start making some important points. Whether he becomes a fish, whether he becomes an ant, which he ll become. Whether he becomes a moose, whatever he becomes the whole point is that somehow all these groups have social structures and he s supposed to learn from these. So, Merlin says he kind of points this out to Arthur. Well, don t just be a doofus out here. Look around. Well, what are you seeing? So, he tells him again this is supposed to be for education on page 51 that second little paragraph you swim along. The second half, don t you see that this place is exactly like the forest, which you had to come through to find me? So, what is he saying? He s saying whether you are in the moat, whether you are in the forest these are all the same. They may appear different but they are a similar kind of experience. So, you have to learn from this. They are now going to see Mr. Bad. They are going to now see the kind of the moat. Since Merlin is a Doctor fish I guess big bad five-pound Doctor fish he has immunity. The pike won t eat him. Since Wart is his friend Wart is theoretically supposed to have some kind of immunity too. So, how do they describe the bad fish, the kingfish we read about 60% of the way down? Is he the king of the moat? He is old Jack they call him. Some call him black Peter but for the most part they do not mention him by name at all. I know it kind of makes you think of Harry Potter books where you don t say the name of the evil person because that somehow brings you bad luck. So, you avoid saying it. So, here they don t mention him by name. They just call him Mr. P. You will see what it is to be king. So, what is the message here? To be king now, to be king at the time Arthur is being educated, what kind of person if the moat is like the forest to be king in the moat is to be king in the forest is to be king anywhere by analogy. So, he s big four

16 LLT180L4.doc 16 feet long. His weight is incalculable. It says at the very bottom of page 51 the gray body shadowy and almost invisible among the stems ended in a face, which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch. What kind of king are we talking about? An absolute monarch by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains. What was he like? What s this king? What s this absolute despite like? At the top of the next page, he was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, and pitiless. Not particular nice attributes. What s the monarch s view of stuff? How does the world function? What s important in the world according to Mr. P? Might is right, power is everything. What about love? Now, I m really kind of a pathetic romantic individual. I describe myself as probably as a romantic realist or a realist romantic. I tend to think the good will out and all this stuff. I m constantly disillusioned when it doesn t happen. That s still the way I am. I tend to see the positive in stuff. My glass of bourbon is half full. No, just kidding. I don t encourage such behavior. I only drink red wine because it s good for my heart. No, seriously. It s important to know this stuff when you re old enough. About line 20 on 52 there is nothing said the monarch except the power, which you pretend to seek. Power to grind, power to digest, power to seek and power to find. Power to await and power to claim all power. As Reece read us love is a trick right after that played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same however a nice thing. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind. To the minds power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end. Only and this is the key phrase might is right. So, this is what Arthur obviously is not supposed to agree with and he s going to have to fix that that s how things are at this point. Then, they

17 LLT180L4.doc 17 change back. The next little chapter, chapter 6, is almost like an interlude. We ll find this a lot when White s writing different parts of the book. Sometimes we ll have a real serious chapter. Then, we ll just have kind of a throwaway chapter. It s like he doesn t want to bog you down too much and stop reading the book. So, he ll beat you up a little bit of trying to get the points across he wants to get across. Then, we ll have some silly little chapter that doesn t mean anything. The only thing I found interesting in this particular chapter was again at the end where we get more insight after the bird takes Arthur s arrow that was show into the sky. How Kay and Arthur or Wart react. Kay war frightened. He was spooked by this. He thinks like a witch did it. Boy, he needs help. He needs some serious counseling. Obviously, he s been in the woods a little too long alone. I m not saying that Wart s reaction is right but he was furious and certainly irritated. We ve talked and as we pick up in the next chapter in chapter 7 Merlin is going to grumble about athletics and the norm in society s obsession with athletics. So, certainly some appropriateness and concern for our own society. Unlike some faculty members I don t view athletics as a whipping boy. In fact, I was our faculty athletic rep to the NCAA for 15 years. So, I m fairly sympathetic. Before my present puniness I used to weight about 205 and played football and lacrosse in college before my knee went byebye. They want to get out the big knife and I said bye. No big knife for me. In retrospect I was really depressed. At that point of time people didn t realize I was so depressed that my body was broken that I lost about 35 pounds in about 4 months and just never gained it back. So, it s probably false weight anyway. Balance Thomas Mann; a 20 th century German novelist, if you do anything in comparative literature anybody who likes to talk about 20 th century literature always talks about Thomas Mann. He s really important.

18 LLT180L4.doc 18 Thomas Mann his first famous book was entitled Buddenbrooks, which was a name of a family. It had the subtitle Verfall einer Familie, decline of a family. Mann talks about a lot of stuff. His books are very complicated. One of the things that is kind of in Mann s books is that we exist on three levels. We exist on the physical level, the mental and some of you would want to say spiritual but probably in a general sense so people aren t offended. The word magical works really well as long as people aren t offended. How dare you call Christianity magical! Well, chill out. We ll put it under magical. Basically what we find in his characters is that as there s ascendancy on one level some other levels give way. Now, this isn t necessarily that you re 100%. So, if you gain 6% on the intellectual level you ve got to lose 6% somewhere else. You know it s really hard. It s really hard to do everything well. It s hard to look like Arnold, to pump yourself up and be all cut and maybe be as fit as you want to be. At the same time you want to do wonderfully in school. At the same time you want to pursue what you want to in a magical realm as far as spiritual development. I think there s only so much time in a day. That s why kind of the joke about college students. They don t go to church. Well, by the time you study, try to work out and party there s not a lot of time left for magical. So, we kind of this gets back quite obviously to our idea of balance, of keeping things in some relative degree of balance so that things don t get all whacked out. Merlin starts off and I guess we re about out of time. Merlin starts off complaining about the excess of concern with athletics. He says that the craze for games was the ruin of scholarship. He said nobody got scholarships like they used to when he was a boy. I think there s always a little bit of that feeling like people aren t as well educated as they used to be. I just kind of find how things change that are kind of curious

19 LLT180L4.doc 19 on what is considered modern. My wife is a professor in Spanish in my department. She and I both taught last fall, we both taught graduate level evening classes in the fall on the same night. I think it was on Monday night. So, we just usually stop on the way home and pick up something for dinner because it would be 7-7:30 when we were going home. We d stop at different places. We stopped at Subway one night. We went in and their cash register wasn t working right when we got to the checkout. My wife is younger than I am. She would say she s way younger than I am. We got to the checkout and it wasn t working. So, the young kid tried to ring this in a couple of times. He said I just can t make this work. I ll do it the old fashioned way. We laughed in the car about this later because we both in our brain envisioned him taking out a piece of paper, multiplying whatever taxes in Springfield, whatever it is times the amount. He took a calculator out of his pocket. I thought oh, the old fashioned way. So, we kind of had a laugh. We obviously didn t get to page 85. We re only on 57. So, to get an idea we covered 34 pages today. So, why don t you try to take it over to whatever is a logical break, about 100 wherever a chapter ends. Let me say 103. See ya next time.