1 Timothy

1:2 In addition to Paul's usual wishes of grace and mercy, he adds a blessing of mercy here.  An interesting choice.  What could have transpired in Timothy's life to make Paul perceive a need for mercy?

1:3 and also what were they teaching in Ephesus, such that Paul felt Timothy's presence there was needed?  His letter to them didn't have the same warnings as certain other letters, and I found it mostly warm and uplifting, rather than admonitory.

1:4,7 His reference to genealogies and law makes me wonder if there wasn't a problem with Judaizers, such as he observed in other congregations.

1:16 Oh, this is elegant.  Paul tiintroduced the idea of mercy ever so gently in his introduction, no doubt with the intention to develop it more fully here--but not as expected! 

1:18 Here's another interesting bit of trivia.  Evidently Paul received prophecies specifically with regard to Timothy's role.  Could they be the very visions that he hinted at in his letter to the Ephesians, thus prompting him to station Timothy there?

1:20 And what does Paul mean by turning these two "over to Satan"?  Simply that he has given up on them, in which case how could he possibly hope that they would "learn not to blaspheme", or is there some more complex metaphysical dynamic at work here?

2:2 Paul's first direction to Timothy is pretty bland.  He asks for prayers that the authorities will leave them alone. 

2:5 From where is Paul quoting here?

2:12 Paul's doctrine here not only grates, but it does not hold water.  He speaks from his own authority, saying "I permit no woman to teach" instead of indicating that the directive comes from any higher source, but the usual source of Paul's authority--his sound logic and theology--does not hold up here.  He cites as his reason that the woman was deceived and not Adam, but does that no make Adam more culpable than Eve?

3:1-13 Paul's qualifications for Bishop and Deacon are interesting, insofar as there is so little space between them.  The main difference is that Bishops musn't be new converts for fear of being "puffed up with conceit".  Is that really the only difference?  Seniority?

3:16 I'm really curious whether Paul is quoting something here, or lapsing into verse.  If the former, from where is he quoting?  If the latter, is it any good?

4:1 And here's the meat of his theology for this book.  The preceding directives are merely organizational in nature, but here he hits on the real point of his writing: that some are adding unnecessary proscriptions to the message.  He calls it hypocrisy, though I don't know if that's accurate unless they themselves are taking wives and forbidding other to.  At any rate, it makes the point of his outlining the qualifications for leadership clear.  In Ch. 3 he makes a point of saying that deacons and bishops are not forbidden to marry, but they should in fact be married--only once.

5:2 This is not the first time Paul has reminded Timothy to remain chaste.  I'm not clear on his standards here.  If Timothy decided to get married, would it not fall in line with the qualifications set out in Ch. 3?

5:9 What list?  The list of "actual widows"? 

5:12 So a widow remarrying is proscripted?

5:19 this is an interesting translation of a familiar verse.  In my upbringing, testimony from two or more witnesses was required in all cases.  In this translation, it is only against elders that such heightened burden of proof is warranted.

5:24 I really like this verse.  Indeed, some people sins (and good works, for that matter) follow them to the grave, others precede them there.

6:16  Wait a minute, hasn't Paul himself claimed to have seen Christ? 

Man, this whole thing just doesn't feel like Paul to me.  The faulty logic, the poetic interludes, the seeming inconsistencies.  I just don't feel the same voice here.

Unforgiven and The Grapes of Wrath

I didn't originally set out to place these two movies back to back, but I watched them in succession, so naturally the parallels stick out in my mind.  To be specific, both movies focus on a likeable, if rough protagonist, who is laboring to deal with his past mistakes in the American West.  Both movies were enjoyable and orth the time, but the successes of Unforgiven made the two minor weaknesses in Grapes of Wrath a bit more clear.

Firstly, I had a problem with John Ford's pacing and editing in Grapes of Wrath.  I couldn't tell what was so offputting about his transitions at first, but little scenes like focusing on a sign that said "Welcome to Arizona" for a few seconds before cutting to the next bit of plot development just jarred me.  Would it have been so difficult to just have that sign pass by while we were observing something else?  Did it really need it's own shot?  And he did that sort of thing a lot.  Even the scenes that propelled the plot felt popped out of a kit and lain next to each other instead of fitting together like a puzzle. 

Watching Unforgiven next made me realize exactly what was missing in Ford's equation.  Having observed this fault in GOW, I was watching for it and was surprised to realize that Eastwood did the same sort of piecing together, but it wasn't nearly so jarring.  What was the magic ingredient?  The soundtrack.  The presence of a piece of music lain over a series of potentially jarring scene cuts just made me more comfortable, and my mind was fooled into thinking that there were appropriate transitions.  Which makes one wonder, did Ford just not like using music, or was it not yet the cinematic convention that it is now? 

That minor greivance aside, both movies were well worth their place on the AFI's 100 films list, largely with the help of superb performances all around.  Hats off to Henry Fonda for making a potential didactic character quite lovable. 

한국 문화 77

Paul Nation 언어학자가 효과적인 두번째 언어 습득 프로그렘은 가닥 네개가 있다고 한다.  먼저, 의미에 치중하는 입력이 필요하며, 그다음에 언어에 치중하는 이력, 유창성의 연습, 의미에 치중하는 출력이 순이다.  그 네 가지중에 의미에 치중하는 입력의 부족을 여겨 그 부족을 보원하기 위해 이 쉬운 책을 읽었다. 

의미에 치중 하는 입력이란 세로운 무법, 어휘 별로 없어서 무선 뜻이 있는지에 치중할 수 있는 내용을 말한다.  배우는 게 별로 없으나 유창성, 정확성에 큰 더움이 된다.  따라서 읽으면서 배우는 느낌 아니라 습득하는 느낌을 받았다.  이런 학습 덕분에 한국어 실력이 높아지고 있지 않는가?

Kurt Vonnegut: Bluebeard

Up until the last page of this book, I knew exactly what I was going to write about it.  I was going to say that, in spite of having taken the laziest possible route for an author, vonnegut managed to stitch together something that was enjoyable, inventive,and occassionally insightful.

But that last page.

In it Vonnegut reveals that (although I still feel he did it the easy way) he has been developing to it's logical, glorious conclusion, an idea that he stumbled across years earlier in Breakfast of Champions: that at the core of every human, there is an unwavering band of light. I believe this with all my heart, that something at the core of this sack of meat animates it, and makes it worth more than hamburger.  Something not only more valuable, but more resilient than my meat is inside, pulsing with vitality and light, and furthermore the same is true of every other meat bag out there.  If I could just stop looking at the garbage sacks that they walk around in, and notice the neon tube at the core of every other human, how happy I and they would be!  Oh happy meat! Oh happy soul!  Oh happy Brandon!

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

I won't bother to write much about this book, partly because Nabovok has said everything there is to say about it, and partly because I have no idea where to begin.  Never before have I read so perfect, so complete a book and am weary that I am only now, in my 36th year of life experiencing it. Every last passage, every image, perfectly reflects the book as a whole, and layered on top of that structural and thematic perfection are incisive descriptions and explanations of human behaviors that, while universally experienced, are so subtle and precise that one would not have thought could be captured in words.  I simply must learn Russian after I have mastered Korean, so I can read the original.

Bonnie and Clyde / Chinatown

I choose to write about these two movies together, not only because I feel a pressing need to catch up on my writing, but also because my complaints about them mirror each other.  As before when writing about an item from the AFI's list of 100 American films, I find myself returning to the question "Is it actually great?", and in these cases to the question "Why not?" 

In the case of Bonnie and Clyde, I found myself reminded of Godard's Pierrot le Fou more than once.  While Bonnie and Clyde, Les Fous did not descend quite into the realm of postmodernism as Godard's more representative work, Arthur Penn's sudden, jarring cutaways indicated a similar discouragement to the natural tendency to build a narrative, or otherwise make sense of the proceedings.  By the same token, the cavalier, almost smirking tone that he seemed to take at times, while portraying explicit sex and violence that were shocking by 1960's American standards, seemed to reveal a Postmodernist refusal to take the matter too seriously, and by all means to avoid anything resembling a message.  All this is certainly significant, and it's very comforting to have an artistic framework within which to consider a film, but significant does not mean great.  To be fair, the AFI has never claimed that its list is of great films, merely of films. But I can't help judge a film by criteria that seem to fall under the heading of greatness:  visionary direction; insightful, sound screenwriting; and astonishing, believable performances.  This film seemed to have none of these elements, and so I wonder why anyone other than a film historian would ever watch it.

Chinatown suffers slightly less by those criteria.  I would call Polanski's direction just sort of visionary, in that he didn't quite pull it all together into something coherent.  Nicholson manages to turn his potentially cardboard gumshoe into one who clearly always has something going on under the hood, and Dunaway draws the audience in to her world in a way that she simply is never given a chance to in Bonnie and Clyde.  That script, though.  Clearly there is something being said about society, and the way the strong prey upon the week and woe are we and all that, but it feels so secondary, as though added in the final act to give it heft, and make Dunaway's demise more sympathetic than her eerily similar one 7 years earlier.  And the final bit about "This is Chinatown", clearly meant to refer obliquely to a running joke about the way Chinese fuck, doesn't seem to relate to the rest of the script. In short, while it is nearly great in some ways, it is in no way significant, while the opposite can be said of Bonnie Clyde.  The only reason I can imagine watching either again is to hone in on and write something incisive about Dunaway's performance, since she's awesome, and I like picking things apart.