Believe Recast Be-Live

Believe Recast as Be-Live

by Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President

“Believe! Be live! What a word!” exclaimed Amy Krouse Rosenthal in the Anthropocene Reviewed. This collection of essays by John Green uncovers fascinating insights into everything from lawns to the Monopoly game. He rethinks the commonplace world with new perspectives.

My grandson and daughter got me the book and I can recommend it as interesting with a healthy dose of humor. Each essay is self-contained so you can choose the ones of interest, when you can find a few minutes to read. 

One chapter credits the Council on Books in Wartime as a crucial use of books to bolster morale during World War II. In 1942 the Council sent thousands of pocketsize paperbacks to U.S. soldiers because "Books are weapons in the war of ideas." For example, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsy were among the selections. A soldier reported that the books were "as popular as pin-up girls." What books would you send to soliders today? What books do you consider essential reading for students? I can see that reading does impact our national and community discourse. I remember when we had a Cedar City community reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and there was a staged performance of the jury scene. The discussions involved in community readings are interesting. Hopefully we will continue having such events.

Green takes something you think you understand, tilts it five degrees, and suddenly you are seeing the world from an angle you have never considered. A discussion of the sunset and the color spectrum leads to artist Tacita Dean's observation that "color is a fiction of light." A review of scratch-and-sniff stickers becomes a meditation on memory and childhood. Each essay functions like a short lens through which American life comes into sharper focus.

In discussing why we make art, Green quotes William Faulkner explaining that the work of an artist is "to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before." The description of the Lascaux cave in France was particularly interesting to me because my husband and I had visited the replica that protects the original cave. During the tour they showed how the flickering light of a torch makes it look as though the horses are running. Using the concave ridges in the cave walls creates this interesting illusion with the horse drawings. My husband, Des Penny, had always been fascinated by this phenomenon because of a King Tut lamp that his mother got in Egypt. It looks like the eyes are following you around the room when it is lit. He was delighted to bring King Tut to our home in 2019.

The Post-Script talks about the "wonder of art". Green muses, "When I finish a book, it feels very over to me, because once a book is published it's no longer really mine. It belongs to the peole who will read it." Responses to this book came from all over the world, as readers gave critiques and added their knowledge to the essays. "The art and its viewer or reader make meaning together in a collaboration that transcends time and space.  My feeling has always been that I make the words, and then leave them to becaome whatever kind of meaning a reader can find," said Green.

So let's put the "Live" in Believe as we pursue our reading.

(column for Iron County Today)

Des was pleased when King Tut came to our home in 2019