Joanna Russ in the Valley of Dry Bones

[randy_byers]

Boy, sometimes I'm amazed at the things I don't know. Today I was reading Andrew Sprung's analysis of Obama's Charleston eulogy and found there a quote from Obama's Dreams from My Father in which he lists stories from the Bible: "the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones."

Comments

[kate_schaefer]

This passage is also the source of the song, "Dry Bones." Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around.

[randy_byers]

I mean, I'm not going to say I'm a big Bible scholar, but I'm really surprised this particular story hasn't come to my attention before.

[history_monk]

I think Russ is simply saying, in her indirect way, "There is hope. There is always hope."

[randy_byers]

It's particularly potent coming at the end of a novel about the difficulty of imagining liberation in the face of the human predilection for oppression and injustice.

[history_monk]

Yup. Russ was an exceptionally fine writer.

[ron_drummond]

I'm very moved by this, and grateful that you took the time.

Forgive me, but I found I wanted to rewrite your last sentence thus -- but then, rereading it, I realize its first two words may obviate the need. I'll go ahead anyway: "It's a reminder that human history is not only the stories we tell but also -- perhaps predominantly -- a force greater than stories."

John Carroll, in his superb book-length exegesis of the Gospel of Mark (the New Testament's only masterpiece), The Existential Jesus, retranslates the opening of the Gospel of John as "In the beginning was the story", arguing that that word choice gets much closer to the meaning of the Greek word logos than "word" ever can. (Carroll's only comment in the book about his own beliefs is to affirm that he is not a "practicing Christian.")

[randy_byers]

Thanks, Ron. Your edit of the final sentence is indeed more elegant than mine!

I was thinking later that perhaps the stance Russ took toward story in this novel is similar to Lao-tse's, "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao."

By the way, I just posted a review of Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life. Thanks for giving me the book; it was well worth reading.