| Short stories show a valiant effort from John Grisham Give the king of the legal thriller credit for expanding his literary range. Today, Ford County, John Grisham's first collection ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Who else should Tony Gordon have killed - in Corrie and beyond? Which other residents of soapland should Corrie's Tony Gordon have bumped off before fessing up to Liam's murder?Tony, Tony, Tony. Why did you do it? When there was so much more work to be done? Coronation Street killer Tony Gordon always knew he was heading for the underworld, even before he took over a factory of the same name. But now he's gone and spoiled it. Tonight Tony walks into a police station and confesses to the murder of Liam Connor, asking for one offence of pushing Roy Cropper into the canal to be taken into account.Bad news for non-swimmer Roy (David Neilson) who, for the first time since life dawned over the Red Rec, was not attached to the lifeline of his shopping bag. Corrie producer Kim Crowther told David she'd never felt more guilty in her life about having him plunged into the murky water. To which he replied: "Not guilty enough."In due course, Tony (Gray O'Brien) will face trial by jury – and Blanche – his labours in soapland left sadly unfinished. Surely he could have stayed a free man long enough to bump off Kevin and Molly for crimes against believable soap affairs? Taking Molly's Auntie Pam and her sandwich round out at the same time.Devil boy David Platt will be sitting at Tony's right hand side in Hades. So why not speed up the process and spare us decades of soap viewing purgatory which can only end badly? And Tony – what about kebab shop drunk Teresa? Currently shacked up with Lloyd, the taxi firm boss with a romantic life badly in need of a TomTom. Did she really deserve to live?We can all play this game. Weatherfield to Walford is but a few hours' drive. Slaughter on Albert Square? Take your pick, starting with the next person to walk into The Queen Vic. Or across the Pennines to Emmerdale, where they have troubles of their own. Gold-digger Charity might have a pretty face but she's first on my list.Hopefully Blanche, and the judge, will be merciful and set a low tariff for Tony's life sentence, allowing him to walk free after 15 years inside. Which in soap time will be 2012. So perhaps all is not lost. In a previous TV incarnation, Gray O'Brien played Peak Practice's Dr Tom Deneley and is, therefore, televisually medically qualified for daytime resettlement at the Mill Health Centre in Letherbridge. BBC1's Doctors. From which there is no escape.Coronation StreetTV and radioTelevisionIan Wylieguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Holiday Books: Photography More than 200 arresting photographs convey the complexity and scope of African-American beauty. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Box of Delights is a true Christmas classic With its dreamy prose and snowy, magical adventures, John Masefield's book deserves to be as much of a Yuletide favourite as A Christmas CarolCan there be a more Christmassy book, this side of old Ebenezer's adventures with his trio of spirits, than The Box of Delights by John Masefield? Young Kay Harker, returning from school to his family home Seekings and his festive visitors in the shape of a gang of cousins, is given the Box of the title to care for and protect by a mysterious travelling Punch and Judy man, Cole Hawlings. As is the case in these types of books, the Box is a treasure of such magnitude that by rights it should be entrusted to a private army rather than a small boy, and it isn't long before a gang of crooks with a rather magical bent, led by the dark Abner Brown, are on its trail and menacing Kay and his cousins. So far, so fairly traditional children's fantasy. But its Christmas setting in a snowbound corner of England (with particular resonances for this very festive season - all the grown-ups conspire to be snowed in elsewhere, leaving the children pretty much alone to enjoy their travails) and the dreamy, poetic language of author John Masefield come together to make it something of a seasonal classic that certainly bears repeat readings year after year. Dreamy and poetic … those descriptions are rather important in The Box of Delights. The novel was first published in 1935, and the author, John Masefield, was poet laureate from 1930 until he died in 1967. His prose trips along like a hallucinogenic daydream at times, especially when Kay takes advantage of the box's powers – he can use it to go swift, to go small, and to fall into the past, where he meets a succession of characters including Herne the Hunter of English folklore. In fact, the whole book is shot through with a folklorish, mythological flavour, and even the "real" world that Kay inhabits is peopled by a cast of often eerie, mysterious, enigmatic and sometimes downright scary figures. Masefield then, at the drop of a hat, switches between his poetic descriptions and episodes that are downright fairytale-ish or Narnia-esque, with talking animals and mice armed with sewing-needle rapiers. Masefield has a way with a well-turned, memorable sentence: "And now, Master Harker, now that the Wolves are Running, perhaps you could do something to stop their Bite?" Dreamlike indeed, which leads us to one of the major criticisms that has been levelled at the book … I suppose I should give a spoiler warning here, but not in the sense that I'm giving any of the plot away: Rather deflatingly, we learn on the final page, it was all a dream. A cop-out in anyone's language, but we should consider, I suppose, that in 1935 this plot device was perhaps not as hackneyed as it now seems. And all a dream? Somehow, given the magic that has infused the previous 300-odd pages of my Egmont edition, I rather doubt that Masefield meant that in the conventional sense. The Box of Delights is a dream - a Christmassy, satisfying and exciting dream of a book. And when I buy into a story in the way that I did with this one, I never fully believe that it didn't, in some way, happen. I'm glad I shared Masefield's dream, and with a big screen version on the cards, it might well become a Christmas standard for many more than me in future years.   Children and teenagersDavid Barnettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Rumi's Masnavi part 7: God's Grace; human tolerance | Franklin Lewis For Rumi, God's grace allows us to be judged on our intentions, and to recognise our common dependence on himHindus praise me in the terms of IndiaAnd the Sindhis praise in terms from SindhNot for magnificats do I make them pureThey themselves become pure and preciousWe do not look to language or to wordsWe look inside to find intent and raptureMasnavi 2: 1757-59Such is God's pronouncement toward the end of Rumi's tale about Moses and the Shepherd (Masnavi 1720-1815), in which Moses rebukes an illiterate shepherd for uttering a prayer to God that expresses his devotion as a naive desire to darn God's socks, rub his feet, wash his clothes, comb his hair, and pick his lice before sweeping a place for God to sleep. Speaking as the bearer of the Commandments, Moses (who is the prophet and the person most frequently mentioned by name in the Qur'an) denounces such prattle as blasphemy and harshly chastises the shepherd, who wanders off, deeply chagrined. But God reveals that by this action Moses has torn a servant of God from the presence of God: Were you sent in order to uniteor to distinguish and divide?!…I to all their qualities assignand give a form to their expressionWhat to some is praise, to you is blameWhat's honey to his taste, your poisonAbove pure/impure I'm sanctifiedFar above all suave- and boorish-nessI command my servants worship menot for my profit, but to bless them …We've no regard for words or languageWe look for spirit and behaviorWe see the heart and – if that's humble –ignore the words used, brash or mumbled … Masnavi 2: 1750-1760Moses then goes after the shepherd to console him, only to find that the shepherd's pure intentions have made him take this rebuke to heart, and have caused him to climb to a higher rung on the ladder of spiritual ascent.This tale presupposes God's love for his servants, and his willingness to overlook their shortcomings and to judge them by the spirit of their intent, rather than their outward conformity to the letter of law and dogma. Without the emanations of this divine grace and loving-kindness, all the eloquent hymns and praises, the subtle thoughts of humanity in description of the deity, would be so much anthropomorphic nonsense (Masnavi 2: 1800-1804). This grace flows from God to man not, for example, when he correctly performs rituals such as prayer, but when man's spirit is oriented God-ward (Masnavi 2: 1814).We have seen how Rumi's theology of love and the effacing of the baser self points to an existential unity in which everything is love, or as the Qur'an puts it, the face of God eternally remains after all else perishes. We experience our lives as separate individuated consciousness because our light has become refracted in the realm of matter and creation and so takes on the appearance of conflicting spectrums. But if we could trace the differentiated bands of distinctly coloured light we perceive back into the pre-prismatic realm, they would of course revert to a single bright whiteness. It is our presence in the realm of colours that casts us into this refracted state, and leads us to identify with and choose a particular side or colour:Slapped by the polo stick of His commandBe and it was, we roll through space and BeyondWhen the colourless became enmeshed in coloursa Moses came in conflict with a MosesGain back that colourlessness you once hadand with Moses and Pharoah peace will reignMasnavi 1: 2466Here, then, is a ground of being for a genuine theology of tolerance. Difference certainly does exist – in religion, in morality, in spirituality (in physics, where light is both particle and wave) – but our standpoint determines the perspective we adopt, which side of the prism we view at any given moment.Mention of Moses has bogged down your mindssupposing these tales tell of long agoMention of Moses, a veil cloaking eyesBut, my good man, Moses' light, look to it.Both Moses and Pharoah dwell within youSeek out these two foes in your inner selfIf we look to the lamp rather than the light, we will see duality and difference. But if we look at the light itself, it remains unchanged, no matter what colour the lamp.Mind of the universe! Point of viewmakes all the difference we see betweenbelieving Muslim, Zoroast, and JewMasnavi 3: 1251-58The role of religion and spirituality, from this perspective, is to open a vista into the transcendent colourless realm so that it informs our vision:As I enter the solitude of prayerI put these matters to Him, for He knowsThat's my prayer-time habit, to turn and talkThat's why it's said "My heart delights in prayer"Through pureness a window opens in my soulGod's message comes immediate to meThrough my window the Book, the rain and lightall pour into my room from gleaming sourceHell's the room in which there is no windowTo open windows, that's religion's goalMasnavi 3: 2400-2404IslamPhilosophyReligionFranklin Lewisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |