I hope you all had (or are having) a fantastic Thanksgiving Day. I hope, too, that as Advent dawns this Sunday, you’ll experience the season in all its promise, wonder, joy, and especially peace.
Tragically Doug Chaplin has discovered that he is unable to post unless provoked to do so by the thoughts of others. Or, as he puts it
This has been the longest hiatus in my blogging since I started, but I have been enjoying a ten day wallow in the sin of accidie, and haven’t managed to stumble across any post that has stimulated me out of it. Even Jim West’s rantothons have been pallid of late.
Poor Doug, he hasn’t managed to stumble across anything outside himself which moved him to thoughtful reflection or even reaction. I suppose it was inevitable, as reactivity rather than proactivity seems to be the norm these days. Not having, it seems, within himself any impulse to put thought to keyboard, Doug has wallowed in the fallow fields of rancid staleness. We should all rejoice that he was able to be shaken from his intellectual stupor by someone with the hubris to name himself El Shaddai.
Pray for Doug, that somehow or other he be allowed by divine providence to stumble across something that gets his synapses firing more regularly. We are all blessed when Doug writes about oily virgins. Perhaps the muse will stir his stony heart once more before another 10 days.
Via Jeffrey Gibson.
I know them all except the two people on the back row on our left. Who are you, kind strangers?
The essay is available here.
Following are Philip Davies’ thoughts on the annual meeting along with a photo. Enjoy (as one always must when Philip puts pen to paper, or in this case, finger to keyboard):
Apart from the majority bent on frantic engagement with the latest in scholarship, there is a small and determined band of SBL attenders who go to the meetings for purely social reasons – including what we in the UK have come to call ‘binge drinking’ and what might more aristocratically be termed ‘reception history’ – namely the evening sessions, courtesy of institutions and publishers. This year I went along with that group, though in my defence I should say that I was there, as I have been since my retirement, in a publisher’s capacity.
It was a rewarding meeting in both respects. Finding it more difficult than usual to adjust to the jetlag, I ended each evening pleasantly satisfied but as far as I can remember, sober. Yet there was good reason to be jubilant. After a sorry AAR, publishers did well at the SBL. The Great Divorce has hurt publisher’s budgets, but on this first year’s experience, many of us may be expected to forget the AAR next year. One exhibitor, it seems, was doing so well that it was even able to close on Sunday [see pic].
Such was the demand for books, especially on Saturday, that some publishers reported Jewish customers choosing their wares on the Sabbath and deferring payment until Sunday. I wonder if this principle applies to all shopping – in which case maybe there is need for a special Jewish credit card on which any actual transaction agreed on a Sabbath is actually processed later? Provided that the shops are not too far from the house, of course…….
Indeed, it was rather difficult to banish thoughts of shopping from the mind. The cold weather prompted most of us to avoid the streets and so my trek from hotel to conference venue took me between parades fronted by hundreds of shops. May I suggest that in future meetings that can be arrange in similar fashion the retailers offers discounts to those wearing the SBL badge? It might reduce attendance at sessions, but increase the attendance of spouses and partners……
The smaller attendance (I gather it was about 5,500) meant that I came across more or less the same people that I normally do, only more often. Although the reduction in numbers was not actually huge, it seemed to me, and to many I talked to, that the atmosphere seemed a little more relaxed, slightly less hectic. Perhaps this was helped by the very fine organization of the meeting, which seems to get better every year.
My one regret is that because of a mix-up over my return flight, I had to miss a session on Monday evening in which I was to participate. I hope it went well – perhaps better than if I had been there, because I have a tendency to hog the conversation. It was one of the ever-increasing session in which publishers manage to have their books discussed – and why not, since publishers are paying about half of the costs of the meeting. And after all, it’s now becoming an important element in their chase for authors. I was very sorry not to show for the session, and I did miss the Monday evening reception history, which I dreamed about during the long sleep back across the pond.
Oh, yes, one more thing. One failure. I bumped into Hershel Shanks before I was able to take evasive action. Otherwise, all the people I went to Boston specifically NOT to meet were not met (it’s not a very big total, and don’t ask me for the names).
