Yesterday was Shelley's birthday, and Obama's, and the day that Alex Rodriguez of the cursed New York Yankees hit his 600th home run; and also a crucial and repeated date in the plot of Ford Madox Ford's glorious 1915 novel The Good Soldier. Among other things, it's the date of the character Florence's birthday, marriage, and suicide. Not once but twice I have happened to find myself reading that book on August 4, a coincidence that is rather skin-crawly. If you've ever read The Good Soldier, you'll understand why I do not, in any way, want to imitate the trajectory of Florence; and now I make a point to avoid taking that novel off the shelf during the summer months.

You may be pleased to hear that I am actually at this moment reading a novel I have never read before: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I've been meaning for quite some time to read a Robinson novel, and finally one leaped into my hands at the Goodwill, a sign that now was the time to undertake it. Which it certainly has been. This is a beautiful book--exquisitely, patiently composed; and though the narrator is an elderly midwestern Protestant preacher, he speaks, really, for anyone who puzzles over her place in this world, for anyone who loves it.

Here's a paragraph I read this morning:

[John] Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it? I suppose Calvin's God was a Frenchman, just as mine is a Middle Westerner of New England extraction. Well, we all bring such light to bear on these great matters as we can. I do like Calvin's image, though, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us. I believe we think about that far too little. It would be a way into understanding essential things, since presumably the world exists for God's enjoyment, not in any simple sense, of course, but as you enjoy the being of a child even when he is in every way a thorn in your heart.

I think this is a wondrous paragraph, and it is only one of many. Already I feel a letter to the author burgeoning under my fingers.

And now off to circumvent the hot day. Gazpacho tonight, and more of the endless green beans, and possibly watermelon sorbet. Till tomorrow, then, dear reader.