A couple of things I picked up in the course of work today.... One, I never knew that Jack Kerouac was a Buddhist (or at least embraced Buddhist enlightenment on a philosophical level). But-- true! I ran across a copy of his Dharma Bums today on the shelf, and sure enough, Amazon's description reads:
One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac.
And in a similar vein (but probably less interesting to the general populace), I learned why mythology is classed in the high 200's (which is religion) instead of the high 300s (which is folklore). The heading in DDC is actually "classical religion" (or, more precisely, "Greek religion," "Roman religion," and "Norse religion." When I think about it, yes, that's a logical fit (gods, goddesses... yep, sounds like a religion to me), it's just... sort of weird. I grew up reading folklore and mythology all mixed up together as literature, so it's a little odd for me to think of part of it as, yes, this was once part of an organized practice of worship. Hm. I guess it gives me a little better insight onto those who look at the Bible purely as a work of literature.
Posted by gris at July 26, 2004 11:30 PMI can add another "new thing" to the list today... this is the first time I've actually used the blockquote tag in a document! And it even sort of almost validated, dammit! (I think the reason it didn't is because it's not defined in the CSS, and/or I'm sticking it into a form that's generating automatic markup that I can't see. But I'm sure Jeremy will tell me.)
Posted by: Gris at July 27, 2004 12:04 AMWhere do Bibles fall in Dewey?
Posted by: Matt at July 27, 2004 06:57 AMHeh. I remember offending a guy in Lynchburg one time by calling it the "myth of Jesus Christ."
(ooh, I offended a guy in Lynchburg! Bad me!)
Posted by: KT at July 27, 2004 09:21 AMMy father did the same thing when a girl came to his door trying to get him to buy... I'm not even sure it was a Bible, I think it might have been collections of Biblical stories. At anyrate he said he wasn't much interested in mythology and it took her a bit to figure out what he meant.
Posted by: Jeff at July 27, 2004 10:57 AMTo be fair, referring to "the myth of Jesus Christ" is sort of like referring to "the myth of Octavian" or "the myth of Buddha"-- you can debate all you like over whether he was God or holy person or whatever, but there's little question that the historical person *did* exist.
And as to Dewey and Bibles... well, the quick answer is that Bibles and books about the Bible are in the 200s. 220 is general works (and the text itself), 221 is Old Testament (the Tanakh), 22 is the historical books of the O.T., 223 is poetic books of the O.T., 224 is prophetic books of the O.T., 225 is New Testament, 226 is Gospels and Acts, 227 is Epistles (letters), 228 is Revelations (Apocalypse), and 229 is apocrypha and pseudepigrapha (books and letters not included in the "official" text).
Dewey's religion numbers are *strongly* Christian-oriented (just as the history numbers are strongly Occident-oriented), and they've done little to balance things out, really. A lot of this has to do with Mr. Dewey himself and his own upbringing, but it doesn't really excuse the fact that almost everything from about 225-289 is stuff about Christianity. (FYI, 290 is comparative religion and "everything else." Of the major modern world religions, Judaism gets 296 (our 296's are HUGE), Islam, Babism, and Baha'i is 297, 298 is unassigned, and 299 is "everything else of everything else."
Posted by: Gris at July 27, 2004 07:42 PM