The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald famously lamented that “there are no second acts in American lives,” having persuaded himself that any failure along the way consigns us to be losers for life.

Despite his early success and lifelong genius, Fitzgerald managed to fulfill his own prophesy. As his beautiful wife descended into madness, he became a bitter and violent alcoholic, dying prematurely of a heart attack at the age of 44.

The novelist’s failure might be dismissed as the product of a morbid artistic temperament. But at this moment many professional economists echo his pessimism, teaching that humankind is condemned to inhabit a “zero sum” universe, in which life’s winners succeed only at the expense of the losers.

Don’t believe it. The weight of evidence from the beginning of recorded history demonstrates that the novelist and his disciples of gloom are dead wrong. Failure is not permanent, but predictable and passing.

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One would be in less danger
From the wiles of a stranger
If one’s own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.

–Ogden Nash, Family Court

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.

She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air
whirled around, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

”“ John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

—Please read and ponder it all

“w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

It’s like saying “yay,” the dictionary said.

“It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,” Merriam-Webster said.

Visitors to Merriam-Webster’s Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers.

Runner-up was “facebook” as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.

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Mr. Mailer belonged to the old literary school that regarded novel writing as a heroic enterprise undertaken by heroic characters with egos to match. He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

He was also the least shy and risk-averse of writers. He eagerly sought public attention, and publicity inevitably followed him on the few occasions when he tried to avoid it. His big ears, barrel chest, striking blue eyes and helmet of seemingly electrified hair ”” jet black at first and ultimately snow white ”” made him instantly recognizable, a celebrity long before most authors were lured out into the limelight.

At different points in his life Mr. Mailer was a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women’s liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing. Boxing obsessed him and inspired some of his best writing. Any time he met a critic or a reviewer, even a friendly one, he would put up his fists and drop into a crouch.

Gore Vidal, with whom he frequently wrangled, once wrote: “Mailer is forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more chance, get through to us so that we will know. Each time he speaks he must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more foolish bells. Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements.”

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William Shakespeare left no diary.

He inspired no tell-all biographer during his day. He wrote 36 plays (more or less) during a seething period of political convulsion and religious intrigue, but we know neither his politics nor his religion. Was he easy-going Anglican, closet Catholic, flashy atheist, space alien? Will won’t tell. This radiant anti-celebrity Englishman eludes us still.

Nashvillian Chris Hassel has puzzled over Shakespeare’s poker-faced religion his entire teaching career. Short of outing Shakespeare as heretic, choirboy or druid, Hassel has produced a 455-page dictionary of every religious reference in Shakespeare he can find, more than 1,000 words scrutinized.

“I’ve never been able to pin him down,” says Hassel, who taught Shakespeare 35 years at Vanderbilt until retirement in 2003.

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THE Anglican communion should learn lessons from Harry Potter, a senior religious figure urged yesterday.

The Bishop of St Davids, Carl Cooper, said the Christian virtues of humility, respect and love portrayed in the stories about the teenage wizard should be replicated within the church.

But the religious world last night remained divided about the influence of the hugely popular series of books and films, with one Welsh evangelist describing them as a “doorway to the occult”.

The seventh and final book in the Potter saga ”“ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ”“ will be released tomorrow, with anticipation around the world reaching fever pitch among the character’s army of followers. To make the most of demand, Asda will be selling it for £5 a copy, the retailer said last night.

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UPDATE:

WARNING! There are spoilers in the comments!
I think most folks have been careful to note any spoilers in advance. But for those who’ve not yet read the book who are trying to remain unaware of the ending, read the latter comments below only at your own risk! –elfgirl

A more profound, if subtle, moral interplay is found between Harry and Dumbledore, who effectively lead the joint forces of good. Harry is a boy wonder, revered and reviled for his special powers by the respective forces of good and evil at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Headmaster Dumbledore is the best wizard there is, a seemingly omniscient force for good who rarely reveals his powers in full and who closely observes others’ courses of action.

Dumbledore knows Harry plays a unique and indispensable role in the battle against evil, and outwardly helps him from time to time. Yet for most of the series, Dumbledore keeps Harry unaware of the goings-on known or orchestrated by Dumbledore involving the bigger picture. In the course of his young life, Harry often feels Dumbledore is ignoring his personal needs.

A well-known, heart-wrenching passage in the Bible, from an anguished Jesus on the cross, captures their relationship well: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” When Jesus says that, he feels abandoned by God. We know from earlier in the Gospels that he understands the special role he is afforded by God the Father. But at that moment, it’s as if he feels separated from God or doesn’t comprehend the metaphysics of God’s plan to redeem the world through his sacrifice.

Harry Potter, too, knows he is special, that he is the only good wizard or person ever to survive a killing curse from Voldemort. He has a special scar on his forehead, a remnant of that battle.

Harry has followers who are devoted to him even if they don’t always understand him, and other fair-weather fans who probably don’t know what to make of him half the time. And, of course, enemies.

Sound familiar?

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In 2006, as lovers of poetry became aware that the 100th anniversary of W. H. Auden’s birth was coming up, some of them began to fret that the event wouldn’t receive the attention it deserved. No major celebrations seemed to be forthcoming, in pronounced contrast to the festivals for John Betjeman’s centenary that were going on throughout England in the second half of 2006. The BBC gave Betjeman a whole month of festivities, and wasn’t Auden a much greater poet, worthy of far more honor?

Yes, but ”¦ Betjeman was an enormously popular and beloved poet in England. (Almost the only person who didn’t love him was his tutor at Oxford, a young don named C. S. Lewis””not yet a Christian, by the way””who told his diary “I wish I could get rid of the idle prig,” and later wrote his pupil a letter which began, “Dear Betjemann [sic], You called the tune of irony from the first time you met me, and I have never heard you speak of a serious subject without a snigger.” Betjeman responded, in a book he published when he was twenty-seven, by offering effusive thanks to Lewis, “whose jolly personality and encouragement to the author in his youth have remained an unfading memory for the author’s declining years.”) And it was not just Betjeman’s poetry but also his deep love of Englishness””English architecture, English history, the traditional forms of English society, and the Church of England””that endeared him to his countrymen. As Richard Jenkyns has recently written, “Betjeman was not always sure that Christ was the Son of God, but he was absolutely sure that the Church of England was the true church”””an epistemological condition that for many an Englishman indicates well-ordered priorities.

Auden, by contrast, left England for America in January of 1939 and never returned for anything more than an extended visit. Though only thirty-one at the time, he was one of the most famous writers in England””he was twenty-six when the phrase “the Auden generation” entered the language””and his failure to return to his native land when war broke out later that year was denounced by angry MPs in the House of Commons. And if his wartime detachment cost him the respect of British conservatives, his conversion to Christianity two years later alienated, dramatically and permanently, the political Left, for whom he had been a hero.

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