Responding to some questions

I said previously that we'd do today with The Storm what we did last time with the postings of reading journals and commentaries on people's readings of The Apparition. To make this a bit more efficient, I've grouped them, as far as I can, around a number of concerns, and I invite anyone who's so moved to propose one for discussion. I'll start by clearing up the prison issue.

• What is the purpose of Defoe setting up the Preface of The Storm like this? I think he is trying to tell us something very important “Preaching of Sermons is Speaking to a few of Mankind: Printing of Books is Talking to the whole World.” (Defoe, 3) .
•  “I cannot be so ignorant of my own intentions, as not to know, that in many cases I shall act the divine, and draw necessary practical inferences from the extraordinary remarkables of this book, and some digressions which I hope may not be altogether useless in this case.”
• He references God a lot again, which made me wonder if Defoe was religious, or if he is writing from someone else's perspective? aka, he does not believe in God, but is telling the story from the point of view of someone who does?
• This narration seems heavily religious. Who is this speaker, is it Defoe, and then why would he chose the event in religious terms?
• Why would he add the bits about history and philosopher's ideas on wind? Is it merely to make him sound smart and corroborate his theory that God manifests himself more in the wind than other parts of nature?
• It is very interesting the way that Defoe separates Nature and God. God as the 'He', the infinite power and controller vs Nature the 'She', the unpredictable and fickle, yet still under the control of the infinite power. I believe that a lot could be said about this topic.
•  I noticed Defoe created a distinction between nature (she) and God (he). Thought that was interesting. I was questioning all the letters Defoe used, but after reading that paragraph, I understand.
• "This is what I quote them for, and this is all my Argument demands; the deepest Search into the Region of Cause and Consequence, has found out just enough to leave the wisest Philosopher in the dark, to bewilder his Head, and drown his Understanding. You raise a Storm in Nature by the very Inquiry; and at last, to be rid of you, she confesses the Truth, and tells you, It is not in Me, you must go Home and ask my Father." P.12.  I really like the way this quote defines his idea of the relation between Nature and God.
• In Chapter One, Defoe compares Christian views to Philosophical views to ultimately argue the frustration of understanding the TRUE cause of things such as Wind and weather AKA The Major Storm that just happened.  He does not discourage anyone’s particular views but more or less makes it clear to the reader how each one is a different view but in the end still does not give us the true answer of the CAUSE. I wonder if the majority of readers agreed with these puzzling statements.What was Defoe's obsession with documenting historical tragedies in London? First the plague, now a storm. Was this just the kind of thing people wanted to read, or did Defoe himself have a fascination with it?
• It just came to my mind that how Defoe is stating the again, confusion on the CAUSE of the storm and WHY it happened it seems to relate a lot to The Journal of the Plague- I wonder if he kept this one in mind when creating The Journal of the Plague Year.
•  I am curious whether Defoe was personally leaning to a certain cause of the storm himself, or whether he did not have his own opinion.
• What was the true cause of the storm?
• "if a man tells a lie in print, he abuses mankind" After reading this, it made me wonder whether Defoe is being sarcastic or not. He is known to "lie," or write fiction (which is not true) therefore is he making a joke or is he being serious and everything else he writes he believes is true?
• Within the Preface, I wonder exactly who Defoe is talking about when he is talking about the 'liars' in text. He covers a variety of topics from history to Christianity. Thus, there must have been people writing variations of historical texts, or even the Bible.
• Also in relation to the Preface, although I do not know the chronology, would he consider a novel lying? Furthermore, how did he justify writing the Journal of a Plague Year? Or even the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal.
•  if one is not to lie and writing a novel is a lie what is Robinson Crusoe, or Mrs. Veal, or any number of his works?
• "If a sermon be ill grounded, if the preacher imposes upon us, he trespasses on a few; but if a book printed obtrudes a falsehood, if a man tells a lie in print, he abuses mankind, and imposes upon the whole world, he causes our children to tell lies after us, and their children after them, to the end of the world." This all seems very contradictory.
• In this passage of the Preface, Defoe addresses two ideas that are interesting to think about:
• 1. The inescapable role of “editor” of history, when writing about historical events as the “voice of God on earth,” or the Divine deliverer of truth to others—so in short, what an author does or doesn’t include, and how one justifies those choices?
• 2. How closely the role of historian is linked to the purpose of storyteller of truth or fact, and what happens when history if “fictionalized” – either in the sense that the truth reads as fiction but is still true and people know this, or that it is modified and partly made up, but people can’t easily tell what is or isn’t true. What impact does that have on how people think or perceive a given historical account?

• This one seems a bit random, I see lots of information on The Storm and it being a piece of modern journalism—was this labeled as journalism then, and is this a major history fact learned by students who major in journalism?
• The journalistic aspect of the piece is important to discuss. The fact that Defoe could write a strong piece of journalism before the genre of journalism even existed is interesting.
• The review I found about “The Storm” was quite appealing because it explained everything about Defoe’s work. This specific paragraph explains how Defoe put together this work, which I thought was great to learn about: "Defoe's eyewitness account is valuable, but his real innovation was to collect the observations of others. Journalism was then in its infancy, and there was nothing like systematic and objective reporting on contemporary events. Within a week of the storm's strike, however, Defoe was running newspaper ads that asked readers to submit stories. He and his publisher, John Nutt, must have regarded this invitation as an investment, knowing that they would absorb the cost of correspondence: In those days, the recipients of mail paid for postage.”
• Defoe posted in a newspaper that he was looking for people to tell their own stories about the storm for his piece, I wonder if many other writers did this as well.
• Were the letters added for effect or are they legitimate?
• I read somewhere that Defoe compiled this report by collecting interviews and written reports from various people across the country. There was also debate about the legitimacy of the accounts that he drew from, and his own work as a whole. So, it might be interesting to look at some other historical references to see if there is any evidence that might support or deny the legtimacy of his work, and then, depending on what the subsequent research says, I think it could be helpful in facilitating a discussion on what constitutes fiction and what doesn't.

• He uses a lot of numbers in his descriptions. It made me think of the statistics used by Swift. "In May, there fell more than in any month of any year since the year 1696, viz. 20.77 lbs. June likewise was a dripping month, in which fell 14.55 lbs. And July, although it had considerable intermissions, yet had M.19 lbs. above 11 lbs. of which fell on July 28th and 29th in violent showers." Where did all this come from? I would assume that there was some sort of an 18th century meteorologist that kept records of these sorts of things but how would Defoe have gotten a hold of them? It's interesting that he felt the need to include this, I don't think anyone that lived during the time could contest that there was or was not a storm, it sounds fairly undeniable.
• Defoe’s list of damages, deaths and table showing the height of the Mercury in the Barometer before, during and after the storm makes this a credible non-fictional history.
• I am curious about all the letters Defoe included in his piece. Did he include these letters so readers would reflect on their own personal experiences?
• I found several sections of the text was overly repetitive, all this information necessary?