Another Little Review of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming
An Amazon reviewer, M. Heiss, recently read and reviewed the Little Way of Ruthie Leming. I was alerted to her review (I know she is female from reading her other reviews) through her positive comment on my review of the book. She states "Thanks for your brilliant review. Wish mine were half so lucid. If I had read your review, I would not have bothered writing my own." I responded assuring her that her review is as good as mine. In fact I think it is much better, and I'm glad she didn't read my review if that really would have suppressed the expression of her opinion. Here it is in its entirety:
A book that doesn't know what it wants to be.
by M. Heiss
Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography? This book is not a biography -- slap a "Self-Help" label on this thing.
The book is a mess. I'm sure the author was a mess, given the circumstances. And writing about a messy situation when you're an emotional mess results in, well... a book like this.
Rod Dreher gives you the obligatory 3 parts:
1) Introductions — get to know the family's personalities, the conflicts, the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?), and the community norms in small-town Louisiana.
2) The diagnosis as a rallying cry — Everybody's personality shines in this section. LOTS and LOTS of spiritual awakening. And LOTS more. And then some MORE.
3) Resolution — no surprises. More catharsis. More spiritualism.
From the title and word of mouth, I thought this would be a book about Ruthie Leming's fight with cancer. Instead, this book was about the author's fight with/against his family and himself. Who wins? Not the reader.
A few things are obvious to me after reading this, and the evidence presented is heartening. The first is that this person probably would have been a "Contra-Crunchy" had she known and cared about the conversation back in 2006. It seems like she had been unfamiliar with Rod Dreher's other writings and his, um, unique stylistic idiosyncrasies before reading The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. She has a normal reaction to seeing bull crap proffered as filet mignon. Her remark "the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?)" succinctly sums up Kathleen's and our own reactions to his ever-evolving 9/11 narratives.
The other encouraging aspect comes from her beginning sentence — "Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography?" This insight demonstrates that there is critical thinking going on in the world, and that at least some of those critical thinkers can and do express their thoughts with great precision. Another thing she pegs is the spiritualism present in the book. Dreher fans might object to this word since most traditional Christians shun attempts to contact the spirit world, and Rod Dreher has always touted his traditional Christian belief and practice in each new church he bounces into every few years. His apologists need to read Dreher's short story A Ghost in the Family if they don't have the time or desire to read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. That should shut them up if they still don't want to admit that he's into spiritualism.
Speaking of A Ghost in the Family, I was thinking of doing a long form review of this gem of inadvertent comedy here on the blog back in June. But I was too busy at the time. I was planning to also include the background information of how Rod knew Father Termini and his Ghostbuster friends. Maybe another time.
If you think Ms. Heiss's review is helpful in any way, please go over and give it a YES vote. It's already got a down vote; I don't know who possibly could have down-dinged it within minutes of it being posted. But so far it's batting .500.
M. Heiss can observe Dreher in his natural state munching on the squeaking, squirting flesh of Ruthie here, where he slaps the already exhausted Little Way™ brand on yet another passing item, this time an Onion story.
ReplyDeleteCrunchy Con™, now Little Way™. This is like a comedian who works day gigs in strip malls trying and failing to come up with a signature phrase that will finally make him famous, like Dan Whitney's "Git-R-Done!". You can see him in the dead of night, his face uplit by the spectral glow of his laptop as his wife, dreaming of sex, tosses in troubled sleep nearby:
"'Forward!'...no, they'd sue...'Orthodixie'...no, that's still going nowhere, even next door...'Bourbonoogie'...whoa, promising, but what does it even mean?...
Pauli we need an official Est Quod Est office pool:
- What will Dreher's next writeblurt be?
- What signature branding phrase will he try to waterboard out of it?
Dreher's ghost-busting spiritualism would certainly be a likely area. In a novel, no one would have to accidentally blanche any pixels, and anyone could be anywhere, anytime, doing any cartoonishly heroic thing.
Keith
How about "the little way of Bourbon and Ambien"?
Deleteokaysothisisamoralitytalerightandokaysobourbonandambienarecartoonmiceinparisrightandbourbonisthebigwayrightokayandambienisthelittlewayokayanditllbelikeratatouillemeetscrimeandpunishmentrightokaysowowicanhardlybelievemyowngeniusrightsoallicansayis...bourbonoogiewoogiebrbleurblebubbalilorthodixawayzzzzz....ZONK
DeleteKeith
LOTS and LOTS of spiritual awakening. And LOTS more. And then some MORE.
ReplyDeleteLOL. This lady is brilliant. And funny. And she has a way with words. (So do you, Keith. And then some. ;))
Not me, but Pauli HAS to get this lady here.
Delete"Wait-what?"
Absolutely brilliant, like putting someone on the ground with only a demitasse spoon.
Keith
I like her style because she is so succinct. She's a mom and doesn't have any time to waste. Like Kathleen in that way. For that matter, my wife has provided some of the best -- and most succinct -- Dreher commentary ever. For example, the other night I told her about the dream about the nest with 3 eggs. She looked straight at me and said "Wow." That's it, just one word, "Wow."
DeleteShe said two words when I told her about the subtitle of TLWORL ...and the Secret of a Good Life. "How pretentious," were her words.
Of course we had fun discussing what would happen if a dream contained a nest with 8 or 9 eggs, or a carton of a dozen eggs. Or what if you had a dream where the recipe called for you to separate the eggs to make meringue? Etc.
Pauli: She said two words when I told her about the subtitle of TLWORL ...and the Secret of a Good Life. "How pretentious," were her words.
DeleteHeiss's book review is terser and harsher than mine. While I thought the book was passable, I would agree with Heiss to the extent that I do not consider TLWORL to be a breath-taking and stunning work of surpassing genius.
When I finished the Book of Ruthie (chaps. 1-11), and entered the Book of Rod (chaps. 12-14), I was expecting that maybe the "Secret of a Good Life" might begin to show up somewhere. Well, I didn't find the "secret", but I did find plenty of RD.
And in the Book of Rod, from what is probably the most signal and revealing quote in the entire book, I learnt a good deal from his niece: "Uncle Rod, you're too intense!" That one short little sentence blurted out explains a whole lot about him, way more than he intended, I think.
I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember another signal quote was when RD said something to the effect that "it really stinks being the only guy in town who could tick off a saint." And yet it seems here that he can't imagine that maybe, just maybe, he might be the source of the "problem" and not some kind of "philosophical chasm" between himself and his sister, or some other "modern vs post-modern" folderal. But who knows for sure? Ruthie isn't around to explain what her "bad opinions" about her brother were, nor why exactly she held them. And RD didn't really tell us in the book either.
Yes, Pauli, you have pointed out that in the case of what he did on 9/11, RD has a tendency to change his account of things. In TLWORL, I also suspected, from different places in the book, that he doesn't always disclose relevant information, or there is something going on that he hasn't told us about. I wish I had time to give the book a second very careful reading while taking more notes, so I could illustrate the places where I think this occurs.
As I pointed out in my review, RD's response to Jeremy Beer strongly suggests to me that RD might be having some kind of "second thoughts" about his book, and he wants some way to "re-write it". I think this would explain his recent blog posting where he talks about writing his "novel".
In TLWORL, I also suspected, from different places in the book, that he doesn't always disclose relevant information, or there is something going on that he hasn't told us about.
DeleteOengus, you touch on something extremely important here. If I ever write my "long review" (which is daily becoming more doubtful) I'm planning to go in depth on the tendency to withhold certain information. For example, Rod explicitly says he doesn't remember the crime he committed for which Ruthie was willing to take the punishment. I call BS on that. I think he remembers and merely doesn't want divulge it.
There are some other parts of the book where he doesn't flesh out particulars which makes those parts dull and not as good as parts full of details, e.g., how "Big Show" got his name, etc.
I suspect countrylad gave it the down vote
ReplyDeletePauli, sorry, I don't think I can make this succinct, although at bottom it's only about "the author's fight with/against his family and himself", as M. Heiss so exquisitely puts it. OTOH, let me add my vote to those wanting to see your long review of TLWORL. There may be a lot more we can learn.
ReplyDeleteOengus, I'm fairly savage and merciless with Dreher because of his arrogance and universal sense of entitlement, but you keep hinting at something key here. At the bottom what we are dealing with is a tragedy, although maybe not the tragedy most would imagine. It's the classic tragedy told by Mary Shelley, the story of Rod the Re-Animator, the man with the obsessive hubris to keep tinkering with and reengineering his sister long after her death, detaching and reattaching limbs and organs and twisting a screwdriver in her brain until her relationship with him finally functions correctly, he hopes, that is, comes out the way he needs it to be for him to be at peace with himself without having to change his own behavior towards others or his own image of himself.
But we can already see this dishonest project is doomed by an even more basic level of either dishonesty or the radical obtuseness that comes from being wholly alienated from ordinary people, both fatal flaws in anyone purporting to be a journalist. Specifically, we see it in the wholly artificial, manufactured language you quote, Oengus (and I don't doubt any cursory search of the text would turn up much, much more):
"it really stinks being the only guy in town who could tick off a saint."
Now, I don't think we need to dwell on the obvious passive-aggressive appeal to pity there buried under its thin veneer of irony (Oh, Rod, if only we all had giant bosoms to clutch you into, poor boy, to heal your pain at being that only guy in town!). What sings out with the calculated machinations of the Re-Animator, though, is the language itself: it "stinks" to "tick off" a saint.
This is the way Howdy-Doody would talk, this is the way someone recently freed from some sort of stasis would construct dialogue, like "Sis, get your fanny out of here right now!", I remonstrated with her harshly. This is the unreflectively phony language construction of someone who tells his adult blog readers today We’d stopped at the Whataburger next door on the way to Austin so the kids could tee-tee,. Who ever bothers to use "tee-tee" among other adults? Why would they? This is someone putting on a meticulously constructed shadow puppet show, not a memoir from the heart, which is why it's hardly surprising both Oengus and Pauli feel things are being concealed and left out.
It's this screaming phoniness that tells us that the whole TLWORL project is ultimately located only within the confines of the author's head and populated only by the voices he allows there, starving rats sealed in a mayonnaise jar being peddled as art. Imagine, The View actually passed on that.
This ultimate dishonesty, self and otherwise, is also why Phil Robertson's book keeps summiting the number one spot while Dreher's is headed for the pulping mill.
And the final, most interesting item to me: all those wonderful countervailing 5-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, far more verbose than M. Heiss' succinct autopsy, tells us there are in effect many, many more Rod Drehers out these walking around in different skins, a large percentage of whom you're paying premium dollars to educate your children if we're assuming they map anywhere near the number of academics that populate his blog. That's the ultimate scary story to me.
Keith
And...a 2600 word fuzzy sock about food culture wrapped around that same old bouillabaisse anecdote rock to take another gratuitous bash at poor Ruthie's skull for good measure while once again slapping a Little Way™ sticker on something only tenuously related.
DeleteYou're absolutely right, Oengus, an intervention is exactly what's needed and the only thing possible. But who would he listen to? Maw and Paw? Mike Leming? This whole routine is targeted at them no less than Ruthie.
Keith
Keith: "It's the classic tragedy told by Mary Shelley, the story of Rod the Re-Animator, the man with the obsessive hubris to keep tinkering with and reengineering his sister long after her death, detaching and reattaching limbs and organs and twisting a screwdriver in her brain until her relationship with him finally functions correctly, he hopes, that is, comes out the way he needs it to be for him to be at peace with himself without having to change his own behavior towards others or his own image of himself."
DeleteThis invokes images out of a old movie. The mad doctor yelling at his minion, "Igor! Bring me Ruthie's brain! No, You fool! Not that one. The other!"
After seeing this kooky stuff, I now think that things have become tragic on several levels.
Of course, RD scrubs out any dissident voices who have the temerity to tell him that he is talking pure nonsense. But who does that leave? I simply cannot fathom how any sensible person would take this pseudo-intellectual babble at all seriously. But I guess there are people who do.
Keith: "You're absolutely right, Oengus, an intervention is exactly what's needed and the only thing possible. But who would he listen to? Maw and Paw? Mike Leming? This whole routine is targeted at them no less than Ruthie."
Adding everything together, I cannot escape the conclusion that the man has something going like a serious pathology. More and more, he looks like he is hankering to repudiate his own book and rewrite a different one altogether, maybe even re-write history to turn his sister into … sigh, who knows what kind of Frankenstein's Monster he'll turn her into? … and therefore he keeps exhuming his dead sister from the grave, again and again, then subjecting her to multiple absurdities, rather like what you vividly described.
But this has now gone beyond someone being a sleazy ego-driven hustler. This is downright sick.
There can be another family tragedy going on here, besides just the cancer cutting a life short. A death in the family can trigger all sorts of lateral outcomes. I've seen it happen. Therefore, I start to wonder what his wife and kids are getting subjected to. A man who write such blithering lunacy looks like he is in the grip of a deranged obsession about his dead sister, and therefore I have to conclude that he is not a mentally healthy man. And to me it seems inevitable such a derangement will have a deleterious effect on his own family, and other people who are closest to him.
Obviously, leaving a comment in the comment boxes on his blog will not do any good, because his blog seems to be just one of the things feeding his obsession. One can hope that maybe someone nearby can intervene somehow, or slap him around a little and maybe knock some sense back into him. Or will electro-shock therapy be necessary?
I don't know, but perhaps there is a real life tragedy unfolding right before our eyes. And besides that, the other likely outcome that he is basically killing his own career as a writer. He might try writing a novel, but nobody is going to read it because it will be nothing but bat guano.
Me: "One can hope that maybe someone nearby can intervene somehow, or slap him around a little and maybe knock some sense back into him."
DeleteAfter this and later this, it had me wondering.
I don't know anything about the lady other than she's a little long-winded, but I noticed in all of it that Frederica Mathewes-Green manages to say this to RD, who seems to consider her "my Orthodox Christian friend":
"I could probably keep going. I don’t really know why I get so exercised about philosophizing and theologizing. I just feel like it’s a delusional and ultimately poisonous thing."
I don't want to make too much out of any of this. And I could be completely wrong, but it sounds a little like she's saying to our Working Boy that he needs to "chill it a little, bro, because you're going the wrong way."
And if there is anything RD loves to do, it is "philosophizing things to death." And lately this has been the case using his departed sister combined with his odd gastronomic infatuations.
Whether he embraces the lady's advice is another matter.
F M-G has a few issues of her own. And she is rabidly and ignorantly anti-Catholic. I must confess I don't like the lot of 'em.
DeleteKeith, just so you know, I don't expect you -- nor do I want you -- to be succinct. Your insights are for the most part priceless, and your delivery is hilarious.
DeleteFMG leaves a fascinating comment on Dreher's blog about why she doesn't like "theologizing" that reveals far more than she could ever imagine. She discusses when she was on a panel and some Cathoilc academic started calling her out on her BS. She states categorically that she did not understand what he was talking about, at all. She confesses she had no idea and was "trying to piece things together" while he spoke. But then hilariously she uses this episode as proof positive that "theologizing" is something nasty and non-productive, *even though she admits that she didn't understand the man's points at all*. Further, she casts everyone in the room who vocally supported the Catholic academic as just participating in nastiness for sport. The notion that there was an intellectual exchange going on completely escapes her It's actually fascinating to read. It reminds me of people who write turgid, unclear treatises and then blame the reader's supposedly inferior intelligence for the lack of comprehension.
DeleteIsn't that classic Dreherrian behavior? Instead of giving someone the benefit of the doubt when he has a criticism, just write him off as a nasty SOB who's not worth the time. And ignore even the remotes possibility of one's own shortcomings.
DeleteKathleen...that's a hoot re FMG. Yes, she is the Queen of that Mystical-East-vs.-Rationalist-West Myth; sounds as if her polemic stems from her insecurity, perhaps?
DeleteMeanwhile, over at Modestinus's blog, a Catholic monk named Brother Peter demolishes that silly myth -- very charitably yet cogently (quoting Brother Peter here):
The best refutation is the prayer life and “mystical” writings of an allegedly “rationalist” theologian. These “rationalists” were more serious men of prayer than most of their “mystical critics”
So, you can look at someone like Garrigou-Lagrange
“The Three Ages of the Interior Life”
“Christian Perfection and Contemplation”
“Our Savior and His Love for Us”
or the biography of him: “Reason with Piety” by Aidan Nichols.
You can also look at some of the work done on Thomas Aquinas by people like Jean-Pierre Torrell:
“Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas”
“Thomas Aquinas. Volume 2: Spiritual Master”
The second best refutation is to actually get them to read some 6th and 7th century Greek Fathers. (A good example is Maximus the Confessor’s “Dialogue with Pyrrus”) Most of that “mystical” vs. “rational” nonsense that comes from some people in the East stems not just from ignorance of Western Christianity, but also from ignorance of Eastern Christianity (or at least, a fanciful re-imagining of it)
The “rational” vs. “mystical” distinction is complete bunk anyways. An intellectually curious person can’t pray or be holy? Come on. God deifies your brain, he doesn’t shut it off.
Besides, properly theological insight makes its own contributions to the mystical life. The person who only has experience is not necessarily the best guide for others. Someone who has a grasp of theological principles and how they apply to the process of theosis will have a better chance of both avoiding self-deception and leading others aright.
The infuriating thing is that they USE concepts such as "mysticism" and "Christian charity" to write off any criticism that presents more intellectual rigor than makes them entirely comfortable, i.e. that even slightly interrupts their constantly humming superiority complex. Any religious attitude that pre-empts debate is a cult, I don't care if you call it orthodoxy.
DeleteAs an aside I've been researching the behavior of substance abusers for entirely unrelated reasons, and that is exactly the kind of thing they pull. We see here that religion can be abused just like drugs and alcohol can.
DeleteAny religious attitude that pre-empts debate is a cult, I don't care if you call it orthodoxy.
DeleteAmen!
I call it the EO "have your cake and eat it" routine: *They* (especially the ones, like My Dear Friend FMG, who jump from Canterbury to Constantinople without any stop in between) have a better understanding of cold, legalistic Roman logic than poor benighted you, but when *you* start questioning the Eastern theology or history, well that's a mystical, existential knowledge of God that you would never be able to comprehend.
Delete-The Man From K Street
Hah. Yep, that's how it seems to work.
DeleteHave you ever read any of FMG's screeds bashing Saint Anselm? Even her own priests have told her to give it a rest, and countless people more learned than she have pointed out the ways in which she misunderstands and misinterprets Anselm's theory of the Atonement. To no avail. She has found a stick to beat the Catholics with, and it doesn't matter how flimsy it is, she's going to flail away.
Ask Kathleen about the article in which FMG claimed that Catholics experience their religion, including the Mass, as a "business transaction." Now she's a clairvoyant who can read our minds, hearts, and souls. Who knew?
The woman could win an award for Most Obnoxious Ortho-Convert Bigot if she didn't have so much competition.
Diane: "The woman could win an award for Most Obnoxious Ortho-Convert Bigot if she didn't have so much competition."
DeleteAs I said earlier, I never even heard of Frederica Mathewes-Green until I saw her mentioned at RD's blog.
But going by some of the comments here, she seems to have some kind of track record.
As for "mystics", I did read St Teresa of Avila's autobiography once (and am trying to get through her other book Interior Castle). Maybe I am a real idiot, but I thought I learned at least a few things from her book:
(1) genuine mystics never think of themselves as "mystics".
(2) Also, they are very practical.
(3) They never contradict doctrine.
(4) They totally love God.
I am not suspicious of mysticism per se. I am a little suspicious of overly self-preening "professional mystics" who go on well-paid lecture tours.
Oengus, well said.
DeletePray for me.
"I suspect countrylad gave it the down vote"
ReplyDeleteIt's easier than sending a court summons.
Keith: "bouillabaisse anecdote"
ReplyDeleteKeith, you reminded me of something. Though I didn't put it in my book review, that "bouillabaisse" incident in TLWORL was one of the places that just didn't ring true. It was unconvincing to me as a reader. I kept getting the feeling that RD had left out some critical piece of information which would have explained the motives that the other people had. It is easy for me to imagine that had I been there I would have come away with a different impression of why what happened happened. The incident just didn't quite make 100% sense. It was one of the weakest spots in the book.
Well, considering that bouillabaisse is a lot like gumbo, a South Louisiana staple, it doesn't make sense to me, either. There had to be something else going on there. I mean, Louisianans are not a bunch of clueless rednecks who have never tasted exotic spicy foods. Au contraire!
DeleteLol...posted too soon. Just read as much as I could stand of the food / culture thang. Oh, so that explains it. People who live near Baton Rouge have more conventional tastes. Their shrimp creole lacks depth and richness. Dang, they must be clueless rednecks after all.
DeleteOops, I meant depth and vividness. If there's one thing you want your shrimp creole to have, it's vividness.
DeleteOoooh, I see now. Rod does recognize that bouillabaisse is in fact very similar to Cajun food. His problem was that he called fish stew by a fancy name, so it sounded too cosmo and pretentious to his hick sister. Got it. Yikes. Either this anecdote is highly embellished or Saint Ruthie really was a biyotch.
DeleteThe bouilabaisse caper is typical Dreher: conflating matters of taste with matters of truth.
DeleteRuthie and the kinfolk didn't want to eat the damn bouilabaisse, and Dreher turns it into an existential modern-vs-post-modern crisis that shakes him to the core of his being. A couple of years later, and Dreher has now grown it into a signal event defining a culture.
It's fish soup, for Pete's sake. Get over it already.
It's fish soup, for Pete's sake. Get over it already.
DeleteBwahahahahaha!
I've just posted a comment there - my first venture into Rodworld - asking for a bit more clarification on Bouillabaissegate. I'll link to it here if it's approved.
DeleteI've just posted a comment there - my first venture into Rodworld - asking for a bit more clarification on Bouillabaissegate. I'll link to it here if it's approved.
DeleteNothing to be done.
Keith
Comment not approved. I find myself wondering, in a rather objective way, what caused non-approval. This was actually a genuine comment with a couple of honest questions:
Delete_________________
Like your other commenters, I was quite shocked at Bouillabaissegate when I read the book.
Ruthie's reaction is not what surprised me most. That can be written off as typical nasty sibling rivalry. What surprised me was Maw's reaction. Of course "mother-in-law issues" are legendary, but to see this from the mother of a traditional Southern family, who doubtless worked hard to teach basic politeness and table manners to her own children? After approving of the menu and generously letting you and your new bride cook for her? I find myself asking whether there's some critical extra piece of information - ANYTHING at all - which might help explain this bewildering anecdote.
Rod, I also have to ask this: What happened next? Did Mam and Paw order a pizza instead? Did everyone just sit there, bowls clean, and starve with grim determination?
Andreas, after you've been in the Rodverse for awhile it will no longer strike you as unusual that his constructions have a tendency to implode upon scrutiny like those sensitive plants in Avatar (FWUMP!), which is probably why your comment wasn't approved. You yourself didn't notice it, but on the Rodar your comment appeared as "AH-OOOGA...AH-OOOGA...I AM A QUERY BOMB...I AM A QUERY BOMB...9...8...7...6..." (you can imagine Dreher peering anxiously into a round, black & white laptop screen like Ming the Merciless, finger poised over the Destruct Button, if that helps).
DeletePart of the fun of reading Dreher for me is watching his already approved castrati launch questions they don't realize are those types of query bombs. As pre-approved castrati, he can't very well dump their comments, so to evade the threat he ends up giving them these convoluted, tortured answers that always remind me of that old Kraft macaroni & cheese commercial where the 5-year-old explains how Kraft makes the cheese the cheesiest by firing the cow over the moon in a rocket ship, before dissolving in giggles at the credulity of the adult interviewer.
Keith
Keith: "…his constructions have a tendency to implode upon scrutiny…"
DeleteKeith, you make some funny comparisons. Ming the Merciless. Castrati. Frankenstein. Avatar.
But I'll go a step further and draw the most obvious conclusion:
The incident was a complete fabrication. It never happened. There was never any fish soup to begin with.
That part of the story is looking just too "made up" for me. We can speculate on why it was put in the book. My theory is that RD has some kind of mental issue going. As proven again and again, he is basically dishonest. So I think it is entirely possible that he flat out lies sometimes.
If my theory is correct, it becomes more understandable why his sister had some "bad opinions" about her brother.
I'm inclined to think there really was a fish soup, and a very rude reaction to it, and a realization that something was going wrong within the family. Just seems as if the story has been manipulated on its way to becoming a Crunchy Little Origin Myth. As Oengus says, it doesn't quite ring true in its official form.
Delete(Still curious about what happened next. Pizza? Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle? Sulking at an empty table?)
Andreas, you're not missing much. I've thrown a couple of comments on the board over there that actually got through. But unlike here and on other blogs, the commenters over there essentially talk past each other. There is little response by commenters to other commenters. I wonder if the goal of most comments there is the thrill of wondering if the Great One will deign to add an "NFR" to it (score!). Two points if it is a favorable one.
DeleteOf course, the commenters are often as wordy as Dreher himself, which leads to little conversation.
So you're not missing much by not making it through. The ones who missed out are those who would have read and benefited from your comment.
Andreas, soup or not, there is a credibility problem here. Yes, it is possible that something happened, a blow up of some kind, or angry words getting exchanged, but until some other witness comes forward, we really have no way of knowing what the details actually are other than what RD says. But there is something very fishy about what he says. (Yes, that was a pun.)
DeleteBut what especially got me thinking was your observation that Maw Dreher's reaction in the anecdote made totally no sense whatsoever in the light of what we see of her elsewhere in the book. Secondly, it is RD's refusal to answer your very reasonable query about what was a very puzzling incident. Therefore, inescapably, I have to question his honesty.
I have met a few pathological liars before. They can even be very talented and intelligent people but who just have this odd insecurity, a kink in their mentality, where they sometimes make up stuff — usually to impress others or to validate themselves — and they really cannot grasp that what they are doing is lying. They will even believe their own fictional embellishments because they can't always distinguish between falsehood and fact.
Is RD a pathological liar? I really don't know. But I do know that various people reading the same book are having much the same problems believing the same incident in the book.
So until some other witnesses come forward (which is not likely to happen), the bouillabaisse anecdote is very suspect. The simplest way to say it is that it never happened, at least not in the way RD described.
Pikkumatti: "Of course, the commenters are often as wordy as Dreher himself, which leads to little conversation.
I stopped reading the comments on RD's blog because a lot of them get even fruitier than RD himself.
Maw Diane, Paw Oengus, let's do a little thought experiment.
ReplyDeleteLet's say I'm a nationally known social conservative blogger with one (failed) book to my name and a series of nationally recognized blogs. Oengus, you're my father, an frail old man, slowly dying. Diane, you're my mother, a frail old woman with accumulating health problems.
I've just arrived back home from the big city and I've served you my new prized vivid eating accomplishment, braised platypus.
Oengus, you choke a little down and thank me with the natural politeness with which you treat everyone. Diane, you taste a little, say "Honey, you shouldn't have", and confess the only reason you're not loading your plate with more is that your doctor has advised you to go lightly on duck-billed, beaver-tailed food. My little sister, Honey Booger, is more direct. "Rod, there's BIG OLE HAIRS in my platypus! And is that a CLAW?"
Some years later saintly Honey Booger dies tragically.
Sensitive mimosa that I am, I've of course been stabbed to the core ever since my prized platypus had been so rudely and viciously rejected by my entire family and over time those feelings have only festered. When I write my cathartic memoir of the tragic death of saintly Honey Booger, however, as a professional journalist I faithfully recount how my family so rudely and viciously rejected the delicious, traditional French braised duck casserole I lovingly prepared for them by upending their plates on the floor in unison and how much that both hurt and mystified me. Was it because I referred to my offering as Le Canard Magnifique? Later, I blog how this is illustrative of Schlemiel Schlimazel-Hasenpfeffer's theory of differing food cultures: I bring culture to the natives, and they, being the rural philistines they are, reject it.
I'm a nationally known blogger and author with a devoted cult following. Honey Booger is dead, and I'm the only child frail and elderly Maw and Paw have left and Paw's only heir and namesake.
My family's alternatives to anything I decide I want to say about them in my national books and national blogs are, what, really? And anyway, what importance would they really put on exercising them compared to what it would cost them to do so?
Of course, if they disagree with anything I have to say, they should certainly speak up, and, professional journalist that I am, I'll stop at nothing to faithfully report it.
Keith
Keith: "My family's alternatives to anything I decide I want to say about them in my national books and national blogs are, what, really? And anyway, what importance would they really put on exercising them compared to what it would cost them to do so?"
DeleteYour gedankenexperiment was very funny. But you did ask a good question.
Well, I don't know the people other than from what I could sift from the book, but I will hazard a guess.
Supposing that mom and dad Dreher are basically decent people with a very strong sense of decorum, it would be simply unthinkable for them to air in public any disagreements they might have with their son. I think the same goes for the Leming family as well. As to what they say in private, I cannot even begin to guess. Maybe there are just certain subjects that they know are best to avoid talking about.
Keith: And anyway, what importance would they really put on exercising them compared to what it would cost them to do so?
I suspect that they might be the sort of very patient and kind people who think that maintaining, as best as can be done, the peace within their family is far more important than anything else. After all, RD might be an egotistical buffoon sometimes, but he is still their son, and Julie Dreher is still their daughter-in-law, and the kids are their grandchildren and, for the Lemings, their cousins.
Lol. Well done, Keith. Honey Booger! Too much man.
DeleteOengus's insights are correct re: airing disagreements about a son's take on family matters touching a deceased daughter. The real shame becomes the son's lack of shame in telling the story and leaving out details which would embarrass him, which he almost certainly did in this case.
Keith, you had me in stitches. That's not a nice thing to do to an old lady with health issues.
ReplyDeleteLMBO. Seriously.
"Y'know, dat wuddn no duck, hon," Letitia whispered, lowering the hair dryer.
DeleteKeith
RD: I’m not angry or emotional about this — it’s not my church, after all — only genuinely puzzled. Let us discuss it civilly.
ReplyDeleteHere we go again in Rod World. I couldn't help but remember what Pikkumatti mentioned:
"But unlike here and on other blogs, the commenters over there essentially talk past each other."
Besides his occasional fits of "philosophizing things to death", RD pumps out these postings that start out sounding like he might have some kind of serious point to make. But really all he does is toss out another bone for the dogs to gnaw on. Or, to use one of Keith's illustrations, he hands out some sheet music for his "castrati" to start singing on.
But in all of it he never set out a clear and definitive stand. (Of course, there's always the hat tip to dear Andrew.) In the blog world of Rod World, I guess this could be called the Linda Richman Maneuver for drumming up web hits for TAC: Throw something out there and tell the audience to "Talk amongst yourselves", and off it goes like a merry-go-round. But in all of it RD never really says anything of much consequence other than a few quips and conferring a NFR on some of the minions.
Man, I hate being this cynical, but this maneuver has happened so many times now. I wonder. Does the man actually believe in anything? Does he think there is anything worth staking your life on? Sometimes I wish he'd just take some of the stuff he wrote in his own book more seriously — but lately it's looking like he wants to repudiate even his own book. I called TLWORL passable because I at least saw something in his sister that looked authentic. But what is her brother?
Does the man actually believe in anything?
DeleteTo wit, I give you this example of Dreher engaging our favorite BeliefNet pagan:
[NFR: Franklin, no need to comment on Christianity. Feel free to talk about how you manage these tensions -- if they exist it all -- within paganism. -- RD]
My initial thought when I read this is: Why would a Christian believer possibly care about this? Life isn't a laboratory experiment. How the pagans manage the (false) choice between rigid unthinking adherence to dogma and open dissent (as Dreher puts it) provides no possible help to a Christian searching for Truth.
So Dreher acts the part of Margaret Mead studying the primitive people of Borneo. For our benefit, I'm sure.
Vanity, and a chase after wind.
P.S. And while we are discussing Dreher's conflating of matters of taste with matters of truth, we have today's installment of Dreherian criticism of gauche Catholic Mass participation.
The most charitable response I have to Dreher is: Shove it.
we have today's installment of Dreherian criticism of gauche Catholic Mass participation.
DeleteHe's just jealous because 5 million kids showed up for the final night of World Youth Day, and that's more than the entire membership of his minuscule church combined, cubed, and extrapolated to the Nth power.
I bet he's jealous of all the media coverage, too.
I agree. Shove it, Dreher.
Pik, Diane, I'm shocked - shocked! - at your lack of Christian charity, especially when Dreher is generously going all Catholic on you today.
DeleteUnless of course he intends it in the same way Marcellus Wallace announces he's going all medieval on Zed in Pulp Fiction, in which case, um, never mind, my bad.
Keith
Well, Dreher is a Catholic, after all. Juridically speaking.
DeleteGee thanks, Keith.
DeleteFirst, I'm happy to say that the Church that Dreher describes is not one with which I'm familiar. Of course, I'm down here in ass-backwards Texas and am not an academic groupie like he is.
Second, in just a matter of days, Dreher has bounced from being oh-so-interested in how modern pagans deal with dissent in their community, to making fun of bishops at WYD, to now relating his courage in fighting off the forces of heresy when he was Catholic. It's hard to arrive at a theme.
Actually, his "arguments in the confessional" stories sound more than a bit contrived, along the lines of 9/11 and bouillabaisse. Just sayin'.
3) But most of all, for what purpose Dreher is "going all Catholic on us" in a blog for general readership? IMO, it's for the same reasons that he always bashes the Church: 1) to show how smart Rod Dreher is (i.e., to rationalize his Great Conversion), and 2) to embarrass the Catholic Church and the remaining faithful. Exhibit A will be the usual fun the commenters will have with this one.
Dreher can shove it.
Pik, Oengus speculates in this thread that Dreher may be a pathological liar, but to my eyes a slightly different comparison would be those 9-year-olds or whatever (which we all once were) who are just discovering that they can say things that sound "legally" one way but actually carry a much different intent, but who aren't mature enough to get that their machinations are so transparent to adults that their skulls might as well be transparent fishbowls filled with cartoon characters acting out various script drafts of the scheming 9-year-old puppet master within.
DeleteExcept when he is doing something so simple that it can't be manipulated, like posting a food picture, this is the only thing Dreher ever does, his one and only modus operandi, namely start with some resentment and then bury it within a cloud of rhetorical Reddi-Whip until he thinks his turd resembles a banana split. Here, Catholics, enjoy - but you grownups can't "prove" I did anything bad, can you, mwahahaha, so if you can't prove it in court, I win. Um, no, child. We already won. We grew up and learned to see through people like you before we even graduated high school.
So I guess this is my nutshell kiss-off of Dreher: an aging man developmentally arrested and paralysed within the transparent scheming id of a tween, forever searching for the One True Teacher who, instead of Stepping Over Him in Contempt, will finally have him as its One And Only Fawning, Obedient Pet in exchange for Protecting him from The Bullies Who Eternally Pull His Pants Down.
But, oh, what a doomed and pitiful quest, little tween. Conservatism...the kids in the black leather jackets didn't accept him as one of their own and protect him against the bullies, they LAUGHED at him! Crunchy Conservatism...it...mildewed! Catholicism...failed him by not becoming his personal therapeutic shield against the world. Why couldn't it change to become his Personal Religion? Why? Localism...have you seen what most of these locals eat?
And now he's back where he started, back where the Bare Hiney Ontology first deformed the knowable universe that is Rodworld, but, sadly, all it really looks like to me is that Allie Fox continues unopposed to maroon his captive wife and family along with him in a leaky dugout canoe in a roiling delta on a Mosquito Coast of his own confused design.
Keith
And as I predicted, the comment box is in fact showing what fun the non-believers are having from Dreher's post embarrassing the Church and its believers.
DeleteFor example.
Dreher makes me sick.
I can't stand to go there, Pik. I'll have to pass.
DeleteMeanwhile, Mike Liccione has approvingly linked to one of Dreher's Catholic-Bashes. In the immortal words of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," when will they ever learn?
Diane, this is my perennial question. Do Mike and other Catholic Dreher-fans think that a very public ex-Catholic possesses some insights about the Catholic Church that nobody else does? And that these insights are so valuable that they can overlook the relentless criticism he hurls at the Church?
DeleteDreher is an anti-Catholic. True, he's not an anti-Catholic like Jack Chick or Bill Maher, but he's an anti-Catholic all the same.
Pauli and Diane:
DeleteIn your puzzlement, you fail to take into account the great good that is achieved. By linking to Dreher's anti-Catholic pieces, Catholics give themselves the opportunity to heap contempt on other Catholics.
Tom, I don't know if you know Mike, but I doubt his intention is to heap contempt on other Catholics.
DeleteI just checked the link Diane is talking about. It's a link to a short post about Reza Aslan and his ridiculous new book. Dreher's point is that the Jesuits pushed Aslan out of Christianity and back into Islam. So "boo" on the Jesuits. Gee, I've never heard THAT before among serious Catholics....
Diane, we should give Mike L. a pass on this one. I just wish he'd go to the source material and not give Dreher the "airtime" on his page. Mike seems like a stand-up guy who has more humility and probably more sanctity than I.
Maybe the problem is just "cheap grace".
DeleteNow remember, Dreher only said it because Ross Douthat said it first, so legally he's blameless.
Keith
Pauli, you're up dude.
ReplyDeleteDown on the bayou some local named Late Bloomer wants to know where to find comments on Dreher's Reporter Rod Review.
I'm already getting a little moist around the eyes anticipating the joy in Sockville when a whole bunch of long-missing lefties and righties are finally reunited with their mates after you crack this one, brah. And my fishing shirt. I want my favorite fishing shirt back too.
Keith
Keith I love you man--no homo-- but, uh, English please.
DeleteOh, sorry. Just my guess you realize, but I'm expecting you'll find the comments the local is looking for in the same place all missing socks and my fishing shirt must have ended up.
DeleteKeith
Oh, yeah. Sorry so dense.
DeleteThe Catholic-Bashing immediately follwos all the WYD hoopla, which must have driven Rod-Man Kuh-razy?
ReplyDeleteWhy am I not surprised?
I am tempted to apply an epithet my older son picked up at Bama...but no, maybe not. This is a family site,
On the Eastern mysticism vs. Western rationalism, I'm reading a book that offers a plausible argument (as judged by this ignoramus) that all that waffleheaded experientialism of Bl. Jan van Ruysbroeck was actually built around a rock-ribbed Trinitarian theology.
ReplyDeleteFrom that, you might conclude that even the Western mystics are rationalists -- or you might conclude that what sounds to Western ears like pure apophatic mysticiscm (starts in a mist, ends in a schism) may in fact be sound, sophisticated theology.
Personally, I suspect the mystics vs. rationalists divide describes the different ways Easterns and Westerns go bad.
Interesting.
DeleteThree comments, Tom:
1) Charlie don't surf,
2) Mystics don't blog,
3) The Dude abides.
And now, in English.
DeleteThe more mystical than thou meme should be mistrusted and probably laughed at vigorously. Look at it this way: if you're soooooooo mystical then WTF are you doing on a discussion panel? Translations of the desert fathers, St. John of the Cross, etc. are available for me to read -- why should I listen to your commentary on them? Anyone who is spending all kinds of effort talking about it isn't doing it. That's my experience; these people are the worst kind of poseurs.
(starts in a mist, ends in a schism)
DeleteBwahahaha!