Tuesday, June 24, 2014

But it's for research!

Big news today over on the Dreher blog. His self-help book on Dante (the theme and apparent working title being How Dante Saved My Life) apparently calls for additional research -- specifically, a week's trip to Tuscany with a buddy. To better learn how The Divine Comedy can help each of us in our lives, of course. Even his commenters are seeing through this one.

Dreher asks for suggestions from the gang:

So, readers, help me plan our itinerary.  We know the Dante places to see in Florence and Ravenna, but where else would you recommend?

Where else would I recommend Dreher go to research The Divine Comedy?



Yeah, I know. Too easy.

(And no, we certainly do not wish that Rod Dreher actually loses his soul. . . .)


35 comments:

  1. Now if RD would just write a simple and competent travelogue which coveys to the reader the atmosphere of the place and the people, while leaving out of the picture his irritating personal idiosyncrasies, quirks, and neuroses, then maybe the general public would find it to be worth reading. He even could submit it to some travel magazine for a modest return.

    One can hope. But I am not placing any bets on this.

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  2. "...while leaving out of the picture his irritating personal idiosyncrasies, quirks, and neuroses..."

    ...and carte du jour...

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  3. Yes, but he could never write the simple, competent, and useful travelogue without making it into a grand statement of how the readers can mold an entire political movement, save their lives, or save their souls.

    It would be easier to tolerate Dreher's irritating personal idiosyncrasies, quirks, and neuroses if we could be spared his delusions of grandeur about his status as a big thinker.

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    1. To him it's all connected -- the big stuff and the little -- and he is the conduit which integrates it all. A completely local diet plus imported wine plus backyard church equals truth, beauty and goodness.

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  4. Dang, Pik, you beat me to it, but I'll also submit this oh-the-things-l'll-eat-in-Tuscany-tour as further evidence that one of Dreher's core little pleasures is rubbing his chumps' noses in the fact that he's made them over into his chumps and whores, when one reflects on it, just another side of a little bully's passive-aggressive personality matrix: look how clever I am, look what I've pulled off on you, right under your noses, then made you eat it, to boot.

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  5. I don't recall, but did he say who's funding this vacation?

    Because if Dante's already saved his life, there's nothing to be gained in Tuscany, is there? He already knows all he needs to know about Dante that's relevant to him, and all the other biographical Dante info has already been recorded long ago. This is almost starting to smack of the sort of hubris that ultimately brings people down; but then, that's always been Dreher's modus operandi, hasn't it, not to learn from his mistakes, but rather to defiantly double down on them. Or is this just another man-cation away from Julie?

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    1. I wonder if he got an advance from the publisher already. If so, it would be easier to slide the man-cation idea past the Mrs. ("but it's for research -- I've got to walk in the footsteps of Dante himself to properly convey the meaning").

      And yes, I think it is just another man-cation away from Julie.

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    2. Why can't he virtually go to Tuscany on his iPhone while sitting in the steam-room at the Y?

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    3. Because they kick him out at closing time . . .

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  6. Yuck. Now he's going to ruin Italy for me. The most magical place on earth. Spent a semester there as an undergraduate, largely aid for by my scholarship. Love Tuscany. Love Florence. Love Assisi and Perugia and the hill country. So-so about Rome and Milan. But gaga over Assisi. Almost wanted to expatriate there when I was younger. Now Rod-Man's going to ruin it for me. Waaaah.

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  7. All this stuff is strengthening the belief I have in my theory which is this: Rod is actually still Catholic. Yes, he's a disaffected Catholic just like Whats-her-name Kennedy and James Joyce.

    He writes a book called _Little Way of Ruthie Leming_ which is obviously a reference to St. Therese, a Catholic. When he discusses his trip to Paris in that book, he mentions going to the Catholic Cathedral to pray. Then he attributes his "healing" from whatever to reading one of the most famous works of Catholic literature of the Italian renaissance.

    He goes to France, he goes to Italy. I forget if he went to Moscow, or wherever the base of his supposed church is located. But he is still Catholic in his mind and in his heart.

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  8. Given the comments and what he said about the Ireland hoax, I doubt it Pauli.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/miss-emily-litella-alert/#post-comments

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    1. Yeah, he's still not apologizing for *his* role in jumping all over that hoax! His sycophantic comboxers are blasting Andrew Sullivan but gingerly stepping around the fact that Rod himself also went ballistic on the nuns!

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  9. I tend to agree with Jonathan, Pauli, although I can understand your hope for redemption all the way around. But I see the man systematically burning every bridge leading to the island in his head and to the madness that lurks like enervating malaria in the central swamp there. Consider also, for example, that the little ROCOR church he's dominating along with the Alaskan-catechesis-learning-choir-directing-power-chick-Mrs.Dreher is not so much an extension of the Orthodox faith as it is a Dreher-centric religious cyst being developed in St. Francisville primarily to serve him.

    The BBC thinks he's conservative only for the same reason people think I like pandas (I could care less about pandas), and only Obamacon Wick Allison will hire him for a benefits-grade job. His books leap like rabid lemurs through the trees from one random opportunistic psychological obsession to another and, if that were not bad enough, then try to tie the widely separated tree-manias together, Ruthie Leming with Dante with...WTF could possibly come next? Robots?

    The Dante book at best will sell sluggishly in the same psychologically desperate self-help market that TLWORL did, but the whole process already smells of the death spiral. Maybe a Patheos or a BeliefNet will even let him set up a Mark Shea-style itinerant peddler display of the various disparate titles he will continue to crank out on the sidebar of the blog he hosts to hawk them, but there will likely be smaller legitimate publishing advances, if any, and they'll more than likely be self published.

    In short, what Dreher has spent the last several years tossing to the wind like a dancing madman has been any sort of perceptible consistency: Crunchy Con - gone; Catholic - gone; conservatism - gone; family - gone; place - gone. And if people can no longer understand WTF you even are anymore, they're really less likely to throw down money on you.

    The only consistent traits he has left are a squeamishness about sex* and a sexual attitude towards food. His long term best shot right now is to become world famous doing 30 minute infomercials for induction cookware on QVC.

    I guess I shoulda made a post on this - sorry.

    *Don't couples at his point in life usually try to get away for some romantic time together away from the kids? Especially when planted right in the middle of grandparents and cousins? Instead Mr. & Mrs. head off in opposite directions across the globe. Courage.

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    1. I'm in the middle between you two on this issue.

      Running with Keith's sexual theme (sort of), I think the Catholic Church for Dreher is like the beautiful girl friend whom he left for silly adolescent reasons ("Do you have to wear your hair that way?", "Can't you make a decent bouillabaisse?", etc.), but whom he now realizes he still loves.

      But rather than swallow his pride by admitting that his reasons for leaving (overcooked anger over the Scandal, ugly church buildings, crappy music, weak homilies) were juvenile and go back to Her, he instead gossips about Her to the cool kids in class, trying to make himself look good by making Her look bad.

      But when he gets out of the gossip mode, it is obvious by what else he writes about (like the things Pauli lists) that he still loves Her.

      So while I don't think Dreher is Catholic in his mind, I think he still is in his heart.

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    2. Pik, I can see what you're saying.

      IMHO the Catholic Church is like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

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    3. I'm not really disagreeing with Keith. I think think that Dreher ruined the Catholic church for himself the same way he ruined conservatism and ruined St. Francisville and ruined the NR job and ruined the Templeton job.

      But this is all my opinion. Look at the evidence everyone can accept. He writes about the Catholic church, the pope, Catholic literature, Catholic saints. Does he write the same amount about Orthodoxy? I've learned more about modern Orthodox saints from Oengus Moonbones.

      You can say to me "But, Pauli, nobody cares about these little Russian denominations!" And that's my point--neither does he. What he does care about is the Catholic church. He's haunted by it. Forever.

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    4. Had the Catholic Church not "betrayed him", Dreher would still be a card-carrying Catholic writer with obviously more potential readers worldwide than as an Orthodox writer now writing as an ex-Catholic; Patheos and others would likely punt on the opportunity for a "Ex-Catholic and not enjoying it as much!".

      So the girlfriend who betrayed him, to use Pik's metaphor, did so deeply both inside and out, and, boy, is she gonna pay for it now. Is she ever gonna pay. But mostly passive-aggressively, damned with faint and pseudo-praise. Like that other bitch, Ruthie.

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    5. Dreher's old feelings for the girl must be pretty stirred up, seeing that he reached out of the strike zone to take a swing or two today.

      I can see Catholics having strong feelings one way or the other on the issue, but an Orthodox ex-Catholic?

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    6. Pik, I'm going to add this to my diagnosis that Dreher, having reduced his feedback loop to a only a small, self-affirming cocoon, will increasingly begin exhibiting ever more public signs of the fate of all such positive feedback loops, namely beginning to oscillate ever more wildly out of control.

      The latest signs: his newest hobbyhorse, trannies. Logically, though, given that Dreher seems to be only a closet door away from Andrew Sullivan as a blogger, given that he has become dependent on his gay readership and commenters, and given that he's unilaterally thrown in the towel on SSM, it makes perfect sense: he now needs a sexual weirdness to wallow in that doesn't offend the gays he depends on, so...trannies.

      The thing is, whether someone is for or against them or for or against SSM, gays are at least familiar. Trannies, though, might as well be Yetis for all anyone at large has any experience with them or even thinks about them. You ever meet a tranny? I haven't. Someone operating under the guidance of reason would recognize the far peripheral nature of that beast. And yet today, back to back posts on the imminent tranny menace, one involving an "anonymous emailer" many of his commenters clearly didn't quite believe was real.

      This NYT/Catholic thing seems to me like the same sort of oscillating flailing, desperately hunting for a new "winner" to build a catchy catchphrase or a signature "law" around.

      I'm half expecting him to start mumbling at any moment like Captain Queeg about his strawberries or about raccoons plotting in the Louisiana night to steal his childrens' precious bodily fluids.

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    7. Indeed, Keith. We all need someone to tell us when we are full of shit. Wife, work colleague, buddy, priest, or all of the above and then some. Without that, it is easy to run amok, as we see.

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    8. All theorizing to one side, I thing Dreher's writing about transexuals is just a ripoff of Steve Sailor, who has been concentrating on the theme of "World War T" for a while. Dreher admits to reading Sailer's work and obviously just purloined this meme from him. A lot of writers lift story ideas from Vdare and Steve in particular. One can make a good living translating that material for the squeamish and faint of hear. Brooks does this all the time. BTW, I am a great admirer of Sailor.

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    9. Re the NY Latin Mass thing: Hah. Someone should ask Dreher how Western Rite Orthodoxy is faring within ROCOR. In fact, I know just the guy to ask that...but he'll probably get ban-hammered as soon as Dreher realizes that he knows what he is talking about.

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    10. Well, I knew Dreher was a rodent in the cupboard, but good grief, you mean there's already a market for trannyphobia?!? But I'll bet no one's cornered the terror that kitty will start sporting a sack angle yet. So there's still time to get a slice of that veterinary action.

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  10. The inimitable T. O. offers his 2 cents here and here. And here for those of us taking a nip for the wake a bit early.

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    1. Rod Dreher just came out as an old fashioned democrat or some such language. So why blog for TAC? Of course TAC is no longer a conservative site. It's alt.right, reform conservative, crunchy…..etc. So he really does fit in.

      I know readers here will check this latest journey into Dreher's deep introspective recesses with interest.

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    2. T.O., I think the term you may be grappling for is "narcissistic intellectual fart smelling".

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    3. It's just that after all his years of typing, he finally defines himself. I tend to think that's what an honest writer does FIRST.

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    4. That traditional conservative Republican vein o' silver musta finally done run dry on ole Grubstake McDreher. That may have been the true dark wood he found himself lost in: everything he had previously sold himself to others as believing in. Fortunately, there's still rare earths to be dug in them there hills. Aux barricades!

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    5. Another self-hating, America-hating rich guy. I think Daily Kos was groupie-ing him yesterday.

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  11. BTW--the National Catholic Register has a much more measured, balanced piece about the NY Latin Mass thing. It seems the archdiocese has always been very friendly toward the Latin Mass. IF (big "if") they close this one particular parish, they will make accommodations for its TLM parishioners -- there are apparently plenty of young priests eager to celebrate the TLM, and the archdiocese will make them available to MEF congregations.

    Which is a hell of a lot more than ROCOR has done for its Western Riters, which it has pretty much brutally suppressed (forced to Byzantinize).

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  12. "It seems the NY archdiocese has always been very friendly toward the Latin Mass." Diane, your credulousness is really astounding.

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  13. http://www.latinmassnyc.org/p/regularly-scheduled-masses.html

    after the closing of Holy Innocents, there will be precisely ONE EF MASS PER WEEK IN ALL OF QUEENS,SIX PER MONTH IN ALL OF THE BRONX,ONE PER WEEK IN BROOKLYN, AND NINE PER MONTH IN MANHATTAN. ZERO IN STATEN ISLAND, which alone probably has more catholics than most US cities. And after 1000 people petitioned the archdiocese for a Latin mass parish, they were refused. real friendly, Diane.

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  14. "Pik, I'm going to add this to my diagnosis that Dreher, having reduced his feedback loop to a only a small, self-affirming cocoon, will increasingly begin exhibiting ever more public signs of the fate of all such positive feedback loops, namely beginning to oscillate ever more wildly out of control."

    Mark Shea has been suffering that fate for a loonnng time, now.

    "...we certainly do not wish that Dreher actually loses his soul.."

    AFAIK, Dreher lost his soul when he lost his moral spine.


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  15. If Rod Dreher heads for Tuscany, does he have to come back? :D

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