Gee thanks, Dad
Pauli commented earlier on his cringing of Mick's persona singing "I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag." Those are sweet words indeed compared to what Rod Dreher said about his father in a piece today, in which he reprises an interview of himself (which is, of course, about himself). To those who are fathers, may you never read such a thing written about you by one of your children:
I see the error that my dad made. . . . And he confesses this, not in those terms, but it comes out in Little Way. He deified family and place and sacrificed his life to false gods....
Lovely. At least it isn't Fathers' Day today.
And not to disappoint anyone, the piece includes yet another gratuitous swipe at his dead sister.
You know, reading the whole of that quote I think he is setting the stage for another move in the near future. And I'm surprised that he stayed there in St. Francisville this long.
ReplyDeleteHow many towns has he dragged his family to now?
DeleteHere's the only problem with that, Pauli: after a year or so of renting, he just recently bought a house.
DeleteWith that in mind, my own theory must be more grim: he's decided to double down in place as the Rod Dreher much of St. Francisville seems to have despised since Rod Dreher first erupted there.
He has his church. He's under the impression his Walker Percy festival is valued by the locals. He'll inherit his father's land, less any splits the old guy gives to Ruthie's family.
In short, he now thinks he has the money and the power to force St. Francisville to accept Rod Dreher whether they like it or not.
But...as we saw in the case of his Bonnie Blue blog, the power of small town community can be ruthless.
So I expect the reality to be: Rod retreats further and further into the Inner Rod, like Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz holing up in Apocalypse Now while leaving Mrs. Dreher to handle all worldly matters.
Rod will re-brand himself as the near-totally-religious organism and saint focusing on little more than fighting for your religious liberty (in the process, his new favorite sandwich will become part of the cause of your religious liberty, as will his dog, and anything else that grabs his attention.)
In sum, readers of EQE have the odds-on chance of watching Rod Dreher slowly go completely mad in place.
I'd offer the Dante book as Exhibit A of the creeping madness I'm referring to, a mania continuing to unspool completely unselfconsciously and uncritically because it's doing so in that nurturing Dreher space bounded by protected blog and its acolytes and credulous publisher.
DeleteBut what thoughtful person would regard this slapdash, whirlwind appropriation of Dante (complete with "Dante Trail") as anything but either a half-assed, speculative project cynically targeted at the most gullible and needy or a guy building the Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes in his basement?
What, for example, could be the mechanism by which Dante saved Dreher and, by suggestion, those with similar need willing to pay full price for the complete secret? Remember: the need was a complex of viral infection, mopey depression at not being regarded as a returning hero, and some sort of generic spiritual constipation. How can we tell that it was that Dante mechanism rather than that unique breast of chicken Mrs. Dreher served that night, or perhaps just an especially good dose of Super Colon Cleanse, or, to keep skipping down the path of pure randomness, the dander from his dog which did the saving?
But does it really matter? It's never actually the olio di serpente which does the healing in situations like this, it's the transaction itself, confident purveyor bestowing unto needy supplicant, the value, by definition, directly correlated with the purchase price.
So if there is in fact a large enough herd of the needy I've described, there may indeed be a thoughtful, if cynical, method to this madness. But what creature outside, not already trapped in that foggy maze of need I described could possibly regard this project as any sort of serious foray into Dante? What scholarly forum, what university, hell, what high school literature class?
I can't take issue with these characterizations. But just to be clear, Keith, you are going to buy the Dante book and read/review it? I did the last one....
DeleteJust to be clear, Pauli, nope. Tell you who I'd be interested in hearing review it a whole lot more than me, though - Art Deco. Not meaning to put a burden on him of course, just a thought. And let's not count our chickens before they hatch. For complicated but prosaic reasons having to do with aliens or sunspots the book still might not make it across the finish line.
DeleteWHAT?! He has to write it! Shit, I'm going to fly down there and help him do it. In disguise, of course. BUT HE HAS TO WRITE THIS BOOK!
DeleteHey, this interview is not on Dreher's home turf, so we can actually leave comments over on it. Try to be nice, everybody. As the saying goes "If you can't say something nice, leave your comment on Est Quod Est."
ReplyDeleteI know. I just don't get it, how he keeps bringing up his self-pitying, passive-aggressive, judgmental smears against Ruthie and other family members, and his commenters just nod quasi-sagely and compliment him again and again for his "insights." It's the weirdest thing. Does no one ever submit comments calling him on it, or do we assume that he gets those comments and simply doesn't publish them?
ReplyDelete1. They are deleted in the moderation queue. This is supplemented with asinine admonitions on comments he does not delete.
Delete2. Eventually you get banned.
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I've suggested to Dreher that he needs to get out of journalism. He knows at some level he's a bloc ice merchant ca.1952, and his attempt in 2010 to make the transition from journalism to public relations came completely a cropper and left him writing for a publication with a circulation one-fourteenth that of the opinion magazine he resigned from in 2002. It's also an occasion of sin for him. The only argument in its favor was made by Ron Unz, who told the editor via memorandum that the click data indicated that the bulk of their readership was examining his work and not that of Larison, Millman, and the rest of the crank crew Daniel McCarthy employs.
A prayer to St. Joseph for Larison, who has never landed an academic job and has returned to New Mexico after a 15 year hiatus. His wife seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth.
Very interesting; thank you. Only question: can it be said that Rod is still "in journalism," or is anything like a journalist?
DeleteDo you mean Wawison never mentions his wife anymore? I admit to having been perplexed when he announced his wedding--a couple years before he had said he was "unsuited to the married state" or somesuch, which I took as code for either homosexuality or Asperger's.
Delete-The Man From K Street
He gets those comments. He will never publish them! Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteOTOH he's getting his ass handed to him on the "Iditarod Theology" post* comments and it is pretty hilarious to behold.
ReplyDelete*(Better iditarod theology than IdiotRod theology?)
Well, it looks as if he'll need to write something like one-quarter of his Dante book in the next day and a half. Oy vey.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the perfect gig for Dreher. As in "We don't care whether you have anything to say, we just need X words by Monday."
DeleteNot even Kerouac on an amphetamine roll could have 20,000 new words worth reading by tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI would suppose it'll be mostly cutting, pasting, and tweaking material he's already blogged in his Dante posts. There's got to be 20,000x20,000 words in that pile.
DeleteI would suppose it'll be mostly cutting, pasting, and tweaking material he's already blogged in his Dante posts.
DeleteI suspect you're right. What a drama queen he is.