Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior - against his family
As I mentioned in my Ace post, sometimes it behooves conservatives to look in the mirror and realize the phone call from the killer is actually coming from inside the house.
As Dreher blogs whatever alternative gets him the most culture war blog hits on any given day - Miraculé! In the wake of the pushback he's received from David French, Glenn Reynolds and others, today's entree du jour now offers fighting back - now "here’s what the Benedict Option is not":
1) a counsel to run for the hills and to build a fortress where the outside world cannot get in; or
2) advice to quit fighting entirely, and to abandon the battlefield
and
For all that, I do not blame ordinary people, people who are not as privileged as Robby George, Ryan Anderson, and I, for not wanting to rush out and volunteer to die on every hill,
let's review what our extra-ordinary, privileged warrior knight has used his place of privilege to attempt to publish for millions of ordinary culture warriors to read and take fighting heart from. Feel free to look up the links yourself; I'm not Dreher's publicist.
Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party)
Okay, so maybe this whole culture war thing started some time after way back nine years ago in 2006 when granola-chomping Crunchy Cons was published. But as soon as it did, Rod strapped on culture war fighting sword and buckler and waded in full-tilt, right? With
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming
about his sister's death and how, returning to their home town, he was forced to confront their very different views of life and their very different ways of regarding each other. Our host Pauli reviewed the book here. His home town residents, those most familiar with him, continue to review Rod himself here.
Okay, so he took some up front R & R home before battle. But, then, immediately onward and into the fray, right? With
How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem
Oh, dear, maybe not yet.
It seems moving home and encountering how his family and friends really feel about him once again threw our culture warrior into a "dark wood" of depression, which in turn caused a debilitating flareup of what he claims to be a persistent mononucleosis infection.
Fortunately, his wife, completely exasperated at his interminable sleeping, finally forced him to seek a professional psychotherapist for his mental and subsequent physical problems. During that process he also discovered Dante.
From the post I quoted from at the outset, it seems he's on leave from the culture war once again today to promote that book and its issues as well as the general welfare of TAC, where he works.
But hope endures! Only yesterday our brave knight promised us
I am writing the book proposal this week. Things are moving very fast. People need to wake up. You can have St. Benedict, or you can have Dr. Berman. If you don’t choose, do not doubt for a second but that the choice will be made for you.
That was, of course, a full 24 hours ago, ages before today's call to arms quoted at the top of this post.Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe sprinkles!
The problem in producing the long talked about emperorographic next volume in question, of course, is that from the beginning his shapeshifting Benedict Option has depended entirely on what can only be described as "crowd-sourced principle": Rod can't finally decide what the Benedict Option principle actually is until he hears from what enough people who want to pay for him writing a book about something actually want it to be about.
Maybe, just maybe, although the next book will now inevitably reflect the eclectic composition of granola itself, it will actually have our knight waging culture war on our behalf on a battlefield larger than the urban chicken coop, his bed, or his therapist's couch and will engage foes more formidable than the family and neighbors who know him best.
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| Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior |
UPDATE (as they say): In contrast to Curveball and his "strategic withdrawal", above, here's what true culture warriors look like:
"We will not obey.".
Oh, I see. From Dreher's post:
ReplyDeleteWithdrawing strategically from the battlefront is not the same as surrender.
Ahh, now I get it. It's a strategic withdrawal. That makes all the difference.....
/sarc
I think that's what the Cozy Corner is for while Julie drives the kids past the neighbors and deals with their looks in the grocery stores. It's Centcom of all the strategic battlefronts. With Cavalos!
DeleteChesterton pointed out that journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
ReplyDeleteOpinion journalism, on the other hand, almost entirely consists of Lord Jones responding to Lord Smith's response to Lord Brown, repeated until the readers forget that they never knew any of them were alive.
Mock him as we will, Rod is a member of this particular aristocracy, and he will remain so as long as he continues to provide grist for the other aristocrats' deadline-powered mills.
My interest is in making it clear - particularly by focusing attention on his use of anonymous, unverifiable sources within a context of overwhelmingly pseudonymous, unverifiable commenters - that what Rod Dreher excretes upon the rest of us is 99.9% internal essence of Rod Dreher and not, as those tools of suggestibility can falsely manufacture, matters of fact or other objective reality.
DeleteAfter that, if people find the Song of Rod Dreher an essential motor of their soul, God bless 'em, that's what a free country is all about.
Point taken. As a journalist, Rod - and certainly as a rational observer in the SSM debate - Rod is useless.
DeleteHowever, I have to say that his stuff on Baltimore is pretty good. It could be cut by half - Rod really needs an editor - but the sentiments are in the right place.
I think that' is Rod's contribution to the debate in general. He gives comfort to many people who feel frightened and alone when they watch (for example) Baltimore burning. I've criticized him so much, I felt I had to say that.
That does not make him an essential motor of my soul. Just a strange bedfellow.
I think that' is Rod's contribution to the debate in general. He gives comfort to many people who feel frightened and alone when they watch (for example) Baltimore burning. I've criticized him so much, I felt I had to say that.
DeleteI'll agree that there will never be a lack of human prey for people like Dreher to feed on. He comes out of the same south Louisiana demagogic tradition and was born literally just miles from a similar pseudoreligious hustler just like him, Jimmy Swaggart.
It had not occurred to me that most of Baltimore’s cops were black. I assumed this was white people beating up black people.
"What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?" Facts are merely colors the predatory mood artist works with, shading them and blending them to fit the vision needs of his targeted prey.
The sad thing is that, maybe like some lonesome Emperor penguin huddled over their egg in the Antarctic twilight at the bottom of the world, there are enough people bereft of God, a supporting religion, their own thinking processes, of even just a good Hallmark card shop such that they need their soul-nourishing dose of Dreher to frame their world view for them the way the elderly and frail need a tall glass of Ensure.
And now he's just babbling:
ReplyDeleteI was thinking today why stories of rioting and civil unrest unnerve me like nothing else. It has to do with fear — terror, actually — of anarchy. I have a very deep need for order (not that you’d know it by seeing the interior of my car), and I am always thinking about the sources of order, and disorder. For better or for worse, this drives my thinking; it’s why I seem so alarmist to many. You might say that I worry unduly over things that aren’t that big a deal, or you might say that I see things that are not apparent to others.
Maybe it’s a function of latent Asperger’s. In his book The Big Short, Michael Lewis writes about an Aspie who made a fortune because he was able to discern patterns in the market that nobody else could see — this, because his atypical neurology revealed deep patterns to him that eluded the gaze of others. When I read about people with Asperger’s, I realize that I have a lot of those traits myself, though I wouldn’t say I have full-blown Asperger’s.
Is their some sort of congenital, lurking "Awww!" disorder out there that can only be slaked by embracing a helpless, hairy, fifty-year-old "opening himself up to them" as a man-kitten in distress?
Rod, no one gives a f*ck about your latent Asperger's. You charged into the Baltimore story without checking effortlessly found facts because you're not a journalist, just a fat, lazy glutton who thought he'd found some quick and easy red meat to throw to the crowd to score a few cheap points.
Now it seems like he's also trying to pull all of his books past, present and future into some mystical whole that enables them to transcend their obvious roots in passive-aggressive family resentments and the need to be seen as of a culture war while safely not being in one.
I understand the diplomatic need for conservatives to be seen giving Dreher a passing nod and smile from time to time in print lest he go full retard Ruthie on them in turn, but any who let themselves become seduced by this consummate poseur - are you listening, Mollie Hemingway? - risk allowing themselves to contract the incurable venereal disease of having their own thinking preemptively dismissed as oozing from the same sort of sources.
This sentence from the Dreher post cracked me up:
DeleteThat’s a great definition of the Benedict Option: building a terrace against the slippery slope!
Great. Now we're going to get metaphors for the Bunker Option even though he doesn't know yet what it'll be.
People might think I'm trying to look like some sort of big shot by coining the term "emperorography", but I really don't know of a word or concept already out there that describes this unique sort of joint, symbiotic discovery between duplicitous tailor (Dreher) and hapless King (his marks). The closest thing might be Stockholm Syndrome.
DeleteIt's as if each party continually feeds and mutually enhances their shared, developing illusion:
"Do you think the trousers are too long?" asks the King.
"Not at all", replies the tailor, "But, tell me, what color would you imagine this material looking best in?"
"Perhaps a medium gray, a steel gray, if you will," replies the King.
"Fortunately, that's exactly the color the material comes in," answers the tailor with satisfaction. "And don't let anyone try to convince you it's a charcoal gray. It's a steel gray, precisely as you desire it to be."
The big con simply can't exist without a greedy mark hoping to get something for less trouble or effort than it should otherwise realistically cost. The big con in the culture wars isn't any different.
A phrase that keeps amusing me is "taking the Benedict Option", as if it were something old guys from a mobster movie were doing, like "taking a schvitz". This leads me to believe there must be a yet-to be-written post about licensing the BO. If Dreher doesn't bless or sign off on each schvitz-taking personally, how will we know if it's really the real BO? Plus, some competitor's BO might sneak in before the book goes on sale. So the real BO simply has to be licensed directly from Dreher to be sure the consumer "taking the Benedict Option" is getting the gen-u-wine article, complete with the freshest and most wholesome of BO ingredients. Dropping out, changing your name, and coaching ex-thugs in boxing in some obscure Catholic parish might be a BO that's not yet quite New Thought Leader-circuit-ready.
It's hard to see how a metaphor can define a thing. In this instance, though, we have a metaphor defining a non-thing, and I have to agree that it seems spot on.
DeleteA terrace connotes a certain degree of Continental comfort, if not elegance. A terrace on a slope will offer a good view of things that one may converse upon with one's convivial guests, seated agreeably in the afternoon sun.
And sure, there's also the denotation of a terrace as an area of earth that has been flattened against the slope, to be worked as farmland. But come on.
A phrase that keeps amusing me is "taking the Benedict Option", as if it were something old guys from a mobster movie were doing, like "taking a schvitz".
DeleteOr maybe "taking the blue pill".
Why not just cut to the essence - metaphorically?
DeleteThe Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ is a protean metaphor for the archtypal protean human exile, Rod Dreher.
Christ died for our sins. Rod suffers in exile for the sins of all who unjustly accuse others of getting above themselves, an exiled kitten tree metaphor that neatly unites mean family members with mean liberals wanting to exile him from his religious liberty.
Our lives, like Rod's, must be seen to be in truth (red pill) one all-connected existential exile from meanies, an exile in which we hide out, occasionally hissing and spitting passive-aggressively while eating like kings, until all the meanies are dead and gone.
This seems to be the new paradigm he's working the crowd to recognize now, the Rod Dreher unjustly snubbed and emotionally damaged existential exile trilogy: the Lord of the Dings.
And, let's be honest here, aren't "we" all helpless, put-upon, distressed man-kittens ourselves, just like Rod?
ReplyDeleteI had a late dinner last night with a frequent commenter on this blog, whom I met tonight at the TAC gig (I’m not sure if he wants me to identify him here). It was a great time. We stood in the parking lot of the restaurant talking for an hour after closing, still telling stories. We exchanged tales of various family members dunning us (and others) for having gotten above themselves (ourselves), or for putting on airs, or for failing to “keep it real,” and so forth.
White people, check in here. Do you have stories of your white relatives dunning you for the Caucasian version of “acting white”? What did they accuse you of, and why? Let’s do a little crowdsourced sociology here.
A little crowdsourced sociology. The most scientific kind of social science, pioneered at UVA in the Rolling Stone case.
So Rod's really doing conservatives a favor by leading us in the culture wars. So that we don't get above ourselves as all human kittens, trapped in trees.
It just gets sillier and sillier.
DeleteHow does anyone take this guy seriously? It beats me.
DeleteMaybe I'm nitpicking, but having sent dunning letters myself, I don't think "dunning" has the meaning that Dreher thinks it does in his usage: dunning you for the Caucasian version of 'acting white'.
DeleteBut Dreher is a professional, so I guess we can defer to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6si8Xp8P-M
DeleteNo, Pik, I don't think you're nitpicking. When I was young, I got "dunned" for my student loan...so yes, I think Rod doesn't quite know what the word means.
DeleteNot sure what the right word would be. Hitting up? Taking advantage of? Leeching? I do have black friends whose relatives do exactly that to them -- with the implication of, "you've made good, so now support us." It took my friends a while, but they finally told the leeching relatives to go stick it where the sun don't shine.
Diane, maybe you haven't read Rod's post (good decision), but the right word wouldn't have anything to do with demanding payment or asking for money, or anything to do with money at all. Rod misused it twice in this post where he needed a word more like "dissing." Criticizing, shaming. That's how far off he was in using "dunning."
DeleteYikes, no, I hadn't read the post. Good grief, someone send that boy a dictionary.
DeleteTo the substance (ha!) of Dreher's post, I offer this contribution in the combox over there (emphasis added):
DeleteWhen my wife and I had been dating for a few months, and we were having a deep conversation about something or other, she became clearly agitated. I asked her what the issue was and she explained that I sounded just like all of my books and that she wanted to hear the authentic me, not my books. Over time, she came to understand that I am, in large part, the things I have read. I cannot (nor can anyone) divorce my thought or speech from what I have absorbed from others, and my self-understanding is largely rooted in relation to big ideas.
I'll come to a different conclusion from Dreher: if you have ... tales of various family members dunning us (and others) for having gotten above themselves (ourselves), or for putting on airs, or for failing to “keep it real,” and so forth ..., it ain't because you're doing the equivalent of "acting white". It's because you're a pompous ass.
You'll notice a subsequent commenter in that thread picks up the baton and subsequently uses the verb "dun". Monkey see, monkey do: if Rod uses it, it must be right.
DeleteHere's where the broader universe of conservatives might not realize they're being drawn into endorsing Dreher's narcissohegemony of thinking like tuna being encircled in a purse seine.
Now that Dreher is promoting an organic linkage from Crunchy Cons to the Benedict Option, those conservatives biting on the initial seeming attractiveness of the BO become tacitly complicit in endorsing the entire man-as-Dreher-in-exile paradigm, the ultimate booger that then cannot be thumped off. To even utter the phrase "Benedict Option" will be to tacitly endorse the whole of Dreheriness. Others won't have to explicitly endorse his suffering-in-exile-from-family schtick; by now binding all his narcissistic discharges into an organic whole, Dreher can now appropriate their names as endorsements of that whole.
It's as if Acme Brands manufactures a number of products, some seemingly amenable to conservatives, some equally odious, but now, as "Loyal Acme Brands customers", their testimonies appear to endorse the Bible division products and the reciprocating sex machine lubricants division indiscriminately.
And along the lines of your UPDATE, check out the description of a an upcoming book by someone who knows what he's talking about:
ReplyDeleteAmerican freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government—not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, “Try to fight this, and we’ll ruin you.” ...
... federal government has a fatal weakness: It can get away with its thousands of laws and regulations only if the overwhelming majority of Americans voluntarily comply with them. Murray describes how civil disobedience backstopped by legal defense funds can make large portions of the 180,000-page Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable, through a targeted program that identifies regulations that arbitrarily and capriciously tell us what to do. Americans have it within their power to make the federal government an insurable hazard like hurricanes and floods, leaving us once again free to live our lives as we see fit.
Rod posted this NFR on the "Acting White" comment thread:
ReplyDelete[NFR: Yes, but what happens when you're in a situation like the one I had with my sister, in which she not only had no interest in the things I was doing with my life, or cared about, but also was offended that I had them? When I would come home, nobody ever asked me what was going on in my life, and it never would have occurred to them to do that. It's bizarre to think about now, but for most of my life, I had to downplay or withhold any professional accomplishment because they were all a source of resentment back home. To move my wife and kids back home and to write a book extolling (with total sincerity) the virtues of my home and my family, and to learn after that that there really wasn't anything I could do to be accepted, because the problem is not what I *do* or don't do, but who I am -- well, that occasioned a literal and figurative "come to Jesus" moment. -- RD]
"Extolling their virtues" with "total sincerity"! Passive, meet aggressive.
I wish someone would go and take him to task for this NFR. Whenever I get a little critical in comments he dismisses me.
The review by Pauli is surprisingly mild and thoughtful and even seems to find Rod more sympathetic than his family. It is very different in tone from the constantly cranked-up fever pitch of most of the posts here.
ReplyDeleteHi, James.
DeleteSpeaking only for myself and my own constantly cranked-up fever pitch, not for Pauli, let me offer two observations.
First, Pauli's book review is just that, so it would be surprising if it did not read much differently from the things I myself write here.
Second, and more importantly, I write the way I do, at least, for two reasons important to me if to no one else.
Stylistically, I want it known in no uncertain terms from the outset that my writing is not be be confused with Rod Dreher's elliptical, effeminate, passive-aggressive style of burying criticism in indirect commentary, faint praise, reflections intended to evoke sympathy for the writer, or simply the calm, measured tones anyone can use if their intention is to calm rudimentary animal reflexes. As far as I'm concerned, if my readers don't either agree or disagree with the logic of what I say, I could care less what their other reactions might or might not be. They should call their moms this Sunday to have those emotional needs fulfilled.
Substantially, Rod Dreher the person proper is of little interest to me. But, as I have said on numerous occasions, he remains a never-ending fountain of psychologically deformed, pathological ideas and idea fragments, contagious viral debris in which I am very much and, as people may notice, quite passionately interested for the consequences those idea virii will wreak on others.
So that's my story, at least, and I'm sticking to it.
The review by Pauli is surprisingly mild and thoughtful and even seems to find Rod more sympathetic than his family.
DeleteThat might be because I never had to live with him.
It is very different in tone from the constantly cranked-up fever pitch of most of the posts here.
What Keith said.
When Keith first signed up to blog here, I seem to recall him telling us something like "you'll all be wearing gold-plated diapers." I'm not sure what that even means.... Then again, that may have been from a dream I had.
Thank you, Keith and Pauli. Am I the only one who was rather put off by the snottiness of James's comment?
DeleteDreher's defenders never cease to amaze me. The guy is a narcissistic control freak and a Grade A bully who treats anyone who disagrees with him like pond scum. I am sorry he had such a difficult young life, but you know what? So did a lot of us. But we haven't turned around and become the thing we hated: i.e., vicious, nasty bullies. Dreher has. As one of our anonymous posters noted recently, Dreher and his acolytes are NOT nice people. That is putting it mildly.
Then there is his relentless, hypocritical Catholic-Bashing. I honestly do not care one whit about his whiny passive aggression or his self-indulgent lifestyle -- none of my business! -- but I strongly object to his gratuitous Catholic-Bashing, which has done untold damage to the Church I love.
When Keith first signed up to blog here, I seem to recall him telling us something like "you'll all be wearing gold-plated diapers." I'm not sure what that even means.... Then again, that may have been from a dream I had.
DeleteWhat I actually said was "No one tells the Walrus when to short a stock".
"You'll all be wearing gold-plated diapers" must have been from a dream you had.
Well, you see, Diane, the Catholic Church can be a faith trap for the unwary just like ole Dubya and Conservatism, Inc.:
DeleteFunny, but I didn’t think about until just now that my Catholic faith fell apart at the same time that my faith in the Bush administration and the leadership of the GOP did (over Iraq and Katrina). I hadn’t thought that the two were so closely linked, but surely it couldn’t have been a coincidence. I had made such a deep emotional linkage between my Catholicism and my political conservatism, and had embraced it in such a tribal way, that they both collapsed around the same time. Huh.
I don’t like to think back on that painful period of my life, but I bet the deep and simultaneous discrediting of the two institutions I had come to identify strongly with from between 1992 to 2005 — the Catholic Church and Conservatism, Inc. — affected me at a much deeper emotional level than I realized, and the weight of each hastening the demise of the other.
Huh. See, the weight of each can easily hasten the demise of the other.
You know what's probably better for everyone, particularly all those young people and children out there to keep them from falling into exactly the same faith trap? A more artisanal, authenticky, boutique version of each, Christianity and Conservatism, something, say, like Eastern Orthodoxy and alt-conservatism.
Of course, even if someone is foolish and arrogant enough to lead children - children! - into the twin bureaucratic corporate faith traps of the Catholic Church and Conservatism, Inc., they still might escape without suffering the life-wrenching spiritual horror that befell Rod Dreher. Might not. But you've been warned.
Lord. Have. Mercy.
DeleteLOL. "A more artisanal, authenticky, boutique version of each, Christianity and Conservatism, something, say, like Eastern Orthodoxy and alt-conservatism."
Yeah, nothing "tribal" about ROCOR, with its batsh*t-crazy WASP converts sporting beards and Russian peasant tunics and changing their names to Barsaphanios and Theophan. No chance, in such a hothouse atmosphere, of encountering pervy priests and crazy abusive monks, either. Nahhhhh. Perfectly safe for kids. :p
You'd think that someone such as Dreher who claims to be living "a life of the mind" (photo here) and who said this:
DeleteI had made such a deep emotional linkage between my Catholicism and my political conservatism, and had embraced it in such a tribal way, that they both collapsed around the same time.
would stumble upon a question like "Gee, is there something that I got wrong about the Catholic Church?" before making that linkage.
IOW, wouldn't even the most minimal self-reflection cause you to examine your assumptions about either or both of those institutions? Maybe? Just a little?
Well, maybe not when some of the Catholic sanctuaries in town are ugly and their music sucks, or when the President is an icky cowboy like W and chooses meanies like Cheney and Rumsfeld ...
P.S. BTW, that's the first I've heard of the federal Katrina response being a factor in his "alt-conservatism". It's always something new...
Rod has spent the last decade writing three books and untold thousands of additional words about himself, and he's only *now* figuring out things about himself that were evident to casual readers in 2002?
DeleteHuh.
"That might be because I never had to live with him."
DeletePoor wording on my part - I meant not "Your review finds Rod more sympathetic than his family does," but "Your review seems to be more sympathetic to Rod than to his family." Posts here are always pro-family and anti-Rod, so it was surprising that the review was anti-family and if not quite pro-Rod, at least less anti-Rod. And the Kathy Shaidle post to which you later linked was even more anti-family. Sorry for my original unclear wording.
Dante, Gateway Drug to Orthodoxy
ReplyDeleteBut of course it is. Complete with an enormous head and torso shot of Dreher himself, strenuously looking beatific.
The key to understanding Rod Dreher is what the atheist philosopher Nietzsche referred to as the ressentiment of the slavish personality. Life for Rod Dreher has become a sequential series of quests for revenge against those he feels have slighted or wronged him.
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming was his best means of taking wholesale revenge against his sister for her sins against him. The Dante book is his effeminate revenge sex against Catholicism. He left Catholicism for the arms of Orthodoxy for Catholicism's having failed him; now he will celebrate Catholicism's greatest poet as the best means of finding true love in Othodoxy instead.
In the political realm, he has thrown over the dowdy Conservatism, Inc. for a new trophy kitten, alt-conservatism, its protean eclecticism always delivering fresh and new delights.
Take that, world which has failed Rod Dreher.
Yeah, people have been reading Dante as an entree to Orthodoxy for centuries now.
DeleteDelusional. Seriously delusional.
Diane, I suspect "incoherent" is a better explanation than "delusional." Rod's enthusiasms do not cohere. As a functional solipsist who thinks whatever he feels *right*now* is the true, good, and beautiful thing to feel, he judges that his enthusiasms must and therefore do cohere. Hence this latest nonsense.
DeleteI would say that the incoherence preceded any possible deludedness. If you allow yourself to marinate in incoherence long enough, then as Tom says, you being to feel that anything which tickles your fancy is the Truth.
DeleteAnd you take WAY too many selfies.
I would say that the incoherence preceded any possible deludedness. If you allow yourself to marinate in incoherence long enough, then as Tom says, you being to feel that anything which tickles your fancy is the Truth.
DeleteAnd you take WAY too many selfies.
This is pretty much it. Like some weirdly narcisso-depressive food-worshipping Colonel Kurtz, Dreher has systematically moved himself further and further up the river into rigidly controlled community where his tastes rule as ontology. That a David Brooks gives him the occasional reciprocal book mention handy can't really bring him back downstream out of the ruins.
Divine Comedy is one of the great works of human creativity, expressing universal truths about human nature. It can lead to self-reflection for any human reader.
DeleteSo "reading" Divine Comedy through Dreher's viewpoint can't help but be a distortion of the work, especially given the way Dreher manhandles things generally, and this especially. That's bad enough.
But worse yet, it appears from this post that Dreher is now distorting that great work even more, by turning it into something (A gateway to Orthodoxy? Really?) that it is not and has never been over the centuries. All for his own purposes, of course.
The quintessential Dreher acolyte
ReplyDeleteDan says:
May 8, 2015 at 2:00 am
A couple of thoughts. First, I have the Divine Comedy sitting on my desk, waiting to be read, because of your blog. I crammed the Inferno in high school, in one night, years ago. What an insult to such a monumental work.
Secondly, your traipsing around an Orthodox monastery in Arizona kills me with jealousy. I love the desert, but live in Nebraska, and I was almost Orthodox once, and am now Catholic, but often still wish I was Orthodox.
God Bless you and this blog. I will follow it diligently for years to come, God willing.
Should he read Dante? Should he not read Dante? Someone help him decide. Should he be Orthodox? Should he be Catholic? Should he be Orthodox? Someone help him decide. Does he like girls? Does he like boys? Does he like goldfish? Someone help him decide. Should he eat peas? Should he not eat peas? Someone help him decide.
Suffer the little tabula rasas to fall into Dreher's orbit, and he shall write himself upon them.
In Oklahoma, not Arizona. What does it matter?
Delete