Rod Dreher wants you to know he's like C. S. Lewis
He does this in a recent post by plucking a quote from the first review of his Dante book by the Englewood Review of Books. But here's what makes this particular act of self-pleasuring by Rod interesting.
Unlike his usual, merely bolded UPDATEs, in this one he adds an extra H3 HTML tag to boost the size of the font even further.
Here is how that looks with the caret marks ( < > ) of normal code replaced by square brackets ( [ ] ) so that you can see the actual coding from the page:
[h3][strong]UPDATE:[/strong] [a href="http://erb.kingdomnow.org/rod-dreher-how-dante-can-save-your-life-feature-review/"]The Englewood Review of Books considers [em]How Dante. [/em][/a]Excerpt:[/h3]
Why the extra self-attention? To highlight this gem:
If as a moral and spiritual writer Dreher is not yet the equal of, say, C. S. Lewis, parts of this book are as profound and moving as Lewis’s own memoir A Grief Observed. No mean feat, that.
Who knew? Our Rod Dreher cruising at C. S. Lewis altitudes of greatness?
Commenter DS sticks a fork in this flatulence:
C.S. Lewis comparisons? Perhaps I need to find a less distinguished blogger. Air getting all thin up in here.
Sorry, Rod. If you have to lard on H3 tags to draw attention to comparisons of yourself to C. S. Lewis, you're not anywhere close to being in Lewis' league, you're just another self-promoting south Louisiana religious hustler with megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur.
...parts of this book are as profound and moving as Lewis’s own memoir...
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Those are the parts that Dante Alighieri wrote.
If he is C.S. Lewis then I am Bugs Bunny! Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteC. S. Lewis's writing is so different from R. O. Dreher's writing that the comparison is laughable. When Lewis writes anything personal or autobiographical he makes it relate to the reader; that's my experience. Dreher does the opposite. Every topic he deals with is forced to relate in some way to him and his pet ideas. This extends to "big things" like Christianity itself and great works like the Comedia. It all gets packaged, branded and boutiquated in the man's little shop.
ReplyDeleteThis pales beside Dreher's latest and most vile autosexual spasm, appropriating and thus debasing the Pontiff of the Catholic Church himself as his personal GEICO gecko in order to promote his dismissed and out of print Crunchy Cons.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever doubted that Dreher's passive-aggressive resentment and loathing of the Church he feels failed his fragile psyche during the Scandal knows no bounds - after you hijack the spiritual head of the world's largest religion as your personal ShamWow! flack, what remains? - you can stop doing so now.
And now, a word from St. Charles Cusimano of Milwaukee about Francis' latest encyclical:
DeleteThere is so much in that thing to make fun of that I would spend all day writing but put most simply, it sounds like the Pope fell on his head and thinks he’s turned into Al Gore.
Arguably the best critique of the encyclical that I've seen.
Excellent point, Keith. Roddy's narcissism extends event to the html tags! LOL!
ReplyDeleteSome other significant quotes from that review:
One incredibly uncomfortable moment comes when Dreher’s own brother-in-law accuses him of using The Little Way to tell a story about himself.
Mike Leming is perceptive in his (correct) hermeneutic of Roddy's book. The Narcissus of Starhill called out by his dead sister's husband. The muse of irony must be splitting her sides with laughter.
Dreher's book should have been titled The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Small-town Girl, Her Superciliously Cosmopolitan and Annoyingly Epicurean Brother, and the Secrets of a Dysfunctional Family That No One Really Wants to Know About. Or maybe even The Little Way of Ruthie Leming; The Much Grander Way of Roddy Dreher. As Seen by Himself. How the Loser Gets the Last Word.
Then this: ...the book’s constant introspection can be wearying. At one point, his wife Julie gives her own piquant thoughts: “I’m trying to be excited for your progress, but when you’ve got three kids to home-school, laundry to do, kids to take to 4-H and tennis, the library, the chickens, and I don’t even know what else, it’s really hard to give a damn about hell.”
Sounds like Julie desperately needs a break. Why not send her to Lyon and Siena? Let Roddy do the home-school, laundry, house-work, tennis, 4-H and the chickens. Work off that superabundant narcissistic energy doing works -- viz., some of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Might knock the hubris right out of him.
Ain't gonna happen though. Tinkling cymbals will continue to tinkle.
Maybe Mrs. D. needs a "hirsute Italian" of her own.
DeleteFor some unfathomable reason the eating stop in Lyon for Rod and Sordello en route to the official Dante-related stop in Sienna didn't get blogged. Well, good for Rod for not telling everything, I say.
DeleteRecovering Dreher fan boy here - the Lyon view from my tablefest is scheduled for this weekend, after the Dante junket.
DeletePlus, why would a traditional/localist/communitarian who just loooves him some local culture rush home to spend the Fourth of July with family when the superior option is gorging himself in France with a couple of sycophantic commentators. See...not thinking outside the box like this is why you're not a big time blogmeister like Rod