The Benedict Option has taken the Benedict Option
A timely comment has serendipitously prompted me to answer a question, actually two questions, that have been gnawing at me of late.
First, why has Rod Dreher strategically withdrawn once again into the sacralized universe of bloggy outrage porn, entreating his readers to imagine and think about titillations running the gamut from underage teen sexting to collegiate SJW silliness to Trump mania?
Second, and, oh, yeah - whatever happened to the Benedict Option?
As it happens, the first question is the answer to the second: Rod is pimping outrage porn once again as fast as his chubby little fingers can type precisely because the Benedict Option has gone and taken the Benedict Option on him.
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| Perhaps the Benedict Option is just resting. |
To understand this, we have to understand what the announcement of the non-pursuit of a late Benedict Option by anyone would actually look like in practice.
First of all, it wouldn't look at all like what I just described just now any more than that girl's rejection of you would be overtly spelled out to you to your face as her rejecting you.
Instead, some entirely rational explanation for why you and she somehow just never, ever manage to get together is offered. Perhaps a dear relative just died. Perhaps she must wash her hair. Perhaps something terrible happened at the salon she simply must try to remedy. Perhaps a monthly visitor is in town and, surely you understand, don't you? Of course you do.
In the same way, the Late Benedict Option is only resting.
Rod is not blogging about it other than to tag it inexplicably into other posts, because of course publishers don't want to see him give away the goody for free. Which publishers? Why all those publishers giving one another sharp elbows in a frenzied bidding war, wanting to make pots full of money from a Benedict Option book if there were a Benedict Option to write a book about in the first place, of course.
In the meantime, ADHD-symptomatic Rod Dreher, in addition to busily compounding paying posts out of the unpaid comments of his TAC readership and haphazardly stitching together great swatches of the thinking and writing of others; arranging the most scrumptious, artful pictures of his trademark glasses perched upon piles of Great Books like a photographer for Bon Appétit; and scouring the Web for the next big thing to tumescently tick you off, is also furiously burning the candle at the other end over parchment writing the Great Benedict Option book.
For you.
You just can't see it, and of course you wouldn't expect to.
You believe that for the same reason you still believe her, because the alternatives - realizing that she really, really doesn't like you, realizing that once again you've been played as the congenital chump you are (remember Benny?) - is just too horrible to contemplate.
So surely, somewhere, out of your sight and impossible for you to detect, Rod Dreher is furiously writing that Benedict Option book for you. For you. And if you call up little Trixie just one more time, that will be the one. She'll deliver. So never give up. Never, ever say never, tiger.
Sure, there a a few bloggers here and there trying to leach a last bit of PageRank and link love (::cough::) by writing about alternatives to the Benedict Option - that is, alternatives other than its non-existence. But that's about it .
Could the truth really be that there is no Benedict Option, no Benedict Option book, present or future, no Benedict Option publisher, and never will be any such things, any more than there really is a living, squawking Norwegian Blue parrot?
But that's the thing, isn't it. Like the regular anonymous comment or email Rod Dreher receives which invariably adds thoughtful, additional dimension to whatever he recently wrote (I think of these helpful, invariably anonymous packets now as "Indates" rather than Updates), the Benedict Option, like the vibrant Norwegian Blue parrot it seemingly yearns to be, never really needed to exist.
Monty Python has etched its place into modern comedy on the basis of a parrot that never was alive and never would be, and Rod Dreher to a fraction of the same degree has done the same.
Well, not into modern comedy. Or not intentionally.
Within the McLuhanesque, topologically involuted dimensions of the Benedict Option,
ReplyDelete- I will be in Norcia this week, at the Benedictine monastery, praying, writing, and interviewing monks for my Benedict Option book.
- Becoming the Benedict Option is the same as being the Benedict Option and vice versa, because, in the final analysis, the Benedict Option exists only as literally (space-)timeless prophecy, a prophecy, moreover, solely about itself. The Benedict Option is being realized everywhere it is being mentioned.
Rod being in Norcia is Rod working on the Benedict Option book is the Benedict Option becoming being becoming.
- The Norwegian Blue is the prophecy of what a parrot could be and should be.
- Once you consider how much premium its commercials must cost, you realize you can save the most money just enjoying the GEICO gecko for the prophet it is; if we could but Tweet with it, our car insurance satisfaction would be complete.
I guess the Benedict Option exists at least as cover for using the cookie jar money for a trip to Italy. "Come on, honey, the publishers will come running once they find out I've gone to Italy for 'research'".
Delete"And I'll sell a few copies of Crunchy Cons to help out, too."
Delete"And I'll sell a few copies of Crunchy Cons to help out, too."
DeleteI though this comment in the 'try and move some old copies of my book' thread was precious:
"While I was at LSU, we started a group for young Catholic intellectuals called the Parousians."
This, of course, being the standard answer when a Dreher fan is asked: "So, if you were so afraid of the opposite sex as to not even be able to talk to them in a social setting, what did you do in college?"
-Anonymous Maximus
What I keep trying to convey (whether I'm succeeding or not) is that I'm beginning to understand the Benedict Option more and more as cutting edge, avant-garde Christian performance art, the cyber-Christian - and only cyber, because Dreher simply cannot successfully author books, he can only successfully blog - equivalent of the mime in the square attempting to escape the invisible box.
DeleteAs of right now, and if my post is correct which I'm confident it is, not only does an actual Benedict Option not need to exist, neither does an actual Benedict Option book actually being written need to exist.
What serves perfectly well in the place of either of those matryoshkas (i.e., an actual Benedict Option nested within an actual book about it) is now a third, derivative Potemkin charade enclosing both: a blog performance acting out a pilgrimage to the Dreher-designated fountainhead of Benedict Option-ism, Norcia, about a book being written about, the Benedict Option.
We're this far down this infinitely nesting, mirror-mirroring-mirror, meta-rabbit-wormhole now: Pilgrimage to Norcia performance << Benedict Option book being written about << the Benedict Option.
What's next? Emanations of a pilgrimage to Norcia about a writing of a book about the Benedict Option?
Regardless, in the final analysis, that's all aficionados of the Benedict Option really need.
I see what you mean, Keith -- the BenOpt is the blog analogue of a McGuffin. In the movie context, a McGuffin is:
Deletea device or plot element in a movie that is deliberately placed to catch the viewer's attention and/or drive the logic of the plot, but which actually serves no further purpose - it won't pop up again later, it won't explain the ending, it won't actually do anything except possibly distract you while you try to figure out its significance. More specifically, it is usually a mysterious package or superweapon or something that everyone in the story is chasing.
Dreher is playing (intentionally or not) this McGuffin a little differently than the microfilm in North by Northwest, in which we never knew (or cared) what was on the microfilm. In the BenOpt case, Dreher's spilled a lot of ink explaining what it isn't, and then pretending to crowdsource what it is (while obviously not listening to any of it). But it's been distracting to spend so much time describing the McGuffin, not to mention dangerous because it might give away the trick -- now it's time to get on with the story. So off to Norcia we go.
The one thing that, literally from the beginning, has always been made clear about the BenOp is that it involves someone "doubtless very different" from St. Benedict.
DeleteAnd yet, here's Rod making another pilgrimage to a 16-year-old monastery in a town St. Benedict left as a child in order to...?
And yet, here's Rod making another pilgrimage to a 16-year-old monastery in a town St. Benedict left as a child in order to...?
Deletehttp://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g194835-Norcia_Province_of_Perugia_Umbria.html
Just Sayin'
Yes, exactly, Pik, and it's at this point we have to understand how the Benedict Option differs from what it appears to be very similar to, Crunchy Cons. Dreher isn't bringing up CC just to flog a few more sales of a dead book, he's trying to gauge what audience of similarly if not the same marketable chumps exists out there.
DeleteWith Crunchy Cons, 99% of the enterprise was simply opportunistic labeling: "What do a green olive, a lamp shade, and a sperm whale have in common? Why, they all belong to a group I'm going to collectively refer to hereafter as things - or maybe nandarinindoloppers; I haven't decided yet."
And, to read the comments under that post, not a few were slobberingly grateful to have someone other than themselves label them. Go figure what that says about them.
With the Benedict Option, however, Dreher isn't just simply attaching a gratuitous label opportunistically to a selected group of people passively doomed to wear it, he's ostensibly - ostensibly - advocating a course of action for his people to follow, and in the most Jeremianic terms. Dreher is the Moses of the Benedict Option, and he has tasked himself with the rather heady job of leading his people out of the Eqypt he has told them they're now enslaved within.
Ruh-roh: what now? Okay, Rod there's something I must do that not only my religious liberty, but also the future of Christianity itself depends upon. Tell me, Rod, tell me: what do I do next, what actions do I take right now?
So the last thing Dreher needs is anything remotely approaching a definitive answer to that question, at least not from him, because the odds approach certainty that that answer will be wrong, or will only be the Wealthy Idler Option, or worse.
The next best solution is a Crunchy Cons-styled green olive+lamp shade+sperm whale collectivization, but, then, that project has already failed spectacularly once, even without Jonah Goldberg's evisceration of it.
So what's better for scoring with a certain cohort of chicks than being a novelist? Simply pretending to that cohort that you're a novelist. Far less work, far less potential to produce (another) failed work, and, given the magic of the Internet nowadays, an entire, universally institutionalized theater of the mind as the stage upon which to perform that never-closing play.
Anonymous 2 with the TripAdvisor link:
DeleteBwahahahahahahaha!
But it's a risky game, don't you think, Keith? If the fate of Western Civilization hinges on you, yes you, following the Benedict Option, wouldn't the rational follower eventually need to see something concrete? Not just another Dreher autobiography but some action? Otherwise this turns into an Enron situation -- you can't just keep saying that revenue is skyrocketing without producing some real $$ at some point.
DeleteI guess one thing that Dreher can peddle is that we have to play the long game -- the fruits of our BenOp may not ripen in our lifetime, yada yada, plus some scolding that you're weak and lukewarm if you don't hang with it. But I don't see anything but a downward trajectory once the novelty wears off.
P.S.: Along similar lines of a vaporware social movement, here's a tale from the annals of New Urbanism, which of course is another Dreher and TAC hobbyhorse.
H/T Instapundit.
Quite, hence my throwing the Late Parrot flag.
DeleteI think the long game at this point is to ascertain which humans within the vast potential Internet reach of Dreher and his repeater towers (Libresco, Meador, et. al.) do or are willing to believe Elvis, excuse me, the BO is still alive, and then to decide what the majority of them might purchase, if and when a publisher desperate enough to hazard such a project given the history of Dreher books ever surfaces. Again, prematurely or not, I'm calling the parrot dead in this post, but there's always the chance of a small, organic press which fervently believes in something other than market economics and ROI closing its eyes and wishing upon a star.
In the meantime, Dreher must earn his family's health benefits from TAC by filling his required blog posts with something other than repackaged reader comments. As long as words follow words, as do the days of our lives, as I'm doing right now and could continue indefinitely if I weren't afraid of alienating all of you, family- and food-delicacy-necessary Dreher posts remain a handy vehicle to contain calorie-free writing about writing about the Benedict Option. For the surely-Elvis-lives! crowd, it's like filling the auto-air freshener dispenser with grilled steak drippings, enduringly effective at a primal level. And, as I mentioned, it simultaneously satisfies and explains why nothing more substantive about the BO is being written (Rod explained that to us, Margaret, his publisher doesn't want him giving away the book for free. We'll just have to be patient.)
BTW, I obviously strain for the right term, but "intellectual vaporware" describes the Benedict Option perfectly.
DeleteNot just another Dreher autobiography but some action?
ReplyDeletePlease, no. Spare us an actual BenOp. LOL!
I prefer to think of the Benedict Option as that last little bit of cheese that is always in the back room but can never be identified, no matter how many different types you request. Just as you think you have found it in all of its gloriously runny essence, the cat eats it.
ReplyDeleteAt least we do not have to listen to a bloody bouzouki.
le Fromage Anonyme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWDdd5KKhts
And so it begins -- the "research", I mean.
ReplyDeleteThe BO: a personality searching for its misplaced cult.
DeleteI mentioned to the guestmaster, Brother Ignatius, that I hoped to share their Christian wisdom with the world beyond Norcia, which so hungers for it. He sighed gently, and said, “We came to the monastery to escape the world, but the world keeps coming.”
DeleteThe Rod Rod Dreher sees in his mind's eye.
The Rhod Brother Ignatius sees himself responding to.
Ha!
DeleteWhat struck me from that post was:
After dinner, the monks stood to chant more prayers, then filed silently out to their evening. I went back to my apartment adjacent to the monastery, and passed a beautiful site: a “norcineria,” which is to say a shop that sells cured pork and boar in a hundred different ways. That’s what Norcia is known for, and never was I happier that we Orthodox still are not in Lent....
... I dressed, then went across the piazza to a tiny cafe, where I had cappuccino and a pistachio cornetto, and after paying, crossed the piazza again and entered the church...
I think I'll dub this sacrament unique to Dreher "gustathesiosis" or "gnoshis": the uncontrollable urge to nibble in the presence of the sacred.
DeleteToday's installment offers these updates (with a few mentions of prayer mixed in for a veneer of legitimacy):
DeleteI ask because late yesterday afternoon, I was at Caffe Tancredi, a tiny bar off the piazza here in Norcia, having a Birra Nursia, when the young woman standing next to me struck up a conversation in English...But she and Mamma managed to communicate that their pigs had won a global competition for best prosciutto, or something like it, and that The Guardian had come all the way from London to write a story about them...
...I had dinner at a restaurant called Il Cenacole, which serves pork — everybody here serves pork, and lots of it — from its own herd. The server told me that they’re part of a movement to bring back a heritage breed that is a hybrid with cinghiale, the wild boar native to this area. I had pork, but I started with a pasta with black truffles, which are also native to this area. It was delicious, though the server, Michaela, told me that this was a bad year for truffles in these mountains. It wasn’t cold enough, she said. She brought out the last of the winter’s black truffles, small dark fungal lumps the color of chocolate, and presented them to me like holy relics.
I went home full of peeg, pasta, and truffles, and settled down to work. But again, I fell quickly asleep...
...After getting dressed late this morning, I lumbered across the piazza to Caffe Tancredi for my morning cappuccino. The barista was busy making his special chocolate cappuccino creation for some women at the other end of the bar. I’m not a fan of chocolate, but he was so proud of it I had to taste his specialty. And it was, of course, out of this world....
...Today is the Feast of St. Matthias for Catholics, and I was encouraged to come to lunch. Given the feast, the monks were going to serve the festal beer they produce, the dark version of Birra Nursia. I walked in and took my usual seat at the long table, and service began. It was pasta, salad, fish, and fruit with whipped cream. The beer was extraordinarily good, genuinely some of the best I’ve had in ages. Did you know you can buy it in the US now? ...
I think there are at least two, complementary things at play here, Pik.
DeleteFirst, if he's not formally trying to get the old Crunchy Cons band back together, he's at least trying to mine that foodie stratum within it.
But overwhelmingly he's practicing the passive-aggressive brazenness common to most niche marketing religious-flavored hustles: he grins into the camera with a whore on each arm correctly calculating that A) the people repulsed by such a display aren't his market anyway and he could care less what they might think; B) the market he is aiming for not only will see them as Magdalenes but also not even care what age they might be; and C) any power players within his field of religious opinion writing can dependably be counted on to, at worst, say nothing at all, fearing either retaliation or being labeled as unirenic if they are so forward as to be critical.
Jonah Goldberg got away with eviscerating Crunchy Cons because Dreher was making political claims about what conservatism was, and politics ain't bean bag. Religion, at least contemporary American intramural religion, however, is very much cheek-turning bean bag, which is why Dreher probably decided on relocating there. Notice, for example, the ostensibly pious retreat to Norcia has midwifed an equal number of Hoo Boy! provocative political posts alongside the gourmet foodie indulgences. This is the Benedict Option strategic retreat as practiced by its sire: you retreat to a Safe Space in the opinosphere where a Jonah Goldberg won't pursue you and where the other kids are afraid to give you a wedgie, and then you do whatever it is you want to do.
I'm afraid that as long as we're the only ones complaining Dreher will continue to pee into the meanings of both Christian and Conservative with impunity.
Meanwhile, by way of the disreputable Alex Jones (by way of the reliable Matt Drudge) here's what our Beav's beloved elder brother Wally has been up to.
DeleteSt. Gregory the Great (who, incidentally, wrote the first major Life of St. Benedict) identified "superfluity of speech" as characteristic of gluttons.
DeleteThe most recent Dreher post (as of now) is about last night's debate. But he gives away the Norcia "research" scam in an NFR to a comment:
Delete*******************
Michelle says:
February 26, 2016 at 8:19 am
My favorite line of the night came post-debate when Trump told a CNN interviewer that he was a strong Christian and that might be the reason he kept getting audited. Laugh out loud funny that was.
I’m almost ready to light out to a monastery in Italy.
[NFR: The food is worth it. I had gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce with shaved black truffles for lunch today in the mom and pop joint next to the monastery. — RD]
*******************
That's just it, isn't it? Commenter Michelle gives not a hint about food in noting Trump's fraudulent claim of being persecuted for his alleged Christian faith, yet Dreher responds with a comment illuminating the fraudulent rationale for the Norcia trip (it's all about the food).
Gnocchistism.
DeleteA friend figured him out for me: the bloggy outrage porn is part of his bait and switch: bait to get conservative Christians' confidence ("look, I'm one of you"), then switch to pushing his surrender strategy for them, a.k.a. the Benedict option. I don't read him so I wouldn't have known he's backed off from the latter if not for this blog.
ReplyDelete