Start reading How Dante Can Save Your Life for free!

Google Play makes the first 45 pages of How Dante Can Save Your Life available for free. This is probably the only way I'll read any of it. Here's a teaser from page 27:

Suddenly Daddy and Ruthie were standing over me. “What’s wrong?” Daddy asked. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” I said, looking up with a face swollen from crying. “I shot those baby squirrels. They were just babies.”

I looked up from the ground at my father and my sister. Ruthie burst into laughter. Daddy screwed his face up in disgust and growled, “You sissy .”

A thick iron gate slammed shut within me, and from behind it I regarded my father with cold contempt. He had struck me where he could do the most damage: my sense of manhood. I followed him and my sister out of the field, my face on fire, this time not with shame but with wrath. And from that moment on, I saw him not as my champion. I saw him as my adversary.

That's the funniest thing I've read today, including this hilarious review of Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula.

The tragic squirrel hunt story may have inspired this review.

Gawd dangit, Bobby!

It's Funny How Things Are Connected

It's funny how things are connected.

Like death, sex and money. I mean, they named a documentary after those three heavy topics.

Check this out: a guy is pimping his book about another book about what happens after death and his event announcement give a nod to the famous pornographic title Debbie Does Dallas. Then the next day we find out in a comment to another book-pimping post that this guy's publisher, Regan Arts, has (somehow) pulled in a winner of a book review from Kirkus for another of its books described as a "the sex-drenched memoir" of a famous Las Vegas pimp, Dennis Hof. The memoir prominently features one of Hof's friends, Ron Jeremy, a legendary adult film actor who incidentally did his stick—I mean his shtick—in all three of the Debbie Does Dallas sequel films. Interesting....

Everyone does know that cover of the book about another book about what happens after death has undergone a revision since the original cover, don't they? I think the new one might sell better—it features nudity. Regan Arts knows their business.

It's funny how things are connected.

"Get me rewrite!"

An Est Quod Est reader writes:

LOL:

This week and next, I am in a time of extremely intense writing, revising my Dante manuscript. I’m writing it in part for readers like these kids, and for teachers like Callen Taylor. If posting is light here in the next few days, know that I’m not wasting time.

Translation: what was previously submitted to the publisher was unacceptable.

 

Moral Therapeutic Dante

The Southern Bookman writes about the upcoming Divine Comedy self-help book. Excerpt:

Conservative writer Rod Dreher is cutting his way into the self-pity-therapeutic literature market staked out on the left by Anne Lamott. Dreher, who wore his heart on both sleeves, pants legs and shirt collars in his memoir of his late sister, Ruthie Leming, recently discussed his further bouts of depression and how he's cured himself by reading Dante. His account of his continual self-actualization appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal's Review section on Easter Saturday.

Dante's great poetic work is really a self-help book, Dreher says. Why, one of Dreher's correspondents even quit smoking by reading Dante. Somehow, I missed the canto about the Marlboro Man in one of Dante's circles of hell.

Dreher's "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming," tells the story of Dreher moving back to his hometown of St. Francisville, La., and rediscovering the importance of community from the support given his family through the illness and death of his beloved sister, Ruthie. He moved back home after a dispiriting stint in New York and Washington as a budding conservative pundit. Dreher's book gives a memorable portrait of his sister and delivers an in-depth examination of small-town life, but his emotional extremes ruined the book for me at the end.

My shelf is devoid of anything by Anne Lamott, but I do have some for Dummies books. But there's no Dante for Dummies book yet. So I was thinking that maybe Dreher is writing for that imprint, a division of Wiley. Or even better he could start a whole new brand of Can Save Your Life books. If that happens, I want to sign the contract to do How Blessed Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Can Save Your Life just for the Trivial Pursuit card.

Do people still play Trivial Pursuit?

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. . . .)

Just my speed

Believe me, I'm into anything which can save my life and if I can pull it off for half price, that's even better. So I picked this book up at Half Price Books earlier today.

It's a graphic novel version of The Divine Comedy by the famous award-winning cartoonist/artist, Seymour Chwast. Virgil and Dante are both wearing fedoras and there's stuff like typewriters and machine guns in it. So I suppose it's a little bit updated, but not too much. Also it's competely written in English. So he either translated it from the original Italian, or he might have merely pulled some pieces out of the English cliff notes version. It's very abridged, to put it mildly, but it hits the main points, e.g., magicians have their heads on backwards, sodomites get their faces erased, Judas, Brutus and Cassius are in the middle, etc.

I've read it for about 15 minutes and I'm halfway through. I am feeling a little bit healthier, but I still need my glasses to see. My favorite thing about it so far is how natural Chwast pulls it off. Dante is dressed like a gumshoe detective, the whole bit with the overcoat and Virgil is wearing a tux. It just feels right to me.

Orthodox Barbara-Marie Drezhlo schools Rod Dreher on motes and beams

Matthew 7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Pauli had previously posted about Rod Dreher using both scurrilous news reports and outright fabrications to take another revenge swipe at the Catholic Church, a 2,000-year-old institution he left not long ago for somehow failing his needs in ways that Dante hasn't quite yet (with Dante there is still hope for a book deal). Tom Piatak of Chronicles and Red Phillips of Conservative Heritage Times each took note and called him out on it, and Dreher was forced to recant - or at least forced to be as honest as he is capable of being short of an outright waterboarding.

Now none other than Barbara-Marie Drezhlo whips it out and takes a shot at that soaking, forcing Dreher to at least dab a little sanctimony behind each ear with respect to Stanley Brittain and 'fess up:

Thank God they’ve put this wretched man behind bars. He should have been defrocked years ago. Why? According to a 2011 internal investigative report in the Orthodox Church in America (PDF here), Metropolitan Jonah reassigned him even though he sexually harassed a Reader at a church in Alaska (the details of the case are pathetic), and was allegedly discovered seeking out online gay hookups after he left for Australia in the company of his former bishop. The internal (SMPAC) report was right to hold Jonah responsible for allowing the depraved monk Brittain to serve in that Oregon parish, but what the internal report did not say was that Bishop Benjamin of the OCA’s Diocese of the West specifically requested that Brittain be released to his care and supervision. As I wrote a couple of years ago...

Whatever. Because Dreher offers no corresponding link to his own writing, however, frankly I have no idea whether what he goes on to say was actually written a couple of years ago as he claims or more conveniently dashed out only a couple of hours ago to neatly fit current needs. Or maybe he's just fuzzy on the details. Something in his eye, perhaps.

In fact, a casual reader only skimming Dreher's post might even be misled into thinking the perp was just another representative of the Catholic Church: the word "priest" immediately pops up as the tenth word encountered in the post. Seven paragraphs later "Orthodox" finally emerges as the 200th.

Other readers are encouraged to fill in the timelines more completely here. Where was Dreher and what was he doing with respect to the enabler Metropolitan Jonah in 2011?  I think it's safe to conclude, though, that the only reason Dreher is now admitting that there are problems in his own Orthodox Church is that the episode in question happened in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the Orthodox communion he tiptoed away from without a peep, certainly without the wailing tantrum he delivered when leaving the Catholic Church, not in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) communion he has since affiliated his handmade backyard St. Francisville church with (when you order your new priest online yourself, I'm pretty sure that counts as handmade).

So why did Dreher order up a different Orthodox communion when putting together his personal Orthodox church several years ago? Why not just stick with the OCA? And, loquacious as he is, why not tell us all why, over and over and over again?

But while motes and beams may periodically clog his vision, as long as Rod Dreher remains religiously nimble enough there will never, ever be any flies on him. Wannabe religious hustlers and cult leaders out there take note: this is the model you want to study and follow. This is once again a master at work.

Oh. Never mind.

Our Cub Reporter was on the job, reporting on the causes of the UCSB murders last week. Of course, a cautionary statement is appropriate, lest the reader run off with his or her own pet theory:

First off, I think we ought to have learned by now not to interpret these horrible incidents as confirmation of whatever theory we previously believed.

After negotiating that traffic cone ("That said . . ."), let's plow ahead and do exactly that anyway: 

I think the fundamental issue here, the one connecting Rodger’s particular psychopathologies, is a craving for status. All of us want to feel a sense of purpose in our lives, and want to be respected and loved by others. Rodger believed that without sex, his life had no meaning. What undid him was the belief that he was entitled to sex, the ultimate status marker (in his world) because he possessed all the status markers that in his reckoning entitled him to sexual attention.  

And while it might be tough to work TLWORL into this piece, it’s pretty easy to use the Dante Hammer on the Rodger Nail, along with a little extrapolated indictment of the culture*:

Envy, for Dante and his medieval world, is not really wanting what others have; it’s wanting them not to have it if one cannot have it oneself. Rodger was envious in both the medieval sense and in the more modern sense. We have created a popular culture in which the worth of people and the meaning of life is measured by hedonistic values, which are constantly celebrated by the culture. What’s more, we have created a popular culture in which young people are acculturated into believing that it is their right to have these things, and if these things aren’t readily available, it is a cosmic injustice wrought by someone else against their innocent person.

There we go:  causes of a maniac’s murder spree all figured out from way out here in South La.  Work in a quote from Paradiso at the end to tie a ribbon around it, and it’s on to the next topic for our Newspaperman.

Except for:   

UPDATE: Sorry, but I've been gone all day long, and just getting back to this.  I'm learning from you readers that this Rodger kid had been psychiatrically ill for a long time, and his parents tried to get him help. That's a huge factor, obviously, and one I wasn't aware of when I posted the article this morning.**

Never mind. 

 * Not that the culture oughtn't be indicted for many reasons. 

** Emphasis added by me.

Rod Dreher's Blood Eagle

SPOILER ALERT: FANS OF THE HISTORY CHANNEL SERIES "VIKINGS" WHO ARE NOT CURRENT SHOULD STOP READING NOW.

In this Dante post immediately following this Southern Gothic offering showing a paterfamilias reading Dante to his thralls over "filet of drum sautéed in butter, garlic, and fresh marjoram; preserved lemon risotto, green salad and Pommery Champagne", our Working Boy ceaselessly teases his hoped for book on Dante by referring again to his suffering, from which Dante has now saved him.

In a similar way, I am convinced that if I had not suffered as I’ve done, and in the particular way that I have done, these past two years, I never would have been able to understand the Commedia as it should be understood: not as merely an aesthetic object, but as a work of art that knew me better than I knew myself, and could reveal to me truths I needed to put my life back together.

Oddly, Rod has never specifically told us what his suffering consisted of or what he had to endure to finally fight his way through to the triumphal redemption of Pommery Champagne and insalate misto.

Fortunately, readers of EQE have bulldog reporter Keith to inform them, and I have finally run this mystery to the ground.

Horribly, it turns out that Rod Dreher has not only suffered through but survived the blood eagle having been performed on him by persons I have yet to identify, possibly disgruntled family members or local townies, or maybe even Biff from Back to the Future who heard he was back in town.

If you're squeamish about these things, you might want to skip ahead at this point, too.

Basically the blood eagle is like spatchcocking a chicken or turkey, except that it is performed on the opposite side of the torso.

The recipient (the sufferer, Rod Dreher) is alive and conscious at the outset. Cuts are made with a knife parallel to the spine on either side deep enough to expose the ribs, at which point the knife is exchanged for a war axe in order to chop the ribs free from the spine. The ribs are then popped free and spread out and up over each side of the back until they resemble the wings of an eagle in flight. Finally, the lungs are flipped up and forward to lay on the shoulders. Salt may be added, to taste. In the show Vikings, it is said that the recipient who doesn't cry out during the procedure is said to be welcomed into Valhalla, while those who do can never enter. My reporting on whether or not Rod Dreher cried out during his suffering is incomplete (he's a tough guy; I'll bet he didn't), but since Valhalla is probably not on his itinerary anyway I'm assuming it doesn't matter.

Others have suffered before, too, but I don't think anyone in history has suffered the way Rod Dreher has nebulously suffered and lived to tell us about it and tell us about it and tell us about it, a feat that is making me rethink my own suffering from my own vague and unspecified Existential Boo-Boo.

Without a doubt it's the renewed manliness and strength of character Rod gained from enduring and triumphing over his blood eagle which allowed him to create this second order, once removed, passive-aggressive post of concern for another human being, The Sarah Palin Who Might Have Been.

It's really important to closely examine the post's structure in order to fully appreciate the redemptive strength of character Dante has bequeathed Dreher in the shadow of his blood eagle.

This first thing to notice is that Dreher is not authoring the sentiment of the post, his role is only that of Pilateally purelled messenger. The sentiment itself originates with anonymous "reader Richard", a person few rightthinking people online have reason to doubt exists.

But, secondly, the sentiment itself is possibly the purest, most exquisite example of effeminate passive-aggressiveness ever produced by the hand of fey: Oh, what might you have been had you not been so terribly, terribly unfortunate as to have lived it as you?

This sort of formulation is mastery, people. This triumph of the self-diddling, ouroborean will is the sort of fingerprint-free, oblique, warrior manliness that can only come from the keys of a person who has personally endured the suffering I've reported on above and lived to tell about it.

Frankly, in my quest to become a better blogger in the manner of suffering-R-him Rod Dreher, it's pretty obvious I still have a long, long way to go.

Invited 1,400, Going 53, Maybe 29

What's this, you ask? The guest list for Hell on a merciful day?

Au contraire, foolish but lovable devotees of me, that's the box score this morning for CorkyFest, aka the Walker Percy Weekend in St.Francisville, LA, the tax-subsidized crawfish and bourbon party Rod Dreher is throwing for himself.

I would be going myself, naturally, but I had already promised to give Crank a thorough dip to help ease his mange. Maybe one of you has an extra 100 bucks and a plane ticket to burn and can go in my place. Ever eaten outdoors in South Louisiana, in June, in the evening? That's right, Spanish moss is only a humble tillandsia, not a romantic, naturally cooling insect repellent.

So maybe my first sentence wasn't that far off. Or maybe this event is really just the soft opening for Danteland.

"Give a nod to Rod"

Because "Better Call Saul" was already taken, that's my offering to help fill the aching void that drives Rod Dreher's one true Holy Grail in life, being known for coining a popular internet meme or other type of catchy slogan.

The latest corpse once again in the sweaty hands of Reanimator Rod is his "Benedict Option" which, as best I can tell from Dylan Pahman's thoughtful analysis here, and a commenter named WorldWideProfessor's remarks here and here, has the same claim to religious or cultural gravitas that the "Danish-sounding" "Häagen-Dazs" does: it's nothing more than a brand name invented to flog a product to naive rubes.

Except that with Häagen-Dazs, you actually get something for your effort, not a vague Mosquito Coast or Jonestown that ends badly, and shouldn't be pursued in the first place for the very good reasons Erika Rudzis has already explained here.

With the so-called "Benedict Option", Rod Dreher gets cash-yielding blog meme hits that allow him to live the good, Paris-vacationing, wine-sipping, newest Apple products, non-Benedict Option life - and you get left holding the bag like a chump.

Remember "Crunchy Cons"? Yeah, me, too - barely.

But whatever was valid (if it ever was) about "Crunchy Cons" when that was all the Rod Dreher rage is certainly no less valid today. So what, if anything, changed? Why isn't Dreher still blogging heavily about "Crunchy Conservatism"? It certainly isn't as if that wouldn't fit in the garage sale of post-graduate thinking that fills his current home, TAC, today.

What happened to "Crunchy Cons"? At the end of the day it simply turned out to be - and first and foremost for its creator himself - nothing more than that other made-up ice cream name, "Bloggin Snotz", the one that never caught on and so vanished into the dustbin of failed brand names like a red-headed stepchild.

Bye-bye, Crunchy Cons...(but, hey, whoa...has anyone tried "Dante Dads" yet?)

So "give a nod to Rod" and help him try to come up with something, anything in the way of a catchy internet slogan he can become famous for so that he can finally stop perverting the saints of the Church into his own instantly forgettable version of a brand name dessert.

The Dante Diet

Recently, in concert with promoting a possible future book deal on the subject, Rod Dreher has been treating us to the myriad benefits of all things Dante, including his miraculous healing in mysterious ways not yet specified from a persistent, medically diagnosed case of viral mononucleosis, the "kissing disease".

This is heady news, so following this revelation the EQE laboratories have been working night and day to uncover other benefits of reading Dante that Mr. Dreher in his current ecstatic state might understandably neglect to blog himself:

• Reading Dante will reveal your interest in Italian literature.
 
• Reading Dante will increase your regular unleaded gas mileage by 13.7 per cent. Premium users, however, should expect no more than a 9.3 per cent benefit.
 
• Sometime after reading Dante, you will receive a phone call from someone you like.
 
• Reading Dante will increase your breasts one cup size and restore that youthful, "perky" look. Be sure this is what you really want.
 
• After reading Dante, call toll free before digging.
 
• Reading Dante will correct your cardiac arhythmia by replacing it with terza rima.
 
• Do not read Dante while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.
 
• Reading Dante will cause bread placed in your oven to turn brown.
 
• Reading Dante is not an offer to sell securities.
 
• Reading Dante will slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.
 
• Reading Dante contains no trans fats.
 
• Reading Dante will remove that persistent tummy bulge.
 
• Reading Dante could increase your tax refund, if you're the sort of person who lends the government money interest-free.
 
• Reading Dante provides 25 per cent of the daily recommended amount of antioxidants, nutrients and vitamins.
 
• Reading Dante will prevent the Cowboys from choking on the eve of the playoffs.
 
• Reading Dante will cause the woman next to you at closing time to resemble Beatrice.
 
• After reading Dante, you must be present to win.
 
• Reading Dante helps with slow intestinal transit time.
 
• Reading Dante could cause you to suddenly accelerate to exhilarating speeds.
 
• Sometime after reading Dante, you will have a dream about someone you know.
 
• Reading Dante contains a substantial amount of non-tobacco ingredients.
 
• Reading Dante does not carry cash.
 
• Reading Dante will restore the imbalance of both positive and negative ions in your body the natural way.
 
• Reading Dante is not affiliated with the American Red Cross.
 
• Reading Dante will reveal that your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.
 
• Benefits of reading Dante are subject to change without notice.
 
• Reading Dante is provided "as is" without any warranties.
 
• If rash, irritation, redness, or swelling develops, discontinue reading Dante.

Only a maddeningly partial list, I know, but be sure to bookmark this page for new discoveries daily.