LMC is disappointed
Here's LMC's review of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A southern girl, a small...life:
Disappointed
I live in Baton Rouge and visit St. Francisville often. I particularly love Star Hill because of its scenic rural beauty, and I ride my bike and go for walks there often. So, I was excited to read this book (especially given the great reviews it received). I have to say I was very disappointed. It felt more like a college essay rather than a professional novel. I'm really puzzled as to why it received so much fanfare. Furthermore, I am left with a sour feeling that the author is lying [to] himself by trying to rationalize why his sister plainly did not like him.
Lmc doesn't say, but appears to think it is clear why Saint Ruthie didn't like her big bro.
Oy, talk amongst yourselves. I'm too verklempt at the moment to say anymore....
Let me throw out a my little unifying field theory of why Ruthie didn't hold Rod in much regard, why Rod can't settle on a religion (his little white Orthodox chapel in the woods is nothing if not evangelical), and why this pot o' porridge linked to earlier is such a mirror reflecting the mess its author is.
ReplyDeleteRod doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up - although he doesn't have any doubt he knows all he needs to know to tell anyone else what they ought to be and how they ought to go around being it.
When I say Rod doesn't know what he wants to be - he's still not sure he doesn't want to be one of those spinster aunts who got to cook while avoiding all that icky sex stuff.
Ruthie knew: she knew she was a country girl who married her high school sweetheart, who settled down, had his kids, skinned his deer, became a school marm and was happy accepting choices.
Rod, by contrast, steeled himself intellectually to select himself a suitable mail order bride from a catalog of qualifying ideas.
Rod wants to be a member of the coolest, most authentic religion - whatever that strikes him as being at the time. Now its Orthodoxy, but all that standing is going to raise the cost side of the cost/benefit ratio on those aging, homonucleosis-ridden knees. Something newer and fiercer with more sitting down might just prove to be the even more authentic.
He can't settle on an argument from faith to stand on against SSM and he can't settle on an argument from logic because choosing either would make him look foolish to his sycophants on the side not chosen. So he tries to fake it down the middle and makes a spectacular mess of the process. From the intellectual lecturer on spirituality and culture, scrambled eggs, not souffle.
But most importantly, doing anything would foreclose the immense power of having infinite options - writing, by contrast, offers an infinitely unbounded universe of sentence-atoms.
Not to grow up, not to choose, not to settle, not to be a prisoner of being something itself, of being a prisoner of something rather than its infinite fanciful alternatives - these are the options gods reserve unto themselves.
Behold: Peter, the Infinitely Ambiguous Divine Pan walks among us - until he tires and must lie down.
Keith
Keith: " Peter, the Infinitely Ambiguous Divine Pan walks among us - until he tires and must lie down."
DeleteRegarding "pot o' porridge", I doubt that RD is taking cues from me or anyone else here. But it is a little odd on the timing that not long after I published this, RD comes out with at least something, which consists of definite, enumerated points capable of being examined on their merits. Now, upon closer scrutiny, they may prove to be serious or laughable or a combination of both. Or they may be a collection of clever escape hatches set up for himself so he continue to play the part of a infinitely protean mugwump, trying to please everybody.
LMC: "Furthermore, I am left with a sour feeling that the author is lying [to] himself by trying to rationalize why his sister plainly did not like him."
I didn't put it in my book review, but I am pretty convinced now that in the "dinner in France" episode near the end of the book, his niece Hannah told RD exactly all the reasons why her mother held a "bad opinion" about him, and these reasons were simply edited out of the conversation because they would not fit the "theme" RD was wanting to construct. I am sure the reasons probably struck home, which explains why his reaction was "I was furious." It seems clear that he still can not get over it, which suggests to me that the presentation Hannah made was probably very blunt in its truthfulness.
As I pointed out in my book review, forgiveness does not equate with validating someone's actions or course in life. In RD's book, he seemed to equate the two and concludes that his sister didn't sincerely forgive him, whereas I pointed out that another interpretation of the matter was possible besides the one that RD wants us to assume.
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DeleteRegarding the "pot o' porridge", mentioned earlier, I noticed this later addition:
DeleteRD: "The State is so determined to root out Vile And Sickening thoughts and practices that it doesn’t care whose right to be wrong it destroys."
I guess, by implication, Dreher is anxious that his "right to be wrong" will also be trampled, eventually. But doesn't this logically amount to an admission that he is wrong? Arguing this odd way sounds more to me like an kind of pre-emptive surrender.
Let me ask. Does this kind of argumentation seem at all unconvincing or feeble-minded to anyone? Or is there some kind of sarcasm at work here that I didn't quite pick up?
In other news, Victor Davis Hanson thinks life in America is starting to resemble something out of the Satyricon by Gaius Petronius. But he ends on a note of optimism by saying "Just as Petronius’s world went on for another 400 years, ours may too."
That sounds rather appalling to me.
Oengus, I offered this comment over on Thomas O. Meehan's site:
DeleteThis tepid apologetic from the ostensible lead socon hitter is now followed by blatant click bait so hysterically over the top from any legal reality as to be indistinquishable from a campy, langorous wink at Andrew Sullivan.
But what the rhythm of the last series of posts made me think of most of all, what I came here looking for Pauli's "losing his mind" comment to respond to, was some disorder on the bi-polar spectrum. These turgid, sulking posts followed by hysterical or rhapsodic explosions, followed by more turgid, sulking posts. Not to mention that taking to his bed because of episodic depression and taking to his bed because of mono would be indistinguishable, and the only medical testimony we have about his EB is Rod's.
I'm starting to think he's bi-polar but realizes that diagnosis would torpedo his credibility as a moralizer; people would just say he's "crazy". So whatever may be wrong with him needs a "beard" that suitably supports his blogging needs. It might be EB or it might be Asperger's or it might be rheumatoid this or that, but you can pretty safely bet it will never be a bi-polar diagnosis that explains his roller coaster output.
Keith
If it comes out that Rod Dreher is bipolar it wouldn't surprise me one bit.
DeleteA friend of mine had a bi-polar relative. When you first met the guy, you'd never have thought there was a thing wrong with him. Very bright, very, very religious and active in his big evangelical church. He made a few million bucks in the financial industry and seemed to have it made. But then he had his license suspended for some "mistakes" -- shady deals, maybe -- and was found lying on his bed crying a number of times afterward, seemingly exhausted with no energy. He was committed several times, and claimed to be Jesus when people visited him and losing it emotionally. Divorce soon followed during which time details emerged about affairs and even crazier criminal investigations than I want to relate here.
If you had met this guy 10 years before this all happened you never would have predicted any of it. His family had a long history of 1) mental illness and 2) ignoring mental illness. This is not an uncommon story, unfortunately.
Pauli, (vraaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!) What are you on to [this time]? What was your Beatrice, your Chartres?
DeleteYour Kale?
Keith
My goddaughter was married to a bipolar guy for many years. I haven't pressed her on the details, but I have an idea it must have been hell. Out-of-control spending was just one symptom. (He was a doctor and could afford it, but it still got so bad that my goddaughter had to appropriate his credit cards.)
DeleteKeith, I think that Dreher piece wraps up Dreher about as well as anything: confusing matters of taste with matters of Truth. It dovetails with his crisis-of-faith-Big-Conversion years back when he was walking out of Mass because the church building was ugly and the music sucked.
Delete"Stupor" might be what Dreher experienced at Chartres -- these days, it is what I experience (in a different sense, of course) when I read his crap.
Whenever I stop by his horrid blog anymore, I don't read what Dreher himself contributes (because it is way too many words for too little content -- sapis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum only minus quite a bit of the eloquence. Sometimes the articles he links to are interesting, so I guess he at least provides some service.
I will treat the group with a link to the last Dreher post I read in full, as it looks like it might be his new next big jihad -- the white guilt of Rod Dreher. Y'all will dig the tears that come to him when thinking about our racial past, the analogy to the anger he felt over the scandal (of course), and of course the hint that his next great opus will be on this topic.
My favorite passage from that piece is what Rod Dreher wants from white people as repentance for the past:
I’m talking more about changing the way we think, turning away from ways of seeing the world that diminish or refuse empathy, and from approaches to life that allow us to ignore our own individual or communal consciences.
I'm sure he'll be happy to tell us what we ought to do to address our communal conscience (i.e., read his new book).
Uh-oh, Pik. Looks like Dreher's still on his Texas tear.
DeleteCould it be that Mrs. Dreher was so distracted by something heinously fried and yummy that she failed to wax the paddle properly?
Keith
Yeah, I noticed that myself.
DeleteTexas posts are always good filler for Dreher on a day he's suffering from homonucleosis or whatever, as they keep the fanboys busy in the comment box. (There's more than a little bit of Texas envy going on in that combox, I see -- pathetic.)
Nice thing about Texas is that it's always willing to adopt newcomers (like me) so long as they have a good attitude. Jerry Jeff Walker is considered down here to be as Texas as it gets, and he's from upstate New York, for Pete's sake.
Keith: …a prisoner of something…
ReplyDeleteIt later occurred to me that St. Paul sometimes called himself the "prisoner of Christ". For him, all the "fanciful alternatives" were gone like a vapor. Or to use his own words, he accounted them nothing but rubbish that he may gain Christ. Paul was on a particular path. He was held captive, but paradoxically he was also liberated.
Keith: "Not to grow up, not to choose, not to settle, not to be a prisoner of being something itself, of being a prisoner of something rather than its infinite fanciful alternatives…"
ReplyDeleteKeith, I think you have reiterated a little more poetically what I said in different words, "Does Rod truly believe in anything? Does he think there is anything that is really worth staking your life on?"
Having the Faith means to irrevocably stake your life on something — in this case someone, Christ Jesus. Perhaps RD needs to finally choose to make that one final, irrevocable step of Faith, no matter what it costs him — to become a prisoner of Christ. Then he will find that he will have far more than anything the whole world can offer. And he'll have more than enough that is worth saying to say (if the Lord chooses that for him).
Oengus, those are truly laudable wishes for you to bestow on anyone.
ReplyDeleteLet me then take the opposite opportunity to play the sin goat and ask, where have we already seen an example of a glib and mellifluous chatterer on whose blank pages the spiritually and psychologically needy can write whatever their own hopes and dreams happen to be?
Hmmm...can I be even more cruelly succinct? Why, yes, yes I can.
Rod Dreher is Barack Obama.
Keith
Oh, and just in case anyone should ever want to take issue with anything I say, you should first know that I have an owie.
DeleteKeith
Keith: "Rod Dreher is Barack Obama."
DeleteThat brings up an interesting question.
But first, let me say that I don't know RD, other than that I've read both his books, and that he has a very long track record as a particularly profuse blogger and public person. But I think that's enough to go on for drawing a few inferences.
As far as narcissistic personalities go, there is nothing baffling about RD. I would say that most of the traits that you and others have observed pretty much align with a narcissistic profile: grandiose delusions of self importance, odd fetishes, the hankering to acquire a coterie of fawning sycophants, petty resentments over trivialities (like bouillabaise), vindictiveness, bullying, emotional immaturity, the lack of an "internal circuit breaker" that would prevent most people from publishing creepy, self-pitying yet self-admiring stuff like "A Good Life", and so forth and so on. It would be more than dreary trying to catalogue it all.
I mean we have all encountered narcissistic people before. As far as narcissism goes, RD is rather run of the mill, one with a passable though mediocre talent for writing (as LCM noted) who's gotten more attention than most people can ever have for what are a few faux accomplishments.
But that brings me to my question, one that does baffle me. How is it that narcissists acquire so much influence and control in this world, often way out of proportion to any measure of actual talent they possess? Obama is a very good example of this. How on earth did such a self-preening, narcissistic incompetent empty-suit ever get elected President of the United States, not just once but twice now? That is a good question.
Obama is amazing. RD is really not amazing.
Oengus, I think your next to last paragraph question is what tipped me to the similarities between the two.
DeleteIn any period different from the one at the end of the Bush presidency, from 9/11 through Iraq through the recession Obama wouldn't have been given the time of day. Or maybe he might have been given the sort of novel interest a Marco Rubio got at first. But Obama is a case study in how the American people will turn blindly to an imagined savior when they're traumatized by those sorts of multiple events. In the history of political strongmen Obama isn't that amazing, he's pretty foreseeable. Anything but this hyperinflation, anyone but Bush, etc.
Dreher's fairy tale story is similar. Imagine what Dreher's career would have been without the collapse of old media and without the corresponding explosion of blogging, which is, face it, the freest, sluttiest, most bastardized format of 'professional' writing history may ever see (no offense, Pauli). Super low to zero startup costs, and virtually no standards or ethics compared to traditional norms.
Imagine if Dreher had had to follow in the footsteps of a Buckley, or had had to make his career solely as a book author based on his books to date, or as a traditional newspaperman. That weed would have been pulled and discarded early on and long ago.
But as it happens, great upheaval provides great opportunities, even for weeds, and so the culture became ripe for the offspring of Oprah and Howard Stern, a spiritual pornographer of resentments, a pseudointellectual Graham Norton of cultural chat.
And with digital globalization, out of 6 billion souls to pull from you only need so many for whom your babbling is their cheap crack cocaine and psychotherapy and you're home free.
Keith
No offense taken, Keith. I've often pointed out that I'm not a writer, I'm a blogger. Blogging does bear a slight resemblance to writing, I'll concede. Likewise surfing the internet bears a resemblance to reading....
DeleteAlthough you point out the vapidity of Dreher's blogging, much of what you say could be directed at 25% of the bloggers out there, and probably 90%+ of the bloggers on Patheos and Beliefnet. Dreher's writing has taken a dip lately into a sort of general moroseness punctuated by strained episodes of giddiness. I wonder if his supposed illness isn't mostly psychosomatic and the dude is truly losing it mentally.
Pauli, I'm neither a writer or a blogger and I do want to make it clear that I value the space you give us here to comment.
DeleteThe thing I was trying to emphasize was that in a very short period of time the professional writing environment as a whole changed from a pro football scrimmage line to a bunch of Chris Farleys sitting around in elastic pants with orange dust on their snouts. It's like Darwinism suddenly went into reverse gear for the professional writer crowd and cows suddenly became kings of all they surveyed.
Keith
But that brings me to my question, one that does baffle me. How is it that narcissists acquire so much influence and control in this world, often way out of proportion to any measure of actual talent they possess?
DeleteOh my gosh, y'all. That's the $64,000 question, inn't it? Email me privately as diane_kamer@yahoo.com, and I'll unfold a tale that will freeze your young blood re a recent example from Dilbert-World a/k/a my workplace.
Here's something you might find humorous. It's from 2002, before blogs were taken seriously by dead-tree types. Here Dreher describes a blog as "a sort of running public diary published on the Internet."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that's why you'll never find Dreher blogging outside the warm, snuggly protection of some big kangaroo's deep and roomy legal pouch.
ReplyDeleteKeith
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ReplyDeleteSt. Therese. Walker Percy. Dante. He knows which Church butters his bread, and it ain't ROCOR.
DeleteTom, yes. He's haunted. Even in his book, he talks about going to Notre Dame Cathedral to pray the Rosary.
DeleteI think that making that kind of remote diagnosis is rather risky.
DeleteI agree, that's why I phrased it the way I did. But there are many people I know who have been diagnosed with bi-polar in middle-age.
Re: grandiosity, check out this line from wikipedia: "Grandiosity is chiefly associated with narcissistic personality disorder, but also commonly features in manic or hypomanic episodes of bipolar disorder." So while I'm still reserving judgment, you can see the connection.
Can someone post a link to the Meehan piece? Did I miss it?
ReplyDeleteDiane
Diane: "Can someone post a link to the Meehan piece?"
ReplyDeleteThe article I alluded to is TAC RIP.
Oengus, if it comes to a tossup between narcissism and bi-polar, narcissism wins hands down. Remember that the only thing that gave him the vapors more than the prospect of NFP (that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it) was his employment at that foundation, where his job in life had become working on behalf of other people instead of publishing his own personal "Web diary".
ReplyDeleteKeith
FYI, I think the Woodruff article to which Meehan was referring is probably this one, "The American Conservative, Unfused?"
ReplyDeletePauli: "If it comes out that Rod Dreher is bipolar it wouldn't surprise me one bit."
ReplyDeleteI think that making that kind of remote diagnosis is rather risky. For what's it's worth, the Wikipedia does give this description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Now, what Meehan and Woodruff had to say about TAC was very interesting to me. The impression I got was that Conservatism nowadays is pretty fractured. Also, that TAC wanted to recruit RD, and spend a bundle to do it, seems completely baffling. There are much better bloggers at PJ Media, who would have been far better choices in my opinion. But, apparently, RD is now doing much of the heavy lifting at TAC in attracting the majority of the web hits to their web site while not being paid proportionately for it. As for TAC going under, if that were the case, I imagine that it would put RD in a pretty desperate bind in trying to find employment, and it may explain why he very much needs to get a career going as a writer.
I think he could have that kind of a career if he restricted himself to what is more in alignment with his abilities, something like more prosaic "journalistic" or investigative writing on some limited, specific topic. And I can think of several possible topics that would be worth reading about, which he might even do passably okay at. He may not get the Nobel Prize in Literature, but at least his books might sell well enough to feed his family. On the other hand, the worst possible thing that could happen would be for him to write with the attitude that "I am the great Rod Dreher and I am just jammed packed full of Great Ideas", or to go on a quest to become the "Walker Percy of St. Francisville" by writing, based on his sister's life, that novel which he threatened everybody with a while back. Such a novel would be a disaster.
Lately, RD has been reading Dante. That may be a good thing, but it is starting to worry me what he might end up doing with it. I think it takes someone about 3 times reading the Divine Comedy to begin to understand what Dante was getting at. I hope that RD will not turn the Divine Comedy into another launching pad to send himself into the outer space.
RD - View from You Table #256: "what a revelation the walnut mustard is!"
ReplyDeleteRD - September the Year Begins: "But the point is simply that we are headed in the right direction, and boy, does that ever make a difference in my mood …September means hope. It means rebirth."
Sometimes it gets to the point where it's unintentionally funny.
Someone please explain to me again why TAC hired this guy. I can see why Oprah or the Food Network maybe would.
Some way or another they must have guessed correctly that he would draw the most web hits.
Oengus,
DeleteYou missed Dreher partaking of his Holy Oysterist, his one enduring cosmic truth and the reason the other trappings of his transient religions are dismissible.
My dog used to look up from his dish with that same thousand yard stare.
If Wick Allison thought he could make money off of performing seals...wait...
Keith
Keith, I liked that picture. In fact, it inspired me enough to re-start doing some artistic experimentation.
DeleteI've updated my "Linda Richman" blog entry, to include my first attempt.
Keith: "If Wick Allison thought he could make money off of performing seals...wait".
ReplyDeleteWoodruff reporting what Unz said: "He also says the magazine is in danger of being seen as unserious."
If TAC does finally go under, it will have richly deserved its fate.
Someone asked a good question. Why keep on alienating what little conservative readership you have left by having your top blogger constantly publish mealy-mouthed stuff like this?
That is, when he's not going on and on and on about oysters, figs, walnut mustard, and bouillabaisse.
Oengus, you are one heck of a talented artist. And a very good person, too: Your portrait portrays Rod sympathetically, empathetically even. He looks like a lost, frightened little boy as he tastes his precious oyster. It does make me want to pray for him.
DeleteRD: How Should We Regard Southern Decadence?
ReplyDeleteIs it Southern? Is it Decadent? Is RD the Linda Richman of Blogging? Discuss amongst yourselves.
I guess there comes a point where one needs to move on. If you lie down with the dogs too much, you'll end up with fleas.
Any "conservative" writer who publishes on TAC and who wants to be taken seriously should consider looking for another venue.
Wait, Oengus...what?
DeleteAnd not have his conservative thoughts uplifted and carried to the four corners of the globe on the wings of Sonic the Hedgehog in The Scent of a "Hooch"?
Keith