Of the Week | 9.13.24
American culture, podcast conversations on books, and more on the Rule of Life
Happy Friday!
This week //
Leaning heavily into church community and the beautiful weather this week. We kicked off the “new year” with an all-church outdoor breakfast between services, my community group attended a Bulls game, and the young adults met up at (one of) everyone’s favorite warehouse-turned-pizza-and-beer-spots. A welcome week of fun.
Enjoying + link love //
Following up from last week — two more pieces on the Rule of Life for consideration: Kirsten Sanders’ observations and Ian Harbor’s defense of the practice.
An incisive piece from Matthew Gasda in American Affairs on the state of American culture and art and how to recover them:
A society that reads classics and writes letters is going to think differently than one that trades memes on Instagram. Societies in which nobody reads are going to have reduced means of communicating; the sound of thought will lack ether to pass through.
A high-culture simulacrum isn’t a high culture. “Trad” aesthetics, therefore, won’t fix anything, won’t produce an American renaissance. Neoclassical buildings and bodybuilders—the fetishes of the reactionary X.com crowd—reflect a hollow, ahistorical vision of human excellence. The circulation of semiotic tokens of classicism doesn’t purchase a living culture and cannot, in turn, commission real geniuses to commence real artistic work. Internet-inspired neo-neoclassicism has no organic relationship, no spiritual relationship to actual creation… Today’s AI-generated neo-neoclassical art, or computer-aided drawings of new cities, charter cities with quasi-classical layouts, are not going to be a new Florence; these places, if they are ever even partially built, will not produce Leonardos or Michelangelos; they will be peopled with modern technocrats or sentimental play-actors with no concept of study, learning, prayer, memorization, apprenticeship (no notion of humanitas).
The Old Books with Grace podcast kicked off its fifth season with a conversation with Haley Stewart about the Catholic imagination and forgotten women writers. I especially loved the episode’s conclusion discussing what makes a good Christian novel: the author doesn’t try to convert or proselytize through their work, but rather, is most concerned with telling a truthful, well-crafted story — and yet, the beauty and goodness of the book end up providing conversion power.
This fantastic Reading Revisited podcast interview with
covers “book gluttony,” the intellectual life, and the power of story (saved to listen to again!)I saw Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker at the Alamo last weekend, surrounded by an audience mostly made up of seniors and 40-year-old men (and so many of them ordered black coffee?! at a lunchtime showing?!). I have mixed feelings about the movie itself, but its themes of desire and human nature provoked plenty of thought. I appreciated Bogumil Jarmulak’s review in Theopolis exploring its ideas:
The Room does not trust people’s words but can search their hearts to find out what their true desires are. Something that people probably more often than not, do not want to do on their own. We prefer to live in a world created by our lies, half-truths, pretensions, and fake stories. A look into the heart would reveal things we would rather keep secret, and it could also destroy the life we have so carefully constructed. Yes, the truth can set us free, but only by killing us.
And:
We approach the Room in many different forms more than once in our lifetime. Whenever we can make a wish, when we dream about a better life, when we pray to God Almighty, is like entering the Room. What do we ask Him for? Do we speak from the bottom of the heart? And is it any good? What do our prayers reveal about us? And what do they bury deep underground to keep it secret even for ourselves?
Currently //
Reading: American Primitive by Mary Oliver, Passing by Nella Larsen, The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner, Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Watching: Stalker, Eating Raoul
Listening: Massive Attack, Jennifer Holliday’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls
Misc: Tribucha Kombucha’s Chill Berry
Looking ahead //
I’m heading to Asheville this weekend! I haven’t been in over six years, and I’m looking forward to hiking, checking out the new coffee shops (Rowan!), and revisiting favorites from past trips (White Duck Taco!).