Month: July 2023

Ephemera, 07/27/23

This starts out interesting and ends in complete and total absurdity. Yes: stop whining on your Discord server, go to your local parish, and say, “If everyone is welcome, then welcome me and people like me.” Uh, no: don’t chase people out of the parish and onto the sidewalk while screaming, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Seriously, people. The return of orthodoxy to the Episcopal Church will depend upon the young gay priests who are right now demanding it, and who know what it actually means to be credally orthodox. (Hint: Leviticus 18 and its admonition against having sex with women while they are menstruating didn’t make the final cut on any of the creeds.)

* * * *

“When I go to a great bookstore, which, to me, is like a cathedral, I feel the need to tithe.” Sigh, me too. (Chris Vognar)

* * * *

“We eggheads used to understand that art is the best hope we have in this low world for a truly autonomous sphere, and that this autonomy is nowhere pushed further than in the productions of the avant-garde. Accordingly, avant-garde artists rejected mass entertainments, or at least did not engage with them as if they were the best thing on offer … In fact the sorry truth is that they may well be the best thing on offer, simply because the forces that produced them have absolutely bulldozed the last surviving hopes for art as a sphere of autonomous creation.” (Justin Smith-Ruiu; used to be Justin E. H. Smith, not exactly sure what happened there) 

Ephemera, 07/26/23

Seems to me that the sort of people who sneer at “old books” are the same sort of people who might find it a reasonable idea to use artificial intelligence to “understand reality.”

* * * *

“Nothing anyone is saying is necessarily wrong; it’s just not interesting.” (Adam Kotsko on moralism in cultural criticism)

* * * *

Finished reading Howards End for a Catherine Project reading group. I’m not sure what I expected when I began, but I don’t think I expected quite so much plot. After barreling through the last third just to see what twists awaited poor Leonard and irritating Helen, I had to go back and reread it more slowly in order to enjoy Forster’s language and brilliantly casual insights. In the end I can’t help but think that the Schlegel sisters are horrible people, but not in any unusual way. They are horrible in the same way most people are: striving to find our own happiness while putting out of our minds the thoughts of any wreckage we leave behind (because what else can we do?); clinging to the things we love while the rest of the world changes around us.

Ephemera, 07/07/23

So now I’m thinking about reading Eric Ambler, because he fits right in with the mild enthusiasm I’ve developed in middle age for 20th century thriller writers. Not only the sublime, like Graham Greene, who I’ve been slowly reading over the last five or six years, but the completely forgotten, like Helen MacInnes, several of whose books I’ve also read over the same time frame. The outdatedness (of both geopolitics and tech) is the point. Nothing helps me relax like a good potboiler from the middle of the last century.

* * * *

“Don’t become one of those people who only reads certain sorts of books.” (Henry Oliver)

* * * *

So now I can look at Threads for a stream of silly shit similar to the stuff I used to view at Instagram before I deleted that app because of the overwhelming advertising and sponsored “reels” or whatever they call them. I can look at Substack Notes (but don’t) to watch relatively smart people talk to each other about their newsletter businesses. I can look at Twitter (but don’t) for … I don’t know anymore, really. Then there’s Facebook, which consists solely of ad bots and Groups, which is a user-hostile sort of bulletin board software. Frankly, I’ll stick with a well-curated RSS feed.

Ephemera, 07/03/23

Yesterday’s Old Testament reading turned out to be the Sacrifice of Isaac, and hearing it read aloud in church for the first time since my experience with Fear & Trembling earlier this year made me realize how much of an impact SK’s book had on me. Murderer, I thought.

* * * *

Six episodes, about fifteen minutes each — I’m not sure I could take much more than 90 minutes a year of Tim Robinson’s brilliantly unsettling I Think You Should Leave. (And I couldn’t possibly watch all 90 minutes at once.) He takes an unpredictable premise, populates it with “normal” people (read: unattractive on the screen, unremarkable in person), and then Just … Keeps … Pushing. The skits almost always last longer than you think they might, to an uncomfortable extent. It’s an existentialist exercise in sketch comedy. You can’t escape the absurdity; it just keeps unspooling.

* * * *

“The post-Christian world is characterized by supercharged morality within a vacuum of meaning.” (Richard Beck)

Ephemera, 07/01/23

I didn’t find the Harrison Ford digital facelift as creepy as the New York Times reviewer; they did a better job with the CGI than I expected. But “generally silly,” “not entirely charmless” — sure. It was a fun, dumb night at the movies. But, my God — so long! Movies do not need to be, and shouldn’t be, as long as they have become. Save money, Hollywood, and end bladder strain. Make shorter films.

* * * *

The Tour de France began this morning. Many Americans assume that it’s the only such race, but if you are married to an avid cyclist and cycling fan, like I am, you learn that there are many. Still, TDF is a big deal and will be consuming about half the mental space in my household over the next few weeks. Also, if you are a newcomer to the sport or merely cycling-curious or even well-versed in it like he is, my husband strongly recommends that you watch the Netflix documentary series Tour de France: Unchained.

* * * *

“The vital powers of Christendom are now entirely spent. Some far rougher beast is on the way just at the moment, and the Integralists and the National Conservatives are simply some of the more pathetic of its idiot accomplices.” (David Bentley Hart)