News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The spring issue of Local Culture has been held up by a backlog at our printer, but it should be mailing out this week or next. It's a good one, so I trust it's worth the wait.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about reading, Undset, and tariffs.
- John de Graff lays out a political vision oriented toward cultivating beauty: "I believe that in our mechanistic age, when we count our blessings in monetary terms and still pay homage to the GDP, beauty is shortchanged. In place of Notre Dames, we get soulless, monotonous, utilitarian towers of steel, a kind of cash register architecture, amidst which increased cortisone levels signal our stress. Sadly, beauty is no longer part of our political dialogue."
- Aaron Weinacht reviews Byung-Chul Han’s new book on narration: "Disagreements aside, however, Byung-Chul's argument remains a valuable one: the cultures of consumption that rule the modern world are death to the cultures of community that give life meaning."
- Harry Zeiders peels back some popular slogans to examine the strange assumptions that lie beneath them: "As-Long-As-Your’re-Happy . . . Follow-Your-Heart . . . Be-True-To-Yourself . . . Believe-In-Yourself . . . Live-Your-Truth . . . Be-Your-Best-Self . . . Do-What-You-Love — the aphorisms of our day are elegant. They sound like beautiful advice. They’re certainly enticing. Who wouldn’t want to be their best self?"
- Jacob Adkins compares the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness with Wendell Berry: "Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself."
- Sarah Reardon ponders Wendell Berry's reflections on the value of writing and the intellectual life more broadly: "Words, somehow, may serve the triumph of wordlessness, for to write well is to serve the love that is beyond words. Berry’s poem thus does not denigrate the immaterial work of thought and writing, nor does it merely elevate material work over immaterial work. Rather, Berry sets writing and words in perspective: they are indeed secondary. They are not ends in themselves but do serve a higher end: literature serves love."
I've read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series, but I hadn't picked up her first novel, Housekeeping, before. It's a strange novel, with more poetry than plot, but I've really enjoyed its lyrical passages and its reflections on how we make--or fail to make--a home in a strange and unsettling world:
Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, "Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire. I had been, so to speak, turned out of house now long enough to have observed this in myself. . . . [O]nce alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery. When one looks from inside at a lighted window, or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself in a lighted room, the image of oneself among trees and sky--the deception is obvious, but flattering all the same. When one looks from the darkness into the light, however, one sees all the difference between here and there, this and that. Perhaps all unsheltered people are angry in their hearts, and would like to break the roof, spine, and ribs, and smash the windows and flood the floor and spindle the curtains and bloat the couch.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro