News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
Due to a conflict with the U of Wisconsin's homecoming, we've had to change the date for next year's FPR conference. It's now scheduled for Oct. 21. If you want to host or attend a smaller gathering of FPR readers in the interim, let me know.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays on snowflakes, Wallace Stegner, and brokenism.
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Daniel Ritchie draws on René Girard's theory of mimetic rivalry to make sense of today's negative partisanship and propose a radical remedy: "By accepting the violence of the crowd and by forgiving us for the sin that set him on the cross, Jesus ends the cycle of rivalry. Further, he makes it possible for us to replace its cause, “mimetic desire,” with love. Reconciliation doesn’t arise when rivals listen to each other more. Becoming more open-minded doesn’t establish it, nor do appeals to moderation. Reconciliation arises from an act of forgiveness that stops the mimetic cycle altogether."
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Mark Botts listens to the stories remembered by some of his pew neighbors and wrestles with mortality: "It is a trouble that visits us all: our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but kingdoms and cultures and homes rise and fall. Being willingly bound in devotion to the Creator redeems that trouble forever."
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David Ryan considers what numbers are good for--and what their limits are: "Math is certainly not the best language for every situation, but it is essential for many situations. And once we understand this, and not merely acknowledge it but shift our paradigms to understand it as a very special method of communication, we can use math without fear."
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Casey Spinks reviews Cormac McCarthy's two new novels and ponders McCarthy's lifelong meditations on the possibilities of language: "Are dreams only dreams? Or are they God’s gifts of the unconscious which we still fail to know? McCarthy lets these questions remain, and no argument or worldview can answer them. So, we are left waiting for God to say something, anything, as His answer."
I've been reading Wilkie Collins's Moonstone and delighting in the narrative voice of Mr. Betteredge, the house steward who swears by his variation on the sortes vergilianae, which replaces Virgil's epic with Defoe's Robinson Crusoe:
You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice—Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady’s last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
And yet the gifts of even the greatest of authors are thwarted by inattentive readers:
Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can’t forget politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club. I hope you won’t take this freedom on my part amiss; it’s only a way I have of appealing to the gentle reader. Lord! haven’t I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know how ready your attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it, instead of a person?
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro