News from the Front Porch Republic (copy)
Greetings from the Porch,
When this email lands in your inbox, I'll be in Grand Rapids for what is shaping up to be another lively FPR conference. I'm looking forward to seeing many readers and renewing old friendships. (And if you weren't able to make this one but happen to be near Pittsboro, NC, check out the upcoming local porch there.)
- The Water Dipper is on hiatus until next week; I was too busy getting ready for the FPR conference to put it together.
- The newest title from FPR Books is out. David Bosworth introduces Living in Language: The Literary Word at Work in the World: "Near the start of his fifty minute talk on postmodern fiction, the lecturer paused, and supplying perhaps some prefatory context for his thoughts to come, he said to us then with a knowing smile: 'If I had a half-hour, I could prove to you that language only refers to itself.' That assertion made, our learned guest, a professor of French at a prestigious private school, pivoted back to the topic at hand by parsing a novel whose many words, in a notable feat of monastic restraint, never included the letter e. The audience was small: to leave would seem rude. And so it appeared, from my conspicuous seat in the second row, that I would have the time, a half-hour at least—while our speaker lightly glazed with ironic praise more self-referential works of prose—to weigh the claim he hadn’t proved."
- J.D. Hester imagines the possibilities for a more humane architecture: "The future of our built environment is in our hands. We can reject the alienation of modernism and instead foster spaces that cultivate connection, celebrate history, and create a sense of belonging."
- Anthony G. Cirilla ponders death, generative AI, and the five-paragraph essay: "Try to write in a way that matters for people who are going to die some day. Try to craft a thesis statement that respects the limited time of the audience. Craft a topic sentence that respects the mind of the audience. Craft a paragraph that respects the audience’s nervous system. Good writing respects the body and the soul of the reader."
- Alex Sosler reviews Brad East's new book Letters to a Future Saint: "Christianity is not merely a doctrine to believe but a life to live and embody. East understands this and invites Future Saints into a different imagination and way of life."
- Samuel Schaefer invites us to raise our glasses and fend off the dark: "The toast conveys more than just a pleasant sense of unity; tradition tells us that an actual event occurs when we toast. We scatter the demons and spirits that plague us. Toasting with someone is a real gift in our age of skepticism and distrust."
I wrote an essay on G.K. Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross for the fall issue of Local Culture (which is heading to the printer soon!). The book is a delightful romp, but it also contains Chesterton's typical piercing insight. Take this bit on the "improvements" of modern technology:
It is a characteristic of all things now called “efficient”, which means mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army merely by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it is quite solid means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means concentrated poison—an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a spirit of stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the swiftest thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest thing on earth in resisting human interference. It may be easier to get chocolate for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine. But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic machine would be much less likely to run after you.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro