The Weekly, December 11, 2023
Hi all,
Last week some friends and I were talking over group chat about the role "irony" plays in contemporary art. I'm not opposed to irony, to be clear; it has its place. I'm currently re-reading Christopher Hitchens's Letter to a Young Contrarian and Hitchens makes the point in there that a healthy appreciation of irony is something of an acid test for him whenever he encounters an author. I can sympathize with that.
Even so, I couldn't help wondering while reading Hitchens if he'd say the same today; Contrarian was published in 2001, which is a lifetime ago in terms of cultural developments. Today I do not think we suffer from an aversion to irony, but rather from an excess of it.
That excess has had the effect, I think, of making us more suspicious (because we don't know when anything is sincere), more ignorant of the good (because we encounter it so seldom), and more likely to embrace cheap knockoffs of 'the good' (as a result of our ignorance of it and due to our being starved of it).
One friend suggested that the recurring popularity of the Russell Crowe Master and Commander movie is attributable to that movie's sincerity, its genuine delight in its characters and their relationship, and its conviction that the world is interesting and worth knowing. I think something similar can be said of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies. Though they have their flaws (most of which are traceable to Jackson's almost complete incomprehension of Tolkien's psychology and moral imagination), one thing I love about the films is that same base sincerity, attunement to the good, and their willingness to present the good as good without a need to hide it in irony or a joke.
One thing I do every year during Advent is rewatch the old 1951 Scrooge with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. What is so striking at the end of the film is how exuberantly Scrooge is portrayed following his conversion—and you should understand it as a conversion, in my opinion. Sim has a way of bringing it to life in his eyes, and a talent for alternating his countenance between Scrooge's former self and his new self instantaneously. Just seeing such a clear and non-ironic depiction of the transformation from darkness to light is striking, not least because so few of our films and TV shows today offer such a thing. You can see what I'm talking about here. I have it queued up to when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning:
So, a question: What art can you think of that makes goodness seem exciting and attractive? And how do we talk about it in such a way ourselves to others?
One more contemporary instance that might work: Watch this cover of "Fairytale of New York" from Shane MacGowan's funeral. Don't miss Glen Hansard of Once fame on lead vocals. The song itself is hard, of course, as you'll note immediately upon hearing the lyrics if you aren't familiar. (Probably don't play this without headphones if you're at the office...)
But what makes it work is the exuberant joy that hits at 1:15 as MacGowan's old band mates in The Pogues join in, playing the most beloved song of their now departed frontman. There's a joy to that memory, I think. But perhaps also a joy that MacGowan in some way died better than he lived—dying at home with his wife after receiving Last Rites and now being remembered in a cathedral. Perhaps I'm reading that into it. I don't know. It may be as simple as a defiant typically Irish joy in the face of sorrow. In any event, the joy is undeniable:
Reading
Books
As I mentioned, I'm re-reading Hitchens. My first dip back into his work in probably a decade. One of the gifts I most remember receiving is when my wife bought me a bottle of Johnny Walker Black for my birthday six months after our wedding. It was more than we could afford at the time, but he had only passed away two weeks prior and I remember I had spent much time revisiting his work, admiring his pen, lamenting what he did not see, and praying that perhaps he might have seen it before it was too late. In any case, she bought me a bottle of Hitchens' preferred whiskey and I toasted in my 24th year remembering a man whose writing sometimes infuriated me and sometimes delighted me and whose authorial presence in my life I had always enjoyed.
Besides Hitchens, I'm nearly done with Senkbeil's Care of Souls which is as good as advertised. I'm also just dipping into Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, which is my first real reading of the Dane. We all have those authors we're somewhat embarrassed to have never actually read. He's one of mine.
I'll also be re-reading A Christmas Carol by Dickens at some point this month, as is another Advent habit of mine.
Articles
Michael Lind on why right-wing Caesarism is a dumb idea
Paul Kingsnorth against progress
Isaac Willour on the right's racial suicide
Andrew Willard Jones on subsidiarity and friendship
Jeff Reimer on Peter Brown
Brad Littlejohn on Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ted Gioia on macroculture vs microculture
Jonathan Van Maren and Steffen Moens on Andrew Tate
Elsewhere
I'm playing with a Christmas themed Last Word variant at home. This is the first spec which Joie really enjoyed but was too dry and tart for my taste:
.75 oz cranberry juice
.75 oz allspice dram
.75 oz maraschino
.75 oz angostura bitters
I'm not sure how I'm going to try and tweak it. I like all the flavors because they all work together really beautifully as classic Christmas flavors. What I might try is cutting back the allspice dram to, like, .25 oz and upping the maraschino to an oz, and then adding .25 oz of simple syrup. I'm not sure. It's OK as is—I love drinks with a big pour of bitters—but it's not quite there yet. I may keep tinkering. If I do, I'll keep you updated.
Under the Mercy,
~Jake