Sunday, January 11, 2015

Je suis

by Keith


For those times you want to be sure your moral courage covers every clickable possibility.


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Posted by Keith at 1/11/2015 05:20:00 PM

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25 comments:

  1. DianeJanuary 12, 2015 at 10:28 AM

    To what does this refer, pray tell? #PleaseDoNotMakeMeActuallyReadDreher

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2015 at 12:02 PM

    It refers to Guardians of the Galaxy, Diane. If Dreher is groot, would that make Wick Allison Rocket Racoon? Jonathan Carpenter

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    1. PauliJanuary 12, 2015 at 1:42 PM

      Yes; that would mean that Dreher is Allison's "personal houseplant slash muscle." Sounds about right since Dreher generates the largest amount of hits for TAC while sounding like a broken record.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2015 at 2:08 PM

    Maybe I am being unfair to Our Working Boy, but I have an actual chronic illness, and this made my skin crawl and my eye twitch:

    "I’m sick again, with mono, for the first time in a year. What triggered it was some family conflict — the thing that started it in the first place — but my autoimmune system was really weakened by all the late nights and gallons of coffee. The good thing about it is that I know now how to get healthy again: contemplative prayer, and applying the lessons I learned from Dante and from therapy."

    What.

    You can't cure a virus or an autoimmune flare with Dante, but you can cure being a histrionic little bitch with it, I suppose.

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    1. KeithJanuary 12, 2015 at 2:28 PM

      Caille, every mama's boy is raised to subliminally believe his issues are the supermassive black hole powering the galaxy and that the globe stops rotating when he skins his knee. See, for example, Barack Obama.

      Delete
    2. pikkumattiJanuary 12, 2015 at 4:02 PM

      But he made sure you knew that he struggled through just for you, the purchaser of the upcoming miracle Dante book (and to take a gratuitous swipe at his family, but that goes without saying). So don't you dare not buy it, now that you know the sacrifice that was involved . . .

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    3. pikkumattiJanuary 12, 2015 at 5:22 PM

      But wait, there's more! From the Making Brer Rabbit go into the Briar Patch Department (emphasis added):

      One thing that rattles me about this book is that so much of it involves me and my own inner struggles, and how reading Dante and applying the lessons of the Commedia to my life brought me out of a dark wood.

      The first draft was a lot more Dante-focused, but the small, disparate group of readers I had looking over my drafts did not like that at all. The felt it was too pedantic, and that the book didn’t have much to say to people who weren’t already interested in Dante. To make this book come alive, they said, you need to tell us how Dante saved your life, and let readers make their own inferences about how he might do the same for them.

      That’s the book I’ve written, and it’s the only kind of Dante book I could have written.

      Of course it is. As if we didn't already know that was what it was going to be about . . .

      Delete
    4. KeithJanuary 12, 2015 at 6:07 PM

      95,000 more words - 95,000 - about the mental problems of Rod Dreher, by Rod Dreher.

      You know, that's got to be the ticket to picking up those readers everywhere not already interested in Dante.

      This whole phenomena, Dreher, TAC, Dante, dark woods, Dreher's flock (many of whom must find much of him and his as pathologically absurd as we do and yet still assemble dutifully in the paddock), this editor herself - all of this is beginning to seem more and more like the inner fantasy world of Fight Club -- but in reverse: "The First Rule of Dreher Club, the Only Rule of Dreher Club - the only thing that makes Dreher Club possible - is talking positively about Dreher Club".

      Creation ex locutio, if my Latin's not entirely mangled.

      But the primordial first rule of the Emperor's New Sabertooth Robes as well.

      Just nothing quite as entertaining as grifters and their scams, is there? I'd just love to see a Jonah Goldberg or someone reload the shotgun and shout "Pull!" again.

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    5. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2015 at 8:27 PM

      Yeah I noticed he had to get in a dig at the fam. I wondered if he meant his parents or his wife and kids. There was also this little tidbit:

      "I wrote about my sister that cancer is a “family disease,” because the entire family suffers along with the cancer patient. I now believe that professional writing is a family disease. Ask Julie and our kids about what my vocation has taken out of them. Go ahead, ask."

      Blergh.

      Delete
    6. DianeJanuary 12, 2015 at 9:48 PM

      Lol. Well, I'm just an advertising hackette. But still, that's writing within the meaning of the Act. But I don't think it has taken much out of my family. It has just helped put food on the table.

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    7. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2015 at 12:25 AM

      It's all just such a study in narcissism. You got cancer and died, sure, but **I** had the sads, and had to write a memoir! Also, the way your motherless, grieving urchins feel as they keen over your bier? That's how my son feels when I spend another day hunched over my laptop in my Special Corner swilling wine and tea and clutching my prayer rope!

      Delete
    8. Art DecoJanuary 13, 2015 at 9:57 AM

      Ask Julie and our kids about what my vocation has taken out of them. Go ahead, ask."

      I guess the 'family conflict' was a dressing down courtesy Mrs. Dreher.

      If it has taken so much out of them, he might just take practical steps to remedy that.

      http://www.lsue.edu/Respiratory

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    9. pikkumattiJanuary 13, 2015 at 5:32 PM

      I did kinda like this comment in that Dreher thread:

      “Ask Julie and our kids about what my vocation has taken out of them. Go ahead, ask.”

      Dear Julie and kids,

      What has Rod’s vocation taken out of you?

      Sincerely,

      His readers

      Note to Rod: Nobody has an “autoimmune system.” Immune systems can be attacked by autoimmune diseases.

      Delete
    10. KeithJanuary 13, 2015 at 6:44 PM

      Immune system, autoimmune system, Dante, Beyonce, whatever it takes.

      Delete
  4. KeithJanuary 12, 2015 at 2:23 PM

    It means Dreher

    je suis Charlie

    je suis Groot

    je suis Ziploc

    je suis Catholic

    je suis Orthodox

    je suis Chevrolet

    je suis #trending

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  5. PauliJanuary 12, 2015 at 2:55 PM

    It is just like they
    say, "Some Dante a day keeps
    the doctor away."

    ReplyDelete
  6. AndreasJanuary 12, 2015 at 10:34 PM

    “What my vocation has taken out of them”? Tell that to a father who spends months away from home working on an oil rig to support his family, or a married Byzantine priest with seven children in hostile mission territory, or just about any other hard-working family man. I’m well acquainted with the modern publishing industry, and Dreher is correct that it can be a bit of a meat grinder, but this lack of self-awareness is astonishing.

    Contemplative prayer, and the Last Things as described by Dante, are not therapeutic pills meant to cure what ails ya. Our God is a consuming fire.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Joseph D'HippolitoJanuary 13, 2015 at 1:47 AM

    Keith, you forgot one other sentence, the one that succinctly summarizes Your Working Boy:

    Je suis Asshole.

    ReplyDelete
  8. KeithJanuary 13, 2015 at 7:40 AM

    "We've always been at editing with the Dante book." - Winston Dreher

    Let me add a surreal if not final Groundhog Day note here pursuant to a mind itch the "Sleep Finally" post left unscratched unfortunately. Was this - To Sleep, Finally the realio trulio, end of days, final Dante book editing and family puke up reveal post?

    If so, what was this back on Dec. 22?

    Dante Book Mind-Melt

    For reasons too complicated to get into here [e.g., the truth - Keith], we faced a rock-hard early deadline. It’s 4pm this afternoon, so we’re going to be working till the very last second.

    Or were either of them, actually? How do you know?

    We've already talked about this one immediately following it.

    My point is, once again, until a copy hits our hands the only one who will ever truly know whether the Dante book is finished, might be finished, will never be finished, never existed at all will be the one and only Rod Dreher.

    In the meantime, the rumored Dante book, its editor, and its uncompromiseable hard deadlines will continue to function as an ongoing, never-ending therapeutic talisman through which the truths of Rod's suffering can continuously be transmitted to his flock.

    The Dante book itself is unimportant. What is important is the Dante book process and the flapping window it affords into the tortured soul of Rod Dreher and the unending suffering he continues to endure for our collective cultural sins.

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    1. pikkumattiJanuary 13, 2015 at 7:55 AM

      “... if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it.”

      ― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (emphasis added)

      Delete
    2. pikkumattiJanuary 13, 2015 at 8:04 AM

      Meaning that, yes there will be a book, but in the form of an exercise in narcissism as Hemingway recognizes and the editor enables ("Please, Mr. Dreher, it has to be even more about you."). That makes the process of the book part and parcel of that exercise, which is why he posts about the grueling family-punishing aspects of it.

      Delete
    3. PauliJanuary 13, 2015 at 8:29 AM

      Reminds me of a quote from Dwight Yoakam's pompous villain character in Slingblade: "See, I work construction. I build things. You understand how important that is to the world, Frankie? I don't know if you realize the pressure a man like me's got on him."

      Delete
  9. Joseph D'HippolitoJanuary 13, 2015 at 1:48 PM

    In accordance with current trends, I hereby rename myself...

    Je suis #DumpMarkSheaNow

    https://www.change.org/p/ewtn-and-patheos-dump-mark-shea-now

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Art DecoJanuary 14, 2015 at 10:35 AM

      Shea, who has exhibited behavior for at least eight years if not longer indicating that he's not...uh...at peace with himself, now appears to be circling the toilet bowl. He's contended in the past that his reader statistics are stable, but I cannot imagine how that is true unless a combine of Kossacks and alt-right loons have replaced his quondam Catholic constituency. Judging from the quality of the commentary on his boards, that would seem to be the case.

      Delete
    2. PauliJanuary 14, 2015 at 10:40 AM

      lol

      Delete

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