This Week's Miscellany (02/24/22)
Art History, the (Female) Intellectual Life, 90s Music, Literary Links
Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary. But before we dive in, pencil in next Wednesday for a live zoom with yours truly and
on Pride & Prejudice. Still finalizing the details but it will be likely be during my lunch hour (and Joy’s dinner hour in the UK!)I’m still musing on the wonderful trip to snowy Chicago last week (and the Art Institute there). Did you know once upon a time I started an art history grad program and then decided after one semester that it wasn’t the right season of life? I had a one-year-old and wanted more kids in quick succession. Considering how debilitating pregnancy is for me (I get hyperemesis gravidarum), I couldn’t figure out how to do grad school and babies all at once. It all worked out better than I could have imagined and now I’m doing my dream job but I’ll always have a soft spot for art history. And one of my favorite parts of my job is working with illustrators to make beautiful books.
So visiting the Art Institute with a friend (last time I visited I had a 5yo and two toddlers in tow—not very conducive to reflection) was a treat!
Some of my favorites were Botticelli’s Virgin and Child with an Angel:
Mother and Child, a Picasso I’ve never seen before:
El Greco’s Veronica’s Veil:
And one of Pope Francis’ favorite paintings by Marc Chagall:
The Art Institute also has some amazing pieces by Renoir, Monet, and Georgia O’Keefe.
Reading
And to kick of this week’s links, here’s a great art history-related piece my mom shared with me that was fascinating. Did you know Vermeer was Catholic?
Five Hidden Symbols in Vermeer’s Paintings: BBC
Vermeer was intensely religious, and he encrypted several of his artworks with symbols of spirituality. He lived in the devoutly Protestant Dutch Republic, but was a Catholic convert, and the scales might be an allusion to his minority faith.
It made me happy to read this review of With All Her Mind, edited by Rachel Bulman with contributors including
, Jennifer Frey, , and myself.The (Female) Intellectual Life: in Public Discourse by Abigail Wilkinson Miller
Christian women are accustomed, even now, to being made to feel small by those who assert that the vocation of a woman must look one specific way….With All Her Mind, in compiling the hard-won wisdom of women from many different states in and ways of life, encourages its reader to cultivate compassion toward women whose balances of work, family, children, and study look different from her own. The intellectual life need not be a source of competition among women, but instead ought to find a place in each of our lives.
I’ve really been enjoying a new publication
. A friend gifted me a week long subscription and I plan to pay for one when it expires. Great round ups of interesting pieces on literature including:This piece by Sam Leith from The Spectator on the kerfuffle over sanitized versions of Roald Dahl:
Run a Dahl-style edit through the canon of children’s literature and you’ll end up with precious little left, a lot of imaginative specificity lost as collateral damage, and no sense of the history of the canon.
I have MANY thoughts on this issue of censoring books to make them more palatable and perhaps if I get some time (ha! Four kids and a full-time job!) I’ll write them up for this Substack.
Speaking of children’s books, fellow Tomie dePaola fans will enjoy this piece. I did not know that he discerned religious life with the Benedictines!
The unique and enduring illustrative art of Tomie dePaola: Paul Senz for Catholic World Report
And this was a great read:
I also love starting with fairy tales because they violate more or less every single rule of fiction writing that is drilled into us in creative writing classes.
Instead of “show don’t tell,” fairy tales prioritize telling over showing. Instead of demanding “round characters,” fairy tales embrace flat ones. Instead of logical “worldbuilding,” fairy tales operate with a surreal dream logic in abstract settings. Instead of starting “in media res,” they start “once upon a time.” Instead of “telling the story only you can tell,” fairy tales ask you to retell stories that have been told for centuries. So on and so forth.
And in not great news for my fellow Floridians who have always had an intense fear of gators and walk their dog near a pond: Alligator Kills 85-Year-Old Woman As She Walks Her Dog
Yikes!
Listening
Honestly I’ve been listening to a lot of 90s music lately. Here’s one of my recent playlists (some of the songs include language).
And that’s all folks! Wishing you all a wonderful Friday and weekend. And a huge thank you to Caroline, Jessica, and Laura for upgrading to a paid subscription. This is a reader-supported newsletter so I really appreciate the support! If you would like to support this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription click the button below.
And if you’re not in a position to pledge a monthly subscription but you enjoyed this post, you can always just throw some change in the tip jar.
And since this Substack is still taking shape (so far with Austen content and TWM), I’d love to know what you’d like to hear about. I was thinking about adding a “mailbag” feature of questions I get frequently and my answers as well as sharing some of my favorite children’s books. Let me know.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Spark, Author, Former Podcaster)
Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns
Also the Ronald Dahl censorship/editing had me spitting mad. I think I scared my husband a little bit. I cannot begin to understand how the people think the proper response to potentially problematic elements in literature is to erase and replace. Quite aside from the fact that it shows an arrogant attitude towards the past (as if we today are morally perfect and superior to our predecessors) it eliminates a chance for adults and children to discuss, learn, and grow. Thoughtful footnotes and discussion questions are a much better solution and inspire critical thinking instead of slavish adherence to prevailing norms. Finally, how on earth are we supposed to make moral progress as individuals or cultures if we rehearse evidence of potential issues and moral failings from the past? You can’t confront the sin of racism, for example, without confronting the forms it took (and still takes) in our cultural milieu.
Ho boy! The article about the female intellectual life hit HOME. I was a Great Books and History major at Notre Dame who taught before discerning a call as a SAHM. So many of my struggles and insecurities were addressed in that article (the monotony of the every day, the feeling of being less than for not being involved in formal academia, the need to prove my worth by productivity around the home). I definitely will be looking into the book. Also to that end, I’ve so enjoyed the intellectual exercise of reading and discussing Jane Austen with others. So maybe having an “article of the week” in future news letters to read and discuss would be a neat feature. I also like the mailbag idea!