This Week's Miscellany (02/25/24)
Re-introducing myself, Nick Cave, Sally Thomas, moral worldbuilding, teen subcultures, Greta Gerwig's Narnia, and more
Hi, I’m Haley! Book midwife (editor) and author. 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.
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Lots of new faces lately ‘round these parts. Sometimes I hear from new subscribers that they just found me here after following for years over at my (now abandoned) blog. But often new folks just show up and I wonder, “Do they know what to expect?”
So here’s a brief intro:
Wife to my high school sweetheart, a whisky distiller and beekeeper
Mom of a 5yo, 10yo, 12yo, and 15yo
Catholic convert
Moved to Waco, TX from my hometown (Tallahassee, FL) once for college and and again a few years later to live on a farm with no flushing toilets. Now back in FL to raise kids and be near grandparents.
Almost had our fourth baby in a parking lot because triage didn’t think I was “really in labor.” She was born en caul so she is clearly magical.
Author of 6 books (5 published and 2 in the works)
Was a self-employed writer/podcaster/speaker for many years
Now full-time editor of Word on Fire Votive (children’s imprint)
Occasional pilgrimage guide (next one to Belgium/Germany this summer!)
Once and future podcaster
Interested in telling stories that are spies for hope and form the imagination
And most importantly, enjoyer of Sticky Toffee Pudding
Listening
This week I listened to Krista Tippett interviewing Nick Cave for the On Being podcast. It is an incredible interview. A must listen if you’re interested in grief, love, faith, or music (which I hope applies to all of you).
This got me on a bit of a Nick Cave kick and I finally sat down and listened to Ghosteen, the album he wrote after the death of his teenage son.
This song is so beautiful, it should bring you to tears if you’re not a cold-hearted monster.
And then I took a look at Cave’s blog, The Red Hand Files, where he responds to letters. The most recent one was a response to two creatives who feel stuck. One expressed being unable to create due to the state of the world. I loved his response (which is worth reading in its entirely and does contain language so ye’ve been warned).
The idea that you can’t paint because the world is ‘made of war and cruelty’ has to be the lamest and most faint-hearted excuse not to work I have ever heard, Dan. How will painting a f***ing picture help? — it will help because art is the noble and necessary rejoinder to the sins of the world. When the world rushes toward us with all its streaming wounds – wanting, needing – do we cover our eyes and shrink away, do we sit and wring our hands in despair, do we run and hide, or do we hasten toward it, like we hasten toward an injured child, with our arms outstretched?
Links
Lately I’ve been asked to share about George MacDonald’s fairy tales on a few podcasts/radio shows and here’s the latest. It’s a great conversation with Grazie Christie about The Golden Key, MacDonald’s spiritual legacy, and why it’s so essential for children to read stories that don’t gloss over the dark and ugly parts of reality.
And this is a great piece on spiritual motherhood, Kristen Lavransdatter, and Sally Thomas’s incredible debut novel Works of Mercy.
To Be a Woman Is to Be Called to Motherhood by Tessa Carmen for Plough
Perhaps surprisingly, Thomas’s main character is a childless widow who loves solitude. “On Mondays I cleaned the rectory for the good of my soul.” With this first line, we are in the world of Kirsty (Kirstaine) Sain, a sixty-something Shetlander transplanted by marriage to the small town of Annesdale in the North Carolina Piedmont
Then I thought this one below on teen subcultures was fascinating. Lately my oldest kid has become a theatre kid. He and his friends are in plays and musicals. They spend their weekends going to see performances. They listen to showtunes and hang out at the art park. They have a weekly meetup at the bookstore. It’s more than an aesthetic, it’s a subculture. It’s about what they do. While a few years ago I would have been most concerned about what kind of subculture my kids would connect with (is it a healthy subculture?), at this point, I’m just glad that my theatre kid is connected to a reality that transcends his phone. It is a sad thing for subcultures to be diminished to merely what shows up on your social media feed and what targeted ads you receive.
Teen Subcultures are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids. by Mireille Silcoff
If you are a teenager or have exposure to teenagers, what I am about to write is something you probably know already. Subcultures in general — once the poles of style and art and politics and music around which wound so many ribbons of teenage meaning — have largely collapsed.
What teenagers today are offered instead is a hyperactive landscape of so-called aesthetics — thousands of them, including everything from the infamous cottagecore to, these days, prep.
And you probably read this one already, but it’s excellent:
The State of the Culture, 2024 by
Even the dumbest entertainment looks like Shakespeare compared to dopamine culture. You don’t need Hamlet, a photo of a hamburger will suffice. Or a video of somebody twerking, or a pet looking goofy.
Instead of movies, users get served up an endless sequence of 15-second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners hear bite-sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these tiny videos—just enough for a dopamine hit, and no more.
Lots to ponder in this one from author Brandon Taylor who I’ve followed on Twitter for some time, partly because I agree with all his Jane Austen takes.
living shadows: aesthetics of moral worldbuilding by
We are taught that this is how one writes well. You must love your villains. You must treat even your most unlikable characters as though they were the protagonist, meaning, giving them some sense of moral agency, moral ambiguity. The result of this very nice humanist belief in fiction is a moral indeterminacy, a gray sludge stretched across the field of view in which every act, every harm, every minor inconvenience, is given equal weight and sway.
And Rachel Lu continues to write great things on matters of motherhood and feminism:
Tearing Down the Maternal Wall by Rachel Lu
It was always ridiculous for moms to group ourselves artificially into Team Domesticity and Team Professional Achievement. Moms today enjoy a much wider range of opportunities than our own mothers did, especially because today’s workforce enables us to prioritize flexibility in a way that the old nine-to-five workday did not. We’re living in a whole new world, with at-home jobs, negotiable hours, and low barriers to small-time entrepreneurship.
I admit to being somewhat optimistic about Greta Gerwig’s Narnia adaptation for Netflix. I loved her Little Women and I thought Barbie was a genuinely brilliant commentary on the theology of the body. But no matter how you feel about her, she is always meticulously true to her source material. Watching Little Women I remember thinking, “Greta Gerwig loves this book.” I hope she brings the same love and faithfulness to Narnia.
Greta Gerwig’s Narnia will be ‘bigger and bolder” from Time
Netflix's CEO Ted Sarandos said in a brand-new interview that Gerwig is an “incredible visionary.” And he went on to promise that Gerwig’s take on the source material will also be “rooted in faith.”
And this next one is a tough read. I first fell in love with Sam Kriss’s writing when he wrote one of the best pieces I’ve everread for The Lamp on The Villages. This one is about Israel and Gaza. (Contains language).
Does anyone still pretend Israel isn’t deliberately targeting civilians? As of February 2024, the IDF is wiping out the population of Gaza at just under half the rate at which the Khmer Rouge wiped out the population of Cambodia. When the deaths from disease and starvation are finally added up, the figure might be higher. Whole swathes of society, indifferently consigned to death. Cancer patients, dialysis patients, diabetics, premature babies. The entire enclave is in the middle of an artificial famine. Absolutely nobody has access to enough food; Israel has bombed almost all of the strip’s bakeries and every single one of its flour mills. In between these general liquidations, the IDF still finds time to single out specific individuals. In the last five months, they’ve practically wiped out Gaza’s intelligentsia. At least 94 academics killed, many in airstrikes directly targeting their homes. Hundreds of journalists. Doctors, lawyers, artists. The people who might give Gaza a voice.
And that’s it for links this week, folks. Now I plan to climb back into bed and nap away a miserable cold because it is a truth universally acknowledged that if your husband goes out of town you will fall sick and need to take at least one child to urgent care (Hildie with another ear infection, alas!).
Wishing you all a wonderful week! And a huge thank you to Rhonda, Beatrice, and Rachel for upgrading to a paid subscription. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Podcaster)
Haley’s books
Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns
Thanks for sharing Ted Gioia’s essay. He sends an important message. That said, I’m optimistic that at least a large minority will avoid these new dopamine traps. At the societal level, we’ve shone a spotlight on and mostly overcome similar addiction crises over the past few decades: cigarettes, opiates, sugar, to name a few. Even discussing the evils of social media is becoming more and more mainstream (Netflix’ the Social Dilemma).
Millions of people are still buying and reading books, as you well know!
Future podcaster?! Say more 😁 (I miss fountains of carrots!)