This Week's Miscellany (10/07/23)

Silence, Ghost Ships, The Best Carrot Cake in the World, 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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There is a sandwich shop five minutes away from my house that sells the best carrot cake in the world.

Truly. There is no better carrot cake in creation. Every bite is a revelation. What a delight to live five minutes away from this perfect treat!

I don’t tell you think to make you jealous (although if you’re ever in Tallahassee, FL, you really must go to Hopkins Eatery and order the carrot cake). I tell you this because I don’t always want to be living in Tallahassee, FL. I want to live in Paris, or NYC, or New Orleans, or St. Augustine, or Oxford, or Edinburgh, or Boise, or the mountains of North Carolina. Better weather beckons me. Historic charm calls to me. Walkability and culture tempt me. What would life be like there?

But I firmly believe that if you can’t be happy in Tallahassee, Florida, you won’t be happy in Paris. We have all known people who spend so much time fantasizing about another life that they fail to enjoy the life they have. I had a friend who was always focused on how much better live would be in a city she had spent some time in during college. It wasn’t Portland, but we’ll pretend it’s Portland. We would always hear about the restaurants in Portland, the night life in Portland, the vibe of Portland. For her, this attitude tainted all that was good about Tallahassee.

So much of the joy of life is delighting in particularity. Every place has its distinctives. Each person is not quite the same as any other. And when we commit to a person or a place, we can revel in their particularity. And doing so requires an embrace, a gratitude. This has been a theme here lately because it’s something I struggle with. Only one life to live! So many possibilities! So I was delighted by reading my friend Gina’s reflection on the ghost ships of our lives, the what ifs, the could have beens. And learning to live, even when haunted by the if onlys. If we fail to do so, we fail to find joy and wonder in the people, places, and carrot cake just around the corner.

Mailbag

I’ve been including some questions from readers in TWM lately. Here’s a good one:

Do you think Mr. Knightley has any flaws?  My wife and I both agree he is Miss Austen's ne plus ultra, but certainly there must be some chink in the armor?  Perhaps a bit too commanding?

What a great question! What do you think? I don't think he has any major flaws. Even when he comes across as judgmental—his judgment is right. Frank Churchill is selfish. Emma is wrong to meddle with Harriet’s love life. He does what’s right, he’s charitable and kind. He’s not always guarded with his words about Frank, but it’s in the company of very close friends like Emma who he is trying to put on her guard a bit. Do you think he has flaws?

Links

Speaking of Austen, I think many of you will enjoy this short piece about badly formed parents in her novels:

Austen and Parents by Alan Jacobs

What Austen cares about – what she devotes her extraordinary intellectual energies to – is the moral and intellectual formation of young women. Austen perceives her society to be one in which people have great expectations for young women, and place exceptionally great demands upon them, but does almost nothing to prepare them to meet either the expectations or the demands.

I posted the final part of my series drawn from a talk I gave this summer at the Chesterton Conference:

Chaos Is Dull: G.K. Chesterton and Detective Fiction (Father Brown, Flawed Detectives, and Enchantment)

We’re still drawn to detective stories for the same reasons we always have been, the restoration of order is comforting in a world of chaos. We can’t help but navigate the world according to a moral code so we’re drawn to an environment in which morality is acknowledged. But there are some important shifts in the genre of detective fiction that are worth reflecting...modern mysteries can’t seem to abide a just and ordered detective...Instead the drama revolves around the flaws of the detective himself. Instead of a sane figure coming to bring sanity to an environment of madness, it is a world of madness with a mad detective stumbling around in the dark.

And this conversation between Eve Tushnet and Erika Bachiochi is a must read. I had the pleasure of meeting Erika last summer and I think she is one of the most inspired thinkers writing on topics like feminism, motherhood, abortion, family leave, and faith:

The Burden and the Gift with

Eve Tushnet

and Erika Bachiochi

Do the virtues of gentleness and chastity or courage and justice manifest themselves differently in men and women? Yes -- and in each man and woman, depending on temperament, talents, and the circumstances of their lives (e.g, in the Catholic world, see these different manifestations in Therese of Lisieux and Joan of Arc, and St. Ignatius and St. Francis). If virtue is the excellence of the soul, and each human soul is uniquely commensurated (or adapted) to its sexed body, there exists a beautiful array of what it looks like to be a virtuous woman or a virtuous man in the world. But when the two sexes are vicious, we tend to see deep gender stereotypes emerge.

Catholicism Makes Everything Interesting by Brett Salkeld for ND Church Life Journal

This deep conviction that humans are made for truth, that we thrive on it, is one of the underlying foundations of the Catholic vision of the world and therefore of Catholic education. Education is about the pursuit of truth because knowing who we are, who God is, and what this world God created is like are prerequisites for human flourishing, both here and hereafter. And, once the notion of truth becomes problematized for students, education gets reduced to deconstructing the narratives that used to hold meaning or just learning enough technical skills to get a decent job. The real questions that make human life interesting and exciting are ignored. And boredom and cynicism set up shop.

And another great piece on education:

Education as Pilgrimage by Alex Sosler for Front Porch Republic

Where are you going? At its core, an education seeks to answer that question. Where are you going and where do you want to go? Every educational philosophy has an inherent destination attached to it—a certain ideal student. As such, every education encourages a certain pilgrimage.

But the question of where we are going is also dictated by what story we tell ourselves. One of those quotations that haunts me—that keeps churning in my mind—is from Alasdair MacIntyre. He wrote, “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” The question of action is tied to the question of story. How we pursue an education has everything to do with how we imagine the world.

And finally, I loved this stunning piece on the necessity of silence, lingering, and emptiness for artists (and really, all human beings):

The Island with No Words by Paul J. Pastor

For us to linger in conditions of silence and emptiness means that we become accustomed to abiding in a spiritual or inward place that seems to want to push us away. We learn to make a home where a home should, creatively speaking, be impossible. Why should the bard linger on the island with no words? It is foolishness! Let him go to the towns, to the cities! Let him go to build a platform! Let him get on Instagram and optimize his Reels! Let him get an agent and pitch a two-book deal with some plans for a spin-off curriculum! Let him go on the conference circuit! Even let him briefly visit the island with no words with his agenda, let him plant his feet for Silent Retreat or a Writer’s Workshop or whatever, but anything, anything other than this idiotic waste of talent, of lingering.

But here is the pain of it all: there is no other place that we can learn to Remember, learn to know “those deep Origins.” And this is why, in our generation, there are hardly any voices of power, voices who speak with authority. There are many who can parrot what they have heard, but nearly no one who can speak of what they have seen, from such deep wells of love that knowing flows from it, and truth that flows from the knowing, and beauty that flows from the truth. Look! Where is the man or the woman who writes with such power that the world is renewed and remade by the potency of their song?

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Reading

I’m reading Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian and The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim because I am in my fairy tale era.

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The Year of Jane

Details for our October read of Northanger Abbey are here! Join us!

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Coming Soon!

-Mini book reviews and the Ultimate Jane Austen Film Guide (for paid subscribers)

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2024 Pilgrimage

Our pilgrimage to Belgium and Germany in 2024 is already half full! We’re keeping it small (we just love the experience of a smaller group of pilgrims). Considering how many sign ups we already have, I would advise interested parties to register immediately:

REGISTRATION NOW LIVE: Heavenly Hops Pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre to Belgium and Germany.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions at all about the trip. Let’s go to Belgium!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. And a huge thank you to Kathie, Allison, Bobbie, Emily, and Liana 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 Spark, Author, Former Podcaster)

Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns

Haley’s Book on Jane Austen’s Novels

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