This Week's Miscellany (10/17/23)

St. Francis of Aberdeen, Emily of New Moon, Sofia Coppola, Gothic Architecture, Norteña, AI, 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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In the fall, I wake up.

The cruel summer (yes, I finally went to the Eras Tour movie) makes its excruciating retreat and what follows is glorious.

While my friends up north talk about the relief of the sun coming out and warm days, I am the opposite. The chill in the air, the grey cloudy weather, the rainy drizzle—this is what I live for. During weeks of gloom, I am happy as a lark with the space heater warming my toes, hot chocolate in hand, watching the rain as I work from my little office.

Finally free of the fog of summer! Half a dozen writing projects pop into my mind, begging to be started. I start cooking real meals again and staying on top of the laundry.

Is it because so many of my days in the South are blinding sunshine and muggy heat and these cloudy, cold days are the relief I need? Or was I made to live in a grey-er clime?

My longing to summer somewhere else increases—I don’t think I can bear July and August in Florida much longer. But it would be hard to give up November through March in Tallahassee when the temperature is nearly perfect and we have Camellias blooming for the holidays, replaced by Azaleas in the early spring.

I have many thoughts this week:

• On Taylor Swift

• On schools and gun violence (a scare this week at my son’s school)

• On how cars ruin everything

But those will have to wait for another day.

Links

I wrote about George MacDonald or, as G.K. Chesterton called the Scottish writer, “St. Francis of Aberdeen.” (I’ll share more about Spark Classics, the wonderful project I get to edit for Word on Fire Spark soon, but we just released MacDonald’s fairy tales The Golden Key, The Light Princess, and Little Daylight in a beautiful, newly illustrated collection.) I make a case for why we should keep reading MacDonald almost 200 years later:

The Golden Key: Why Read George MacDonald? By Yours Truly for Evangelization & Culture Online

MacDonald invites us to view reality with his Christ-formed vision, free from cynicism. MacDonald looks with eyes of otherworldly wonder, an antidote to our own world-weariness. As Lewis points out, “The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’ . . . by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” In MacDonald’s fairy tales, we can see with fresh eyes because the strange world he shows us highlights the wondrous reality we find ourselves in. 

You know that if there’s a good “why should we study the humanities” piece, I’m going to share it. This one from Beth Ann Fennelly is excellent. Dear friends gave me her book Great with Child when I was pregnant with Gwen and I adored it.

Stop Corporatizing My Students by Beth Ann Fennelly

See how efficiently students in the poorest state are shunted toward the vocational: It’s not personal. It’s business. This, despite a study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that found that humanities majors are comparably likely to be satisfied with their jobs and employed in supervisory roles as graduates from other majors.

And while you probably know I’m an Anne fan, I do also enjoy Montgomery’s Emily books. But they’ve never held the same place in my heart as Anne. How about you? Valancy from The Blue Castle is more my speed if we’re going to leave Green Gables. (Thanks to my friend Katherine for sharing this article with me so I can share it with you.)

We All Love ‘Anne of Green Gables.’ What About ‘Emily of New Moon’? by Elisabeth Egan

In a journal entry dated Feb. 15, 1922, Montgomery described “Emily of New Moon” as “the best book I have ever written.” She wrote, “I have had more intense pleasure in writing it than any of the others — not even excepting Green Gables. I have lived it, and I hated to pen the last line and write finis.”

Sofia Coppola Makes Movies about Sad Women and Immature Men by Andrew Petiprin

And that’s the thing about love and marriage. It is the union of two real people with their own needs and wants. Priscilla could not remain the equivalent of a contest winner forever. She had to grow up, and she was guaranteed to develop her own identity, whether Elvis liked it or not. When his fantasy fell apart, he simply gave up—again, not a wicked person, but a coward.

Naturalism’s Problem of Gothic Beauty by

The Tar Water

Many have argued that naturalism cannot do justice to the aesthetic dimension of reality, nor explain why the world is so beautiful. But it is especially difficult to understand how, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, for example, we could have evolved an emotional response to anagogically-aiming representations of geometrical harmony and divine illumination. The evolutionary explanation for the existence of awe – which is connected to our experience of the aesthetic – is that it arises as a combination of fear and wonder to promote ethical concern, prosociality, and generosity. But this doesn’t explain why Gothic architecture, specifically, seems to do this so effectively. Why should something so alien to our hunter-gatherer ancestors trigger our evolved aesthetic instincts? 

And I’m fascinated by the EZ Band and how they blend some of my favorite music (MCR’s The Black Parade!) with Norteña music that reminds me of what we’d hear in our old neighborhood in Waco, TX.

Your Favorite Song Is Now a Norteña by Jesus Jiminez

Listening

And speaking of what to listen to, I enjoyed the following podcast episodes lately:

A Case Against (and for) AI on A Drink with A Friend (

Tsh Oxenreider

and

Seth Haines

)

Driving Through the Ruins on the New Polity Podcast

Tyranny Inc. on the PloughCast with Sohrab Ahmari and my friend Susannah Black Roberts and Peter Mommsen

And if you want some haunting wintery-Adventy-Christmasy music as you prepare for Thanksgiving, might I recommend Joel Clarkson’s instrumental album of Midwinter Carols.

And I’m thinking about pie today. My kids have requested pumpkin, chocolate creme, and pecan for Thanksgiving this year. We have tried and true pumpkin and chocolate creme recipes (my great grandmother’s!) but any tips on the pecan? This Bourbon Pecan Pie from Julia Reed looks tasty.

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Coming Soon!

-Mini book reviews, the Ultimate Jane Austen Film Guide, and more answers to writing career questions (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 Heidi, Stacy, Mary Elizabeth, Sarah, Nancy, Kathryn, Cecilia, Carissa, Brittany, Steve, Claire, Elyse, Caitlin, Colleen, Branan, Laura, Casey, and Michal 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)

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