Well worth your time . . . .

Posted on by albrooke

Jake Meador provides a very nice analysis of Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow, a must-read for anyone who loves that novel, though if you haven’t read it, there are many spoilers:

  • In this sense, Jayber Crow is a story of how one man learned to love. That, of course, sounds syrupy and sentimental to us moderns who have grown up on hallmark cards and made-for-TV movies. But it is the manner of the learning that is important. The love Jayber learns to practice is an extremely physical love grounded in practical acts of devotion that sometimes by their very nature require that he not do things he deeply desires to do.

“The Ethics of Jayber Crow,” The Rabbit Room (Jan. 4, 2024) [link].

Harrison Scott Key writes a Christmas memory unlike any other you will ever find: “I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 worth of explosives on the surface of the moon tops the list. The year was 1996. . . . ”Christmas on the Moon,” Longreads (Dec. 6, 2023) [link].

Matthew T. Martens writes about the American criminal justice system: “Since the advent of forensic DNA technology in 1989, 3,284 people have been exonerated after having been convicted of crimes. These aren’t cases of people who later got off on legal technicalities. These are people who did not commit the crimes but collectively spent more than 29,000 years in prison before their innocence was discovered. . . .” Martens, who has worked as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, is no stranger to the criminal justice system, and does not want to reform it, but rather to re-initialize (my word) it to more closely match its original form. “3 Things that Must Change in the American Justice System,” Crossway (Nov. 6, 2023) [link].

Jonathan Rogers teaches writing and here gives some thoughtful advice about drafts and efficiency: “It’s an inefficient process. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to inefficiency.” “The Third Pancake,” The Habit Weekly (Nov. 7, 2023) [link].

Flannery

Posted on by albrooke

Today would be Flannery O’Connor’s 97th birthday.

  • “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.” Mystery and Manners, p. 112.
  • “The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. I believe that there are many rough beasts now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born and that I have reported the progress of a few of them, and when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.” Mystery and Manners, 117.
  • “Wise blood has to be these people’s means of grace—they have no sacraments. The religion of the South is a do-it-yourself religion, something which I as a Catholic find painful and touching and grimly comic. It’s full of unconscious pride that lands them in all sorts of ridiculous religious predicaments. They have nothing to correct their practical heresies and so they work them out dramatically. If this were merely comic to me, it would be no good, but I accept the same fundamental doctrines of sin and redemption and judgment that they do.” The Habit of Being, p. 350.

I recommend again Jonathan Rogers, The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor (Thomas Nelson 2012) [link].