"The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the
veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see
it, is to put it back again."
Michael Flanders, of the Flanders and Swann music-hall duo. Not a bad mission to have.
This reminds me of yet another of my favourite Chesterton quotations:
What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature. I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back— his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all.
There are few things more squalid, in my view, than enthusiastic anti-romanticism and a passion for "debunking". It's the easiest game in the world, and the most destructive.
I can hardly avoid quoting the famous passage from Edmund Burke (and how shameful it is that I have never actually read Reflections on the French Revolution, or much else of Burke besides quoted passages):
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland simulation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of her naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order.
As I've mentioned before, the phrase "curtains make a house a home" sums up, for me, the philosophy Burke is evoking here.
I spent a few minutes browsing through a book shop this morning-- Eason's in Nassau Street. (Well, the shop is actually called Eason, but everybody calls it Eason's and always has, as far as I can tell.)
I was really depressed at what was on the shelves. It seems that nowadays every book has to have a gimmick, an angle-- that it has to be "high concept" in some way. Either it's based on a TV show, or it has a quirky selling point, or it's a tie-in to a recent anniversary, or it's an account of some very distinctive personal experience-- a memoir by someone who was taken hostage by terrorists, or the diary of someone who decides to take a vow of silence for a year, or some such thing. Even history books can't be straight history books-- they have to have some quirky angle, too. (Like Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.)
Admittedly, that's quite a small Eason's, and there are better bookshops. But this seems all-too-typical.
This whole attitude bedevilled the 1916 commemorations last year, too. Thankfully, there were plenty of "straight" books and events about the Rising, but there were also far too many "new perspectives". One conference in UCD was themed "Globalizing the Rising." Why should it be "globalized"? It was an Irish event. Yes, if you try hard enough you can find a "new perspective" on anything, but all too often it's simply a perverse perspective- like the all-male version of The Importance of Being Earnest that was staged in Dublin some years ago.
Most of the time, I think the "straight" approach (to anything) can be pursued indefinitely, without becoming worn out. How many books could you write about world history, without taking any silly gimmick as your focus, such as the history of cod? It's as though one day you decided to walk about on your hands instead of your feet, since you decided you'd taken that approach as far as it could go. Walking about on your hands is really not going to offer any new possibilities. It might be worth doing as a joke, or to raise money for charity, or something like that. But if, after you'd spent a day walking about on your hands-- to everybody's great amusement-- you then decided you were going to give hopping or crawling or dancing a try, you could hardly be surprised if public enthusiasm for your antics began to diminish.
And yet, people still seem to want to buy world histories of cod, and books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What's wrong with them?
I've noticed that many Catholic (and other) websites have stopped allowing comments underneath them.
We've heard all the well-rehearsed arguments against comment boxes, but I'm honestly wondering...have they been killed by political correctness?
Are the views of the "commentariat", including the Catholic and conservative commentariat, now so divergent from most of the readers that the difference is simply too jarring to expose? I've noticed that, when there are comments, they are usually significantly more "right-wing" than the article or video, if it's in any way mainstream.
Yesterday's anecdote of the wine glasses reminds me of another language-related anecdote.
It was Christmas morning, many years ago-- I was probably in my late teens. My father and I were talking about a new dictionary somebody had received as a gift, a big fat proper dictionary. I was complaining about pedantry, which is a common theme with me-- I'm a bit of an anarchist when it comes to language.
"For example", I said, "Why should we talk about "The Dead" by James Joyce as Joyce's 'The Dead'? Isn't it more elegant to say Joyce's Dead?".
"No", said my father. "Joyce's The Dead is clearer."
"Joyce's Dead is perfectly clear!", I complained. "Nobody could mistake what you meant. It's just pedantry."
A few minutes later, my mother appeared, looking rather concerned. "Did I hear someone say Joyce is dead?", she asked. Joyce is the name of my aunt.
This really happened.
I had this interaction with a student today.
Student: Do you have a lost and found?
Me: Yes.
Student: I lost some glasses.
Me (already walking to the lost and found): Can you tell me anything more about them?
Student: They were wine glasses.
Me (doing a double-take): Uh...
Student: They had a wine-coloured frame.
Me: Gotcha.
Language is a funny thing.
It might be considered strange that a student would have a set of wine glasses in the library, but it wouldn't be that strange. Despite the ban on food, we tend to ignore students sucking on lozenges or discreetly munching an apple. But the day a delivery guy turned up with a pizza, which had been ordered by a student, has gone down in legend-- at least, for me it has.
So I'm still revising my book. The chapter on evangelization is not too bad, but I feel it could be rounded off with a few more anecdotes.
If anyone knows any good anecdotes related to the saints and evangelization, please feel free to email me at Maolsheachlann@gmail.com or to leave them in the comments.
I'm looking especially for more modern saints (or blesseds)-- post-Tridentine at least. And less-well known ones, too. Thank you!
"Here I will not shrink from uttering my firm conviction, that it would be a gain to this country, were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be. Not, of course, that I think the tempers of mind herein implied desirable, which would be an evident absurdity; but I think them infinitely more desirable and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a cold, self-sufficient, self-wise tranquillity."
Try to guess it without googling it.
Clue: it wasn't Timothy Radcliffe.
