Quickly Commonplacing #11

Unexpected Twilight rants, Jane Austen rankings, and the language of the machine

I finally got to wear my favorite handmade sweater and use the highland cow hand-warmers my husband bought for our wool anniversary, so I feel like fall is very officially here. With major holidays coming up, it’s a time of year when I wish to recommit to living more seasonally, rhythmically, and liturgically. Reading has been one (small) way to try and make progress on that front; changing out summer/winter clothes has been another. Without further ado, onwards to the latest installment of Quickly Commonplacing!

Current Reads:

1. Reread: Wuthering Heights By: Emily Brontë

   1. I have quite the history with this book. Back in my Twihard days (yes, I know, it was a phase ok?) I came across references to Wuthering Heights in Meyer’s work, and decided to give it a go. Gotta give Meyers credit for correctly identifying Wuthering Heights as not actually being a love story, and describing the characters as “ghastly people who ruin each others’ lives.”¹ I actually think the Twilight series would have worked a heck of a lot better if she had leaned into the Wuthering Heights angle and made the series about how Bella and Edward, much like Cathy and Heathcliff, are emotionally stunted weirdos who ultimately deserve each other and ruin the lives of everyone around them. Instead, she tried to sell the true love/soulmates angle, and ended up writing a really problematic romance as something to aspire to. But I digress. When I first read Wuthering Heights, I found it interesting, if a bit of a headache when it came to the dialect. But I was proud to have engaged with a classic of English literature, and wanted to try more. Years later, I returned to the moors when I was pregnant with my first child. This was a mistake. I couldn’t handle the unrelenting gloom and put it aside, unwilling to return to it in subsequent years because of the bad taste it had left in my metaphorical mouth. However, I am really really enjoying it this go around, and I think a lot of it has to do with having a greater sense of the genre/tradition Bronte is working with, and simply being a more mature human being. So if there is a classic work of literature you’ve been avoiding; don’t despair! Some time, some day, it might finally grab your attention. Keep trying, and keep giving yourself permission to stop if the time isn’t ripe.

2. New Read: Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York By: Adam Gopnik

   1. I read Adam Gopnik’s memoir of his time in Paris a few years ago (read about it here). After Dominika inspired me to watch “You’ve Got Mail” for the first time, I wanted to continue the fall in New York City vibes, and knew Gopnik’s memoir would allow me to do so. It was an unexpectedly poignant pick because Gopnik returned to New York City with his family in 2000. As Gopnik wrestled in writing with what the fall of the Twin Towers meant for his family, his country, and the entire world, I found myself feeling oddly grateful. Because I suddenly felt a lot less alone. While I was a child when the Towers fell, I was an adult (and a parent) when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Living through “unprecedented” events is traumatizing no matter what your age, but being a parent adds a whole different layer of fear. And Gopnik’s memoir captures that fear so well, as well as the strange fact that, in the midst of these events, we also have to just keep going. To the best of our ability, we have to be the source of stability and comfort for our children when everything is falling apart around us. Gopnik does so without any faith from which he can draw additional strength to do so; and there was something profoundly sad about that for me. For I know how badly I need a rock to cling to, one much more stable and sure than even the love of those I rely on most in this world. And lest you think this memoir is all doom and gloom, Gopnik interweaves moments on comedic gold throughout; his bit on how he misused “LOL” when learning how to IM had me literally laughing out loud.

Recent Commonplace Quotes

1. “Clair de Jong, founder of Feminists for Life of New Zealand, wrote in 1978: ‘The demand for abortion is a sell-out to male values and a capitulation to male lifestyles rather than a radical attempt to renegotiate the terms by which women and men can live in the world as people with equal rights and equal opportunities…Accepting the ‘necessity’ of abortion is accepting that pregnant women and mothers are unable to function as persons in this society. It indicates a willingness to adjust to the status quo which is a betrayal of the feminist cause, a loss of the revolutionary vision of a world fit for people to live in.” Erika Bachiochi quoting Clair de Jong in The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

   1. I am not going to shut up about this book anytime soon. One of the many things I loved about Bachiochi’s work was the way she upended the narrative that abortion represents a positive good for women. As this quote exemplifies, Bachiochi reveals the ways that abortion is not about women taking ownership of their bodies, but about women relinquishing their unique feminine capacities because they are (seemingly, and often in reality) otherwise unable to participate in a male-oriented market economy. I also appreciated how Bachiochi’s critiques of abortion focus on the philosophical assumptions underlying abortion advocacy, rather than on individual abortion advocates. In addition, she (rightly) reserves her harshest attacks for unjust political/economic/social systems rather than for the men and women who have fallen prey to these systems. If pro-lifers want to be both effective and charitable, they can find no better model than Bachiochi.

2. “As metaphors from classical mechanics slowly began to penetrate the vocabulary of the resident of the modern world, eventually even every-day people began to refer to themselves as “consumers” and “producers” who bring their “labor supply” to “human resource departments” and try every day to “optimize their productivity”…[C.S.] Lewis also reflected how there were shifts within our individual words so that, sometimes, what had been words of praise for our ancestors became words of condemnation for us, and vice versa. For instance…“Why does ‘latest’ in advertisements mean ‘best’?” The answer, according to Lewis, is that now the image of “old machines being superseded by new and better ones” has become for us the controlling archetype in our imagination. Lewis noted that machines and technologies are so important for us moderns that they began to mark the great milestones of our lives…Lewis was prescient, then; machines are in our brain and out blood and our words and in our air and in our water.” (Why Literature Still Matters, Jason Baxter)

   1. There were several moments when reading Baxter’s book that I found myself feeling as if certain scales were falling from my eyes. This was one of them. Once I read it, I couldn’t help but notice all the ways in which the language of the machine has infected the way I thought about myself and others. I literally told a coworker, shortly after reading the section this quote comes from, that I was “on the fritz.” As a parent, I can all too easily fall into the trap of thinking that if I provide my children with certain “inputs,” I will be guaranteed specific “outputs.” I feel anxiety contemplating whether or not my day has been “productive” enough, and feel the constant allure of buying something “new” to make me more productive and effective. And I think the use and abuse of AI is a direct result of the way in which we have “mechanized” the human image through our use of mechanical language. We have been thinking of and speaking about ourselves as machines for so long, we no longer possess the vocabulary to describe what distinguishes us from them, or or to argue about whether or not it is worth doing so.

Excellent Earworms:

1. Music: Rock and Roll (Castro), Coming Home (Oregon) (Mat Kearney)

2. Podcasts: Christians Reading Classics hosted by Nadya Williams (I especially enjoyed the Dorothy Sayers episode) and The Pillar’s “Sunday School” episodes for paid subscribers

Substack Shares:

• Do you ever wonder where God is in all this? By Laura Kelly Fanucci A beautiful meditation on a question that has been on my heart and mind so much recently. Her suggestions for prayer and meditation are spot on.

• Why the Traditional vs. Liberal Catholic Divide is Enabling Sexual Abuse By Emily Hess: Insightful and convicting. I think Hess hits the nail on the head. Most Catholics (in the U.S. in particular) could stand to take a good hard look at the ways in which we might be contributing to this divide and the evils it engenders.

• The White Martyrdom of Getting Up From Your Chair By Liturgy in the Home with Maria: Boy oh boy did this hit a nerve in the best way possible. My selfishness and self-focus is dying the slowest of deaths over here, so I needed this reminder that I ought to see all the times I have to get up from the proverbial chair are merciful gifts from a loving God who wants me to become a saint.

• Not Everything is Demonic. Just Some Stuff. By Griffin Gooch: An excellent piece to read in the midst of Hallowtide. Gooch reminds us that while there are some hard lines we ought not to cross, a lot comes up to individual discernment, and obsessing over the ways in which others have discerned differently than us can lead to a whole boatload of issues.

Polling the People:

Last poll, I asked about your favorite subjective Austen vs what you think is her objective best work. On the objective side, Pride and Prejudice won with 39% of the vote, followed by Persuasion (24%), Mansfield Park (17%), Sense and Sensibility (12%) and Emma (7%). On the subjective favorite side, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion tied for first (34% each) with Emma and Sense and Sensibility tying for second (11% each) and Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey (9%). I found it fascinating the the objective/subjective lined up as well as it did. I have no idea anymore which is my favorite subjective Austen, because it changes so much depending on my season of life/recency bias. On the objective level, I think Mansfield Park is, in some ways, her most sophisticated work, while Pride and Prejudice might just be her overall best. But as soon as I type that, objections and counterpoints arise, and I throw my hands up in despair. The woman was simply a genius, full-stop, and ranking the works of a genius is, in some ways, a pointless exercise.

For today’s poll, I’m asking for your favorite gothic novel of those listed below, all of which I have read, and which I think most people have read and/or have some familiarity with (If I had more space I would have put The Woman in White and Jane Eyre for sure).

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1. Edward Cullen in Eclipse