Beginning the New Year with Grace

and a book that will not be named

I’m fond of Jon Ronson. I enjoy his books, from So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (about social media attacks) back to Them: Adventures with Extremists (where he followed Alex Jones to Bohemian Grove, where finding nothing untoward only fuels the man’s conspiracy theories.) His podcasts, such as “The Butterfly Effect” which describes all the unintended consequences of Pornhub giving stolen porn away for free, are also quite interesting. I began listening to Things Fell Apart recently, which focuses on the beginning of the “Culture Wars.”

The second episode is about book bans in schools, and focus on one started by evangelicals in West Virginia in 1974, which is much like the ones we see today, which use quotes out of context from outliers to drum up support for banning books by Black and LGTBQ authors that don’t include anything a reasonable person might consider objectionable. Ronson does not go out of his way to make an equivalence between “both sides,” but he pulls no punches. Episode 2 mentions Dick Gregory’s autobiography, which was attacked in 1974 by a group associated with the Ku Klux Klan… but also caused a university dean to resign when they recommended it as reading to a student who wanted to read more books by Black authors. I’ve read Gregory’s book, and it was life-changing for a young white person raised in a racist suburb that has been the subject of multiple lawsuits over segregated swimming pools. Gregory’s choice of title was meant to make us uncomfortable.

You might ask why I’m not using it? And I will reply, “duh.”

I don’t consider that self-censorship, but there’s a lot of self-censorship going on. Michael Gerber wrote about it well. He says the comment section is the worst thing to happen to writers, among other things:

The Piece That Never Was

I can understand why some writers only allow comments from paid subscribers, but positive comments are their own trap. You can self-censor to avoid the dogpiles and criticism from those against you, and you can do it when you crave the validation from the positive comments. It is difficult to keep one’s integrity in a corrupt system. We can’t walk away from Omelas any more, not easily. Antonia Malchik wrote wonderfully on her family’s struggle with it:

The starlight of integrity

Between walking the tightrope of avoiding good and bad faith attacks and not pandering to validation, and trying to behave with integrity within a corrupt system, writing is rarely the relaxing and imaginative escape that it used to be for me. I am more comfortable writing these little newsletters than I am with bringing my dreamlife to fruition, whether for my own enjoyment or to share with anyone. The joy is gone, for now.

What does bring me joy is being outside. On the first day of the year, I drove into the Pine Barrens to climb Apple Pie Hill fire tower again, and then go for a bike ride, and I was thrilled before I even arrived. Driving down a state highway where the trees nearly held hands overhead was enough. The utter quiet of the pines, when I was high above the treetops or down in the wetlands, was enveloping and serene. I’ll write more about that, and share photos taken with my new camera, this Sunday.

Wendell Berry speaks it in “The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I also have Thoughts about Saltburn, and I will share them next Wednesday. The movie is worth watching, and defies expectations in many ways. Somewhere in the middle, the main character reveals something that could change the entire story, and does, just not in the way we expect. The less known about it going in, the better. We’ll talk about that in a week, if you like.

Until then, don’t give in to hate. May you rest in the grace of the world, when you can.