The Catholic Writer and the Skating Boom, Or Every Day Is Self-Parody Day

Last updated on: December 14, 2013 at 9:23 pm by Eve Tushnet

The Catholic Writer and the Skating Boom, Or Every Day Is Self-Parody Day 2013-12-14T21:23:49-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“[Kathleen] Hanna wanted to become a writer. But Kathy Acker, a counterculture writer Hanna admired, told her that no one listens to spoken word, and instead she should be in a band.”

–as recounted in The Punk Singer

Alan Jacobs weighs in vs. me vs. Dana Gioia, on the past, future, and subjunctive tense of “the Catholic writer.” A few scattered thoughts follow.

* Jacobs’ second point is really important: “Why should we not simply think of the generation of Percy, O’Connor, Lowell et al. as a curious aberration in the history of Catholic writing in America, one we should not expect to be repeated?”

There’s a style of discourse in figure skating fandom (you can feel it lurking here, for example) which takes the American skating boom of the 1990s as the normal state of figure skating in this country, and asks things like, “If Gracie Gold wins in Sochi, will we see a revival of skating shows on tour and on TV?” In other words, will figure skating regain its cultural influence? And this question gets tightly bound up with the controversy over “the new system,” the scoring system which replaced 6.0, in much the same way that discussions of Catholic art/writing often get bound up with controversies over Vatican II and its effects and its “Spirit.” If you can’t stand the new system, it’s easy to assert that it is responsible for the decline in skating’s cultural prominence here. (Didn’t seem to hurt skating in e.g. Japan, though.) I have various problems with the new system and its implementation, and also I would love for there to be more skating shows; but it seems likely that the 1990s were a very strange time for US figure skating, and 6.0 vs IJS explains relatively little of the decline in skating’s popularity.

This issue of what counts as a normal amount of influence is important because it affects how harshly we judge the success or failure not only of our own efforts, but of others’.

ETA: Uh, obviously we shouldn’t be judging other people’s success/failure, or caring super much about our own. But acknowledging how tough a situation is often serves as a first step toward being less judgmental about how people handle that situation.

* I was going to clarify that my point about O’Connor & the Chrysler plant was more about her influence than about her lifestyle, but Jacobs’s point is more important than mine, so go read him.

* “The sacramentality of nature” is a phrase I think I’ve heard pretty often to mean “objects in the world are words spoken by God,” or, “physical objects have an inherent meaning because they are infused with the sustaining love and presence of God.” It doesn’t mean “all objects are Sacraments,” any more than “Christian writing often has an incarnational sensibility” means “TS Eliot thinks a cab horse is Jesus Christ.” I think we do need a word for this feature of Catholic/Christian thought; maybe “sacramentality” is too easily misunderstood? No idea. I will just register my surprise at how this phrase hit Jacobs’s ears.

* Re his final points, I generally treat “Catholic” or “Christian” as essentially a genre label. It gives you some sense of what this writer’s community might be–labels in general often help to create and sustain community, though I suppose that’s a separate argument–and community as a spur to artistic accomplishment was one of the best insights of Gioia’s initial piece.

A genre also helps the reader know what kinds of questions or atmospheres might get explored in a work, and therefore can serve to pique interest. That’s a reviewerish approach, not a critic’s approach, but guess what I do for a living, you know?

Or to put it another way, when I talk about why I like what I like, often the fact that something is in some sense Catholic writing, or e.g. gay literature, will help me explain what is good about it and what I liked about it. Genre can even enhance our experience of an artwork–I’m really glad that I read Sean Collins’s discussions of Eyes Wide Shut and Barton Fink as horror movies before I watched them, because watching them with a horror fan’s mindset made them (I think) especially powerful. “Horror” and “gay lit” have boundaries at least as fuzzy as “Catholic lit”; I don’t think the contingent, flailing, haphazard quality of all our genre labels should count against them as long as we know they’re contingent and flailing and haphazard.

* I do think there’s a tendency within contemporary Catholic fiction to try to fit itself into this genre. “Here I sit, writing Catholic fiction, in the tradition of Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor!” The writing becomes formulaic because the writer is practically setting out to be an epigone. But a) I may be wrong about the internal mindset of these authors–maybe they’re just not very good!, b) this is probably an inevitable consequence of having a genre. There are plenty of rote or archly self-conscious horror flicks out there, but there are also ways to use the horror genre to do something startling and sublime.

* So I would replace Jacobs’s challenge for me with the question I was actually trying to answer, lol: “If we want good audiences for great art, and great art for good audiences, how can we make that more likely to happen?” Obviously not a Catholic-specific problem, but that was literally my main point: that many of the difficulties facing Catholic writers face all writers in the current audience/artist structure.

* In conclusion, two videos: Nicole Bobek at Ice Wars in the good old days…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9cTcLYBCjM

…and today, with extraordinary artistry:

Art

Mackerel-Snapping

self-obsessed

all of life is a choice of genre

mackerel-snapping

Previous Post

December 14, 2013

"Where's the Love?": Underrated Horror Films Series

Next Post

December 16, 2013 Underrated Horror Flick on Netflix Streaming!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In James, what is the correct sequence that leads from temptation to death?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Temptation, desire, death, judgment Sin, desire, full-grown sin, death Desire, temptation, sin, death Desire, sin conceived, sin full-grown, death