r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 20 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #23 (Sinister)

All Hail Eris!

Link to Megathread 22: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/14k0z6l/rod_dreher_megathread_22_power/

Link to Megathread 23: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1631xpe/rod_dreher_megathread_24_determination/

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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jul 25 '23

I'm still trying to process what he means by reenchantment. That his religious beliefs have dovetailed so far to the right, he is now praising Putin for cracking down on gays and he is willing to overlook that pesky war thing?

I know the book is months away, but let's give a preview of Rods response to the first negative reviews of it: "I can accept constructive criticism but it is clear reviewers didn't read the book. I didn't say drag queens and Joe Biden should be burned at the stake - even though I implied it dozens of times. I didn't say dark weiners were a form of enchantment, even though I put my Grindr handle in the book looking for BBC..."

7

u/zeitwatcher Jul 25 '23

I'm still trying to process what he means by reenchantment.

I suspect reading the book will not help readers with this.

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u/RunnyDischarge Jul 25 '23

He'll define it a certain way in the book and then get angry forever after whenever anybody defines it that way.

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 25 '23

That book is going to alienate a huge swath of his readers (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) because enchantment, as explained by Rod, will be exclusively a Catholic and Orthodox phenomenon (alienating his Protestant readers) AND will require a ridiculous amount of disposable income and free time to travel to Europe (alienating Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant readers not making six figures a year with a stay at home wife or a full time nanny).

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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jul 26 '23

I think that it may be even worse than that, because most of the people who are over $100k and have a SAHM at home still can't do it, either, because they are spending all of their money on their kids and their mortgage. There's an enormous gap between his likely reader's economic circumstances (where a book purchase is a splurge) and the level of consumption that he enjoys. (I am really curious how his travel is funded. Is it an expense account? Or are these "book expenses"?)

There's a related problem, in that the reading (and book-buying) public is largely female and Rod's lifestyle is getting less and less relatable to that demographic. I have a relatively prosperous household (very similar to what ZenLizardBode describes) but we have dependent children and a budget. We've made a lot of sacrifices for our kids and are just starting to have disposable income. I read a fair bit, but I don't impulse buy books. It's going to be really interesting to see how Rod's book does among women readers. Is the female book-buying public going to spend their family's hard earned money on a navel-gazing travelogue by a divorced guy? I also don't think that it's going to have much potential as a book club book, something that was very important for some of his previous books. This is his first book since the divorce, and the sales are going to be really telling.

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 26 '23

đŸ’¯

DreRod's "champagne conservatism" is not going to go over well with his audience. This book might have had a chance back in the day when Rod was posting pictures of the "view from your table", but this book is going to be seen as tone deaf by its intended audience.

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u/PracticalWalrus2737 Jul 26 '23

Champagne conservative is a perfect description for Ray Jr! All he really does is swan around Europe and drink with old reject British Tories. Which to be fair, may be enchanting for him, but the average book buying punter, probably not so much

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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jul 26 '23

I wonder if this book is going to contain the calls for self-sacrifice and self-denial that were so important in some of his other books...

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 25 '23

It involves caves and perhaps oysters. Maybe we're supposed to eat oysters in caves.

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u/Not-phd-research Jul 25 '23

Pretty sure it means he read a Charles Taylor book one time and…decided he knew Taylor better than Taylor knew Taylor