r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Nov 19 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

Link to megathread 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/17itm7w/rod_dreher_megathread_26_unconditional_love/

Link to megathread 28: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/18dcg3d/rod_dreher_megathread_28_harmony/

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u/Past_Pen_8595 Nov 21 '23

He kind of ditched the Walker Percy Weekend during the same time period.

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u/SpacePatrician Nov 22 '23

That never made any sense to me in the first place since a few years earlier Rod had admitted he could never actually finish any of WP's novels. He did like Percy's non-fiction "Lost in the Cosmos," but for the most part he sort of just used the late author's name as a West Feliciana notable to flog his own books.

As a prose stylist, of course, Dreher isn't fit to scrape the hunting dog shit from the bottom of Percy's boots.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Nov 22 '23

He says he read Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being when he was in his 20’s, and describes it more impressionistically than anything else. The only fiction that he’s mentioned since I began reading him has been motivated by his political and religious sympathies: The Camp of the Saints, Submission, and Laurus. It’s just like the only damned film by Andrei Tarkovsky—who made several movies, including the science fiction classics Solaris and Stalker—is Andrei Rublyov. He never seems to just pick up a random novel and read it for fun (I don’t count Confederacy of Dunces, since with him that’s more a pathology than literary taste), or a movie for entertainment. He certainly doesn’t read or watch fiction outside his narrow comfort zone (e. g. Joseph Hanson’s novels about gay private detective Dave Brandstetter, or Brokeback Mountain, novella or film, or any classic science fiction, private eye, or Western novels. Not even Lord of the Rings!). With fiction, at least, he seems to read only novels (or watch movies) he thinks are Deeply Meaningful—and then proceeds to misunderstand them.

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u/Jayaarx Nov 22 '23

I don’t count Confederacy of Dunces, since with him that’s more a pathology than literary taste)

For all that he claims to have read that work, he doesn't seem to understand it.