... to heart:`Look Into Everything, Keep the Best'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who notes that Patrick forgot to mention that Ormsby "was a librarian (MLS, Rutgers): Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, director of libraries, 1983-86; McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, director of libraries, 1986-96.")
Interestingly, I find that I am not open, either, to most of what Patrick says he is not open to. The pop music I like is not today's (except when I get a chance to hear a country station). I watch baseball now and then and go to a game occasionally. I play the ponies a couple of times a year - after all, I used to do the racing charts at The Inquirer. Otherwise, pretty much not interested.
Father Richard John Neuhaus wries in First Things:
ReplyDeleteRussell Hittinger of Tulsa University and a frequent contributor to First Things was in town this week, and he persuaded me to go see the film Into Great Silence. It is nearly three hours of nearly silent filming of the life of the monks at Grand Chartreuse, the Carthusian monastery founded by St. Bruno in 1084 in the Swiss Alps near Grenoble.
The film was a big hit in Europe but is showing here in only one theater, the Film Forum over on West Houston (For non-New Yorkers, that’s Howston.) It was scheduled for a week, then held over for another week, and is now held over indefinitely. The lines to get in are long and steady, and let’s hope theater owners elsewhere will recognize its potential. I understand it will be out in DVD in a few months, but this is something that should, if possible, be seen in the theater.
The packed house was almost preternaturally silent as people were caught up into a way of life radically directed to the transcendent, to God. For me, the film made a deep and, I expect, lasting impression. If you have the opportunity, I suggest you not miss it.
Joe(New York)
It sounds to me like Patrick is running away from the reality of America.
ReplyDeleteCan a writer afford to put his head in the sand and hide from the world?
Not if he's to have relevance to those masses of people who ARE going to baseball games, or listening to pop music, or, yes, occasionally getting angry at the vast inequities which exist in this country. Realities need to be unflinching looked at and written about. That's the task of the writer.