Welcome, creatures! This newsletter is shorter than my usual because I’m trying to develop some discipline about not waiting months to do one and then sending you a vast tome.
First up, I went to the zoo and have also been watching the David Suchet Poirot adaptations and the collision of these two events led me to realize that Suchet has Poirot walk just like a little armadillo. Endearing!
(The ITV adaptations are quite variable. I love Suchet, every moment he’s onscreen is a delight, but I did not need them to add a suicidal lesbian subplot to the otherwise perfectly-adapted, creepy, autumnal Hallowe’en Party. I extremely and intensely did not need the already-existing homicidal lesbian plotline of Nemesis to include dumb nun stuff and a blasphemous parody of Bernini’s Teresa. That said, I’m probably watching another one tonight….)
I finished Garth Greenwell’s collection Cleanness. This is one of those things where I can’t recommend it, because it is perhaps the most sexually-explicit professional fiction I’ve ever read that was not marketed as pornography, but it is really moving and I’m glad I read it. Lol and I was not wrong to suss out religious longing in the first story I read from this. It’s all over the collection. I guess you do not call your collection of linked short stories Cleanness if you do not want to put a certain set of issues on blast. There’s a recurring attentiveness to the ways Christian faith and sexuality, especially sexual degradation, unexpectedly echo one another or blur or do the old duck-or-rabbit trick. It’s oversimplifying, or imposing my own perspective, to say that several of these stories are about a kind of reverse sublimation, but I will say the narrator knows that sex may be a way of speaking about God and he is not sure what to make of that.
I’d say another recurring, related problem is the question of satisfaction: Can desire lead to peace, and if it does, will you be able to be at home there? Can’t you just be happy about it, or is that not actually satisfying? And if you’re not satisfied by the fulfillment of your desires, is that because there’s something wrong with you, and a better man (more loving and more normal, or more self-abnegating and more fun) might be able to accept satisfaction as a good-enough outcome?
I read this as a library book, although I’m going to buy it. And say what you will about the standards for public library acquisitions, but I was glad I could get a hold of this when I wanted it. I feel like I’ve written too much this year about The Ethics Of Writing Fiction, but if you’ll indulge me one more time, I did try to write Punishment in a way I thought was… defensibly moral? As moral as possible under the circumstances? I don’t actually know if I succeeded, but the sex stuff in Punishment is there in part—in its most defensible part—because there were true things that I thought I could convey to some readers only through those scenes, which those readers might appreciate. And some of the responses to the book have suggested that I was not wrong about that. So now I’m in the position of being that reader, the one who needed these things to be said in this way, for Greenwell.
(Yes, I know, “the Salò defender has entered the chat”….)
And, By Popular Demand, Hot Fox Robin Hood
I also write wholesome articles for Catholic publications! Currently I am working on a round-up or possibly meditation about a surprisingly underpopulated subgenre of movies: films about monks or friars. There are a bazillion beloved movies about women religious (the fact that there are so many is interesting in itself!), a fair number of well-known and/or good movies about priests. But where are the other vowed religious? Are there themes which get explored more in monk or friar films than in priest flicks or nun cinema?
Tell me your favorite films centered on the lives of monks or friars. My own are The Little Flowers of St Francis and Of Gods and Men, so those are definitely going to be in the piece, but I know I also need to watch Brother Sun, Sister Moon, the 1980s Francis biopic from Liliana Cavani, and, I guess, The Name of the Rose. What else should be on there?
Besides, of course, Hot Fox Robin Hood.
Tenderness
My next book comes out in early December. This book is sort of a sequel to Gay and Catholic, sort of a correction or redirection of it: more personal and also more alive to others’ hard experiences, more spiritual and Scriptural, but it is my book so there is a drinking game and a gay fanfiction joke. Also approx fifty medieval saints. If you take a drink every time you hit a Cistercian there’s a chapter where you’ll just pass out two pages in. Anyway it’s Tenderness: A Gay Christian’s Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God’s Extravagant Love, I will be talking about it more here as its arrival approaches, and if you are a journalist or similar lowlife and want a review copy, let me know.
Photo of a capuchin, though not a Capuchin, via Wikimedia Commons.
When in Rome (1952) doesn't center monks, but there's a group of them in the movie who atone for the world's sins and I like that they were shown and mentioned, albeit briefly.
The connection between desire, sex and satisfaction is super interesting to me. I'm curious and would be very interested reading more about what "satisfaction" means to you? And perhaps, you'd be willing to write more about what it means to be "satisfied" on broader universal/cultural/theological levels too? Not sure if you've written about this stuff elsewhere...