I’m vaguely familiar with the trajectory of this multi-year saga, so it seems to me that underneath all this “typing with a quill pen” opaque bluster, what Rod Dreher’s saying is:
“When I was younger, I left my hick family in their hick town and went to the big city where no one would laugh or yell at me for wanting to make something of myself.
“A family tragedy forced me to go back home, where my family and I were reconciled — which is what I thought I wanted cuz I read it in a book somewhere.
“Better yet, I got a book of my own out of it that sold a ton of copies.
“But now I’m miserable again because it turns out that my family is still a bunch of assholes.”
If you are just figuring out at age 48 that families are mostly awful and sometimes even evil and that if you want to do anything independent, meaningful and artistic, you have to tell them to drop dead, then, man, I dunno.
I figured that out when I was about 11.
And by the way, Rod:
Congrats for writing a book that probably inspired a lot of people to try to reconcile with their families, too — and now they’re as disillusioned as you are.
Also, it’s really funny to me that Rod Dreher’s new project revolves around him getting all inspired by reading — you’ll never guess — Dante.
Because when I first heard about Dreher’s bestselling memoir last year, my first thought was:
