JulesLong time, no reading notes from me. I did read, but it was test-reading a mutual's novel, so no notes here.
But now! I'm starting Alice Degan's "From All False Doctrine", recommended by @irina.
Ancient manuscripts, cults, and academia in the 1920s.
Starts with a promisingly astute observation: “It would be so tedious for you, wouldn’t it, to have your research interrupted every so often by cultists wanting to worship the thing you were studying? In my department, now, we don’t have such problems.” “Good heavens, Harriet—you study money! All sorts of people worship that.”
(In STEM, we get crackpots, but our cultists are usually violently denying our findings instead of worshipping them.)
Fascinating to watch how they struggle to figure out class and relative social standing with two random guys they just met. It feels like half flirting, half interrogation! I'd think Elsa is oversharing, but maybe that's what you gotta do: make clear you're not their equal but still worthy?
(Or she's just an awkward nerd. It's not like I'm any authority on social graces.)
“She’ll study the morphology of the verbs or something, Peachy, you fool,” said Mr. Underhill. “She’s not doing her Master’s thesis in experimental pagan mysticism. One hopes.”
Well I don't! Master of Experimental Pagan Mysticism sounds like a lot of fun!
"I was trying to say that I—that I don’t think you need to. It’s 1925. The ‘confines of your sex’ aren’t what they used to be—are they? I don’t know. Admittedly it isn’t really my field. But I would think you could be a woman and a scholar, and you don’t need a husband for either of those things, so you should only have one if you want him."
It's almost 2025 here and somehow this still relevant.
“Not at all. But suppose you wanted to build a cathedral. Would it be good enough, do you think, to scribble a plan on the back of an envelope and leave it in a drawer? Obviously not. The thing has to exist in the world. It’s what we’ve been given the world for.”
Hm. Not sure, actually. There might ve room in the world for ADHD dabblers, too.
But of course we haven't seen enough of the character to decide if they have anxiety or ADHD or whatever.
That business with Elsa and her advisor is so infuriatingly relatable to, I guess, everyone who's been in academia and isn't a cis white man.
How dismissive he is - "thanks for pointing this out; of course you were wrong"! How ge puts her down and fucks her over, how easy that is. 😡
We've all met professors like that, and many of us have hoped they'd accept us as scholars if we're brilliant enough.
1920s, 2020s. Same shit different century.
Not only academia and the things girls hear don't seem to have changed that much in the last 100 years, the attitudes towards modernity in the Catholic church haven't either - but that was kind of expected.
"To be belittled in public but showered with affection and presents in private; to listen to all of his opinions but to have her own laughed at; to be unable to go out in mixed company without setting off a storm of jealousy: All this was romantic?"
NO! Run, girl!!!
Pick-up artists seem to have existed in the 1920s, too.
"So that was my conversion—I can’t explain it any better than that, and believe me, I have tried. It didn’t go particularly smoothly after that—I tried every way I could think of to get out of it, not out of conviction, or even loyalty to my mother, just because I was so scared. [...] I kept desperately trying to close the door, until I got so tired that I couldn’t keep it up."
I relate to this, like, SO HARD. 😢
Underhill's background, somewhat weirdly, is very similar to Jon Snow's in "A Song of Ice and Fire", isn't it? Right down to the celibacy. Huh.
There's maybe a bit of similarity to Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" here. Guy invents a conspiracy theory for fun, people form a cult around it, and things get messy pretty fast. It even has a university-adjacent setting, too, and changes in gender roles and politics and vertical dualism play a role as well.
Eco's just focused less on the relationships and more on all the weird factoids.
"he said, ‘You’re right, and I know you only have my best interests at heart because you love me.’ And then all three of them laughed about it—‘Yes, we love you, isn’t it tiresome? [...] it was a revelation: They work at it. They try, they do the right things, most of the time, and the result is this beautiful place where love presides even over stupid arguments."
How I wish I could do that, and how I fail.
Okay, weird cults, demonic possesions and going out on Good Friday, I accept that, but I draw the line at playing the organ in church on Holy Saturday. That's just wrong.
I'm not sure how I feel about "PTSD healed by invocation of Jesus". I mean, this is sort of a Fantasy novel, so yeah, why shouldn't magic work here. But... it's a little too easy, isn't it? It feels wrong, not the least because the PTSD's effects are shown so clearly and accurately.
(But I so feel Elsa's confusion: "that WORKED?!")
"I started to see that nobody had answers to the questions I was beginning to ask—it wasn’t just that I hadn’t learned the answers, it was that most of the others hadn’t thought to ask the questions, weren’t bothered by the things that bothered me. I was hoping for some mystery beneath the surface that would make sense of the inconsistent doctrines, the hard Scripture readings"
I feel that very much. And it's difficult.
I think I'm a mixture of Elsa and her father at church: part unsure if I belong and am doing it right, part editorializing about a reading or sermon (I haven't gone as far as making notes yet), part feeling it deeply. Okay, and part herding kids 🙃
"The kind of man who would invent a system for subduing the world to the mastery of his own mind, for fun—and then sell his soul for the chance to make other people believe in it."
That is scary indeed. Imagine Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk doing that.
The fact that this big fight scene takes place in a bathroom just cracks me up.
Oh YES, what an ending. Big showdown, very dramatic, life and death and damnation, and it ends - with a research topic. Now THAT is a take on redemption I, as an academic, can get behind wholeheartedly.
(And it's really funny as well)
And I think after this Kit will never complain that Holy Week is so busy* and full.
*K2, on Easter Monday: "but WHY do we have go to church AGAIN??"
Taran Rampersad@quidcumque some say this has already happened. 👀😂
Random Weirdo@quidcumque oh yes. Feel that.
@Sci_Fi_FanGirl it's like - I want to believe, and worship, but I also want to be taken seriously intellectually. Using learning and reason is a path to spirituality, too! So many people don't get that. It actually makes me feel very lonely.
@quidcumque Yes, absolutely. There are things that I don't understand yet and there are questions and doubts that, for the time being, remain unanswered. But it's important in my journey.
For many people, faith is only about feelings. And though we may not grasp God completely with our reasoning, I believe God values this wish and responds to it.
KatLS@quidcumque @Sci_Fi_FanGirl welcome ! Binaries suck. You can be both. Mysteries are myriad. Wonder is required for science.
@KatLS too bad it's so hard to find a church that sees it this way.
@quidcumque @KatLS Too many Christians feel challenged (in a negative way) when asked questions they can't immediately answer or that they have never thought about 😔
@quidcumque @Sci_Fi_FanGirl United church of Christ….🥰
@KatLS *looks it up* sounds like a nice one!
@quidcumque @Sci_Fi_FanGirl congregations differ but overall serious about justice and love; not about dogma.