Author: J. Thorp

Waugh, or Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: Four summers ago, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I continue to press forward, this being number 11 of 15, and at this point 15 Classics in 15 Years seems quite doable…

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was the wildcard in my list of 15 classics, replacing Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian on the original list. I was trying to buy all 15 books used, and couldn’t find McCarthy; one previous spring I picked up Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and thought, “What the heck; I’ll read that instead.” — then my friend Fr. Tyler recommended Brideshead. He has proven to be a reliable recommender of books (especially East of Eden), so I added it to the mix.

This is not a book I would’ve chosen without recommendation. An impenetrable title by an author with whom I was not familiar (a man, as it turns out), which, as I flipped through it, skimming pages, seemed another novel about shallow, wealthy people indulging in food, wine, and art and mocking the less sophisticated and the pious. If not for Father Tyler, I might have set it aside, guessing it similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray — which it is not so much. And so…Three Things to Love About Brideshead Revisited:

  • People Change: As in Dorian Gray and The Brothers Karamazov, most of the characters in Brideshead begin as superficial, hedonistic, and not particularly likable, however, through chance and tragedy, as these characters collide and intermingle again and again, they grow deeper and more complex. This is not a story in which the weakness of characters lead them to an inescapable end. These people struggle. They learn from their mistakes (however slowly). They change over time, and emerge different people at the end.
  • The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: One recurring theme in the book is that of a tiny part of a man, pretending to be whole. These upper-crust Brits lead lives of leisure — they have time on their hands and passions and vices they indulge, ignoring transcendental truths, scoffing at faith and virtue and love, and pretending to live. They become artists, politicians, alcoholics, trophy wives, adulterers and mistresses, but can’t figure out to be whole or happy. How many people have we seen like that?
  • All Roads Lead Home: The deeper theme of the book, it seems to me, is that all roads lead to Truth and God — you are never so far away that you cannot get back, and although we may choose to resist, when we do not, He draws us inexorably to Him, with grace and mercy we do not merit. It is, in the end, a very hopeful book.
A side note: I have said numerous time in this journey through 15 classics that it is remarkable how timeless these books are — how the characters are relatable and the themes common to our time. I finished this book yesterday, even as I started a new book for work called Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Out Futures & What We Can Do About It. (Sounds like a page-turner, doesn’t it?) 

Brideshead was published in 1944 and is set between the World Wars; Pinched opens with a 1914 quote from writer and journalist Walter Lippmann: “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. There isn’t a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn’t move in a strange situation….There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn’t made for a simpler age. We have changes our environment more quickly that we know how to change ourselves.”
Sound familiar? It is ironic to me that a book published just this year should open with a quote from 1914, claiming there are no precedents to guide us. We’ve been down the path of “unprecedented change” repeatedly* — apparently in 1914, for example. Waugh’s great novel, to me, insists that the wisdom “made for a simpler age” is unchanging, still relevant, and even necessary. We are simply slow to learn.

—–

*If change wasn’t unprecedented, it wouldn’t really be change, would it?

Book Break: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Today I finished another of my boss’s books, recommended to me by our research assistant, Ben, who was responsible for sorting the boss’s library as we moved from Morrill Hall to the Humphrey. I’d seen the book before, and it looked like a gimmicky, gifty book someone would use to decorate a shelf or display as light bathroom reading. It featured multiple styles of fonts, “handwriting,” and illustration, and bore the oddball title, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace.

“I think you should take a look at this,” Ben said, when I raised a skeptical eyebrow upon seeing it again, in his hand. “It’s actually pretty good.”

I took it, exhaled, skimmed the opening poem by Rumi, glanced at the whimsically illustrated table of contents and a two-page spread that looked like a grade-school painting, and started to read. And read, and read, and read.

The author, Gordon MacKenzie, worked 30 years at Hallmark, and this book is his attempt to show adults how to recollect their creative genius; to flush (or even remove) their PC, company-line filters and begin to really innovate and invent again…like when they were kids. For 30 years, he worked for a great “hairball” of a corporation, and for much of that time, he managed to orbit the hairball, close enough for mutual benefit, far enough to never be sucked into the mess and stifled. The book is, at times, a little New Age-y, but it’s inspiring, nonetheless. Here’s a guy who tends to say the things we wish we said, who pushes the envelope of acceptable behavior, gives the wrong answers, writes his own rules…and time and again, shows that it pays, both in terms of profit and personal fulfillment.

I’ve been that guy only once that I recall — when I applied for my former job at a Minneapolis marketing firm. The job posting was quirky and creative (somewhat moreso than the job, as it turned out); I wrote a solid but straightforward cover letter to accompany my resume. I was trying to stretch my experience a bit to cover the position described, and a friend read my cover letter and said, “This isn’t going to do it.” She told me that, since I didn’t have the qualifications they were looking for, I should show that I could market myself in the same way they were selling themselves in their ad. I went home and thought, “What do I know about branding?” Immediately I thought about my rancher friend Jinglebob, and wrote a completely different letter, excerpted here:

You aren’t looking for me. The anthropology degree is all wrong—I studied people, not business. My work history skews journalistic, with infrequent forays into student recruitment and fundraising. Where I come from, branding involves a flame, a red-hot iron and singed hair. It’s difficult work, and it scars.

That said, it’s not so different from what [COMPANY] does. Your clients want what every rancher seeks—a brand that leaves an indelible mark that the world will recognize and associate with its owner. It’s hard work, sure, so you do what any good foreman would: hire the best hands and stoke the fire.

My friend read the new letter and grinned. “This. Is. It.” she said. “They may love it; they may hate it, but they will definitely remember it.”

I had abandoned the way you apply for a job and had done something new. It paid off — both the HR manager and the hiring manager called me, stumbling over each other to set up a flight and an interview. I had successfully re-written the rules, and “The Hairball” had given me the benefit of the doubt, and a shot. That never happened, before or since.

I’ve tried the revise that letter in applying for other jobs, but it doesn’t work. I’ve tried to build writing routines and exercises to spark consistent writing that moves me as much as, for example, last year’s Holiday Letter, but everything sounds forced and derivative. It’s frustrating…and then, as I neared the end of MacKenzie’s book, one of his main points struck me like a ball-peen to the forehead — rang my head like the ginormous bell that it is: Once creativity is routine, it is not creativity. You cannot do something completely different, over and over again.

The cover letter accomplished its intended purpose; I can ask no more of it. Should I need another, I must again give birth. Which is hard work. But worth it.

Blogger’s Note to His Bride: You’ve noticed I’ve been goofier lately. It’s the fumes from the rocket fuel, keeping me just clear of the Hairball.

Who Is the Public?

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

I have just finished another book I would not have read if not for my job, Barry Bozeman’s Public Values and Public Interest: Counterbalancing Economic Individualism. First, permit me to confess that, left to my own devices, I would read fiction, poetry, and an occasional history — so I am being forced to broaden my horizons and get educated, which is never a bad thing. Second, let me say that, as a wannabe writer, I have many, many thoughts about this book, mostly concerning its readability. I would not say that I enjoyed it, but it did provoke thought. The primary thought it provoked may be worth sharing. I say “may be” because I am not an economist, a philosopher, a political scientist, or a public interest or public management theorist, so it’s possible that I simply didn’t get it.

My primary thought about the book is that it spends a great deal of time on the topics of whether and how it is possible to identify public values and the public interest, and contrasting those with private or individual economic values and interests (which are often not the same), but it spends remarkably little time on the question of “Who is the Public?” The author is very conscious (almost too conscious) of the limits — the squishiness — of terms like “the public interest” and “public values,” but while his book tackles “interest” and “values” at length, it gives short shrift to “public.”

Especially in the U.S., a vast nation with remarkably diverse cultures, religions, lifestyles, and economies depending on where in the country you reside, it seems to me that the more immediate the “public,” the more practical and realistic it is to identify shared public values and pursue the public interest. At the state level, this becomes less realistic: every state in which I’ve ever lived has had marked, or even deep, social, economic, political, and cultural divisions (“Outstate” or greater Minnesota versus the Twin Cities metro. East River versus West River. Downstate versus the U.P.) and different lifestyles worth protecting. At the national level, then, it seems unlikely that we could identify public values and a cohesive public interest, aside from the broad priorities of securing the nation and preserving our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The difficulty of pursuing public values and the public interest is not identifying values and interests — these are abundant, diverse, and obvious — but identifying who shares them, which helps to decide at what level of society they should be implemented.

The critique of economic individualism (which, says Bozeman, is increasingly driving our public policy agenda) in the book insists that individuals in this model are concerned primarily with their own economic interests, and perhaps those of a few close others (immediate family and the like). That may be the proper definition of economic individualism, but I don’t know anyone who lives this way. As a friend in Western South Dakota has explained, in his part of the prairie, neighbors take care of each other — and if someone doesn’t contribute to the good of the community, over time they are made unwelcome. They simply don’t last. Those who remain recognize that it is in their personal interest to take public interest: to be engaged in the community and preserve their shared values and lifestyle.

I enjoy a similar experience in “The Bubble” — the devout, small-town Catholic communities in Albertville and St. Michael. My circle of public interest begins at home, with my family; then expands to encompass my parish and the people with whom I share a fundamental belief system and way of life; then to my town(s), which provide the education my children receive and the goods and services we need to live and thrive; then to my state and nation, which should be responsible for ensuring my towns, parish, and family have the opportunity and freedom to thrive. I invest what time, talent, and treasure that I am still free to spend as I wish in the circles closest to me — which makes sense, since the more distant circles I am already obligated by law to support.

It seems to me that Bozeman’s approach to identifying public values, public interest, and ultimately, instances of failure of public policy to deliver in the public interest, is useful in inverse proportion to the size and distance of the “public” considered. At the local level, the public interest is much easier to identify — because although our population is increasingly diverse, we tend to cluster together with likeminded folks who share similar values. But as long as the majority of public resources are allocated at the state and national level, we will struggle with coming up with one-size-fits-all solutions to generic political issues that approximate real-world challenges, but do not reflect the actual problems of real people living in genuine community with each other.

Amazing Grace of Motherhood

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

“I’m constantly amazed at the sheer power that women hold within their bodies. The power to create, to nurture, to grow. It’s such a mind-blowing thing. And not just once, but over and over again.” —a young female friend currently living in Central America

Something amazing happened last weekend: at long last, I felt our baby move. It’s been a long time coming; apparently, the position of the placenta is such that, even for Jodi, our little one’s movements were nearly imperceptible for most of the last several months. But even in recent days, when Jodi would say, “Jim! The baby’s moving!” her exclamation or the touch of my hand was enough to still whatever stirring had been underway.

I’ve said many times that this is my chief jealousy with regard to the opposite sex — that I’ll never feel the movement of my own child growing within me. Even with four children already born into this world, it’s still a thrill to experience this, even from the outside.

Something else amazing happened this weekend. At the St. Michael Catholic Church Fall Festival, Jodi received abundant congratulations—such is the genuine joy that this community finds in each and every baby, no matter how commonplace a miracle it seems in our little Catholic bubble—and at least twice, two grandfathers asked if they could hug her. One said he feels in awe of pregnant women, and the other, with his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, said, “I always feel about this tall around mothers.”

Their tremendous respect for women and motherhood resounds in my own heart—and calls to mind one of the traits that attracted me to my bride from the beginning: the fact that she was the first woman I had met since I started college who did not hesitate to say she wanted to be a wife and mother. Sexuality and fertility, procreation and co-creation, married love and family life are tremendous blessings, which, too often, we devalue or seek to avoid. Thank you, Jodi, for allowing God to work this miracle through you, as my young friend said, “not just once, but over and over again.” You are beautiful, strong, resilient — and we love you.

Related poems and postings:

Burning Love

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Last weekend, to celebrate the end of summer, we had a little campfire in the backyard. I had thrown an old birdhouse onto the fire, which was finally beginning to break down, with flames of blue, and yellow, and orange. It was a beautiful night, and for the first time in ages, we all sat and did nothing but visit with each other: about the coming school year, the dancing flames, the smoke rising to the stars. 


Then Gabe said something curious: “There’s a flaming heart in the fire.”



It was the remains of an old barn-wood board from the birdhouse. Emma saw it, too, and noted that she was, at that very moment, wearing her “Burning Love” t-shirt, featuring a red heart like a torch and St. Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:


Love is patient,
love is kind.
It is not jealous,
is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered,
it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.


We were marveling at this coincidence, when Trevor noticed something else. “Look,” he said, “there are three nails in it…just like Jesus.”



Sacred Heart of Jesus, we entrust our family to You. Look down upon us and reveal to us the treasures of love, goodness, and grace in Your Heart. Forgive our sins and fortify our weakness, that we may serve You faithfully as You deserve. These favors we ask for ourselves and for every family in our neighborhood and homeland. Heart of Jesus, pierced by a soldier’s lance on Calvary, be our refuge in life and our gateway to Paradise. Amen.