Anselm Hall musings

 AI assures me that while Kraznahorskai might have quietist themes and memes, if I am looking for a quietist writer buddy, Fosse might be more my guy.  Have to look again at him.  I think Eric Johnson texted last summer asking if I had read him.  I started into Septology a few years ago and got put off by something.  Worth another look.  Sebald liked Krasz, says blurb on War & War, so I may give it a look.  Now his long meandering sentences are a well known feature.  "obsessive realism" makes me pause, not sure I can take that.  Orlando I could abandon.  Is it linked to Anselm Hall?  in the sense that living there for two years was like living deep within English Literature.  Tudor magnificence conjuring Hampton Court and the march of great snippets of lit history from the Norton anthology.  And sexual ambivalence identity issues, in the sense that after the first summer at Ammendale, with the taking of temporary vows, we started wearing the habit.  We took new names for ourselves, the names that would guide us forward into sanctity, and we wore every day the ankle-length dress of our vocations.  Ok, not dresses but habits.  From a sartorial, couture point of view, it was a dress.  For Western eyes, Appalachian eyes.  Habits on nuns and priests and brothers, soutanes, liturgical robes and gowns, all that lace that the priest donned before mass, albs and what all else.  Chasubles.  Altar boys wore dresses, robes.  The monks at SSPP wore those ultra cool heavy brown robes with rope waist belts.  All of that led to visions of the princely life in Anselm Hall, bridge to the Vatican in Elkins Park.  Orlando is British masque, masquerade, house party costume dress-up joking and playfulness.  Stage and theater, display and court parade.  Castle life.  Now I can put Orlando back on the shelf and move on.  

Could we call Burke's Logology his variant of quietism?  Question for AI or for moi?  

Wow, what a link I found right below AI's answer of No . . . . (it is a very shallow and mistaken answer by the way).  The link is to the long piece (whole dissertation or book?) by Duquesne prof Richard Thames, posted in 2007 on the KB Journal.  I did meet Thames once at one of those conferences and maybe we exchanged a letter or two?  He was advisor to the woman who came to PSU in communication who had been a police officer in NJ.  

The Gordian Not: Untangling the Motivorum (2)

Richard H. Thames, Duquesne University

Thames says yes of course Burke is a mystic and the Motives end in a quietistic mode. Great long book-essay, I'd say definitive actually.  Shoulda read in twenty years ago.  But, what can you do?  Great title he gave it.