New Review Out: Dorothy Day, Radical?
On How Not to Engage With Historical Figures
I had a new book review come out today that I’m very excited about being out in the world. It’s on a book that I did not care for, but raises some important question, not the least of which is how to let historical figures be themselves, and what it means for us to encounter the past. The author may very well ignore it. But if she doesn’t, I anticipate the response to be interesting, and hopefully, illuminating.
The short answer:
The past is like us in one way—that we’re humans—but unlike us in many important ways. To read past figures is to listen carefully and to not expect them to slide readily into our world. This is to assume that our age, because it’s newer, is better and that if someone like Dorothy Day isn’t up to date on current questions of gender, all the worse for her.
To be a friend to the past is to let them be who they are in all of what they are. There’s nothing that irritates me more than readings of complicated figures like Dorothy Day that don’t take the time to get her right on her own terms, and then ask “Why did she commit herself to a life like she did?”. Chances are very good it’s because she saw something that we need to see, and that it will make us profoundly uncomfortable.
Take and read.
Will the Real Dorothy Day Please Stand Up? A Review of D.L. Mayfield’s Dorothy Day: Unruly Saint.
"Chronological snobbery", Lewis called it, and Werntz calls it out as he sees it.
That's good transgenerational teamwork.
You've befriended the past well, my son.