READINGS

WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING LATELY? — NONFICTION

by Rick Dietrich

I ended last month’s Readings with a promise. The column had been more or less about what I had been reading in fiction and poetry, and it concluded, “Next time: What have I been reading lately? – Nonfiction.” As soon as I wrote that, I began preparing a list, to include Melissa Katz and Robert Orsi’s Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts (Oxford University Press, 2001), Graham Ward’s Cities of God in the Radical Orthodoxy series (Routledge, 2000), and Jane Leavy’s biography of Sandy Koufax, A Lefty’s Legacy (Harper- Collins, 2002 ), which my brother gave me for Christmas. I started Alasdair McIntyre’s Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, 1990) to give me cachet with those among you who read that kind of stuff.

And I began scratching down phrases I might use to describe the books, “handsome” (Divine Mirrors), “challenging” (Cities of God), “a nice change” (xxx), and “long sentences” (McIntyre). But when I sat down to write my column, the first words out of the keyboard turned out to be, “What does it mean—non-fiction?” It’s an immense category, including, only in my small sample, art history, theology, biography, and ethics. And it doesn’t necessarily mean not fiction.

Take Ward’s Cities, for example. Ward has interesting ideas about cities, both what they have become and what they ought to have become. He has provocative ideas about marriage, including gay-lesbian marriage (which he favors)—that it (marriage) is always heterosexual! And he has arguments supporting his ideas; but, however closely argued, well argued, or byzantinely argued, they are Ward’s ideas. What makes them not - fiction?

But mostly I have been reading the newspaper and my steady supply of magazines and journals, full of commentary on the news. What, particularly, makes these commentaries non-fiction? They comment on facts, I suppose, but only insofar as the commentator knows the facts. More accurately, they comment on the commentator’s understanding of the facts.

Here’s part of what’s going on today, at least according to the first page of our three-page editorial section. (“Our” paper is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) Thomas Friedman describes the war on Iraq as “a war of choice.” His “main criticism of President Bush,” he says, “is that he has failed to acknowledge how unusual this war of choice is . . . . Instead, he has hyped the threat and asserted that this is a war of no choice, then combined it with all his worst pre-9/11 business as usual: budget-bursting tax cuts, indifference to global environmental concerns . . . , neglect of the Arab-Israeli peace process,” and so forth. I agree with most of this, but does it make it non-fiction? Is that the criterion—it is not fiction, because Thomas Friedman and I believe it to be true?

Below the fold, Marsha Mercer writes that, “These are not the best of times for a sunny outlook on life.” Nevertheless, “social scientists are hard at work” studying “what makes us happy.” Among their findings, “a chat with pretty people or singing can make you feel better.” Or acting extroverted, whether you are or not: “It doesn’t matter whether someone actually is shy, if he talks more and acts bolder, he feels happier.” You can do it, Mercer goes on. She quotes William Feeson, professor of psychology at Wake Forest: “As a society, we tend to think of happiness as something that comes from outside us. It’s kind of a radical idea that we have some control of happiness.”

“Radical?” Mercer responds. “Isn’t this just what our mothers and grandmothers have been telling us for generations?” Now, I have as much respect for science and grandmothers as the next guy, but does that make what they say so? I’ve always found a little moaning with my ugly friends, or by myself about them, makes me happier.

And that’s a fact! I’m tempted to conclude. But is it?

Let me leave you instead with this, the best advice I know about truth, and truth-telling. Append it as the Theologian General’s Warning with regard to this column. From Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy: Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses. “If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.”