Kathleen Norris began her writing career as a poet, and after graduating from Bennington College in Vermont in 1969, she lived in New York and associated with Andy Warhol and his circle. However, in 1974, she and her future husband traveled to Lemmon, South Dakota, after her grandmother's death and eventually settled there permanently. Although a married Protestant, she sought and found spiritual support at a Benedictine monastery near her new home. Norris' spiritual memoirs,
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography,
The Cloister Walk, and
Amazing Grace, have captured readers' attention and affection. These works blend essay and memoir with an examination of scholarly topics concerning spiritual life as well as a meditation on how these topics relate to Norris' personal life, transcending denomination and doctrine.
In
Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer's Life, Norris provides an in-depth history and discussion of
acedia, a soul-weary indifference that she suggests is similar to, but distinct from, clinical depression, describing how it has manifested in her marriage to poet David Dwyer, her spiritual life, and her writing career. In our discussions, we will consider Norris' contention that this ancient concept and its remedies are especially relevant to the quality of our lives in the 21st century. We will also explore connections to other books we have read this year. For example, what connections can be made between Laurence Gonzales' "Rules of Adventure" in his book
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why and Norris' suggestions for how to work with
acedia? Do you think Chris McCandless' wandering across the country and his final, tragic journey to Alaska were a manifestation of
acedia? What about Mildred Armstrong Kalish, author of
Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, and Edwidge Danticat, author of
Brother, I'm Dying, and her family? Why didn't they succumb to
acedia's temptations? And what about us? Can we rise to the complex challenges facing our global climate, culture, and economy using the suggestions offered by Barbara Kingsolver in
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Bill McKibben in
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, and Fareed Zakaria in
The Post-American World?
We hope you will join our discussions: Tuesday, October 6, at 7:00 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; or here on the blog.
Meanwhile, consider these quotations from the last chapter of Acedia & Me, a commonplace book of other writers' reflections on acedia, and how they resonate with the ideas of the authors we have read so far this year:
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase. --Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) The Conquest of Happiness
Why does man feel so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use?
Why has man entered on an orgy of war, murder, torture, and self-destruction unparalleled in history?
Why is the good life which men have achieved in the twentieth century so bad that only news of world catastrophes, assassinations, plane crashes, mass murders can divert one from the sadness of ordinary mornings? --Walker Percy (1916-1990) The Message in the Bottle
I'd say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it once was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land . . . the shoemakers who knew every villager's feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners . . . The meaning of life wasn't an issue, it was there with them, quite naturally, in their workshops, in their fields. . . . Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy . . . [which] has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time. --Milan Kundera (b. 1929) Identity
Just as the excellence of an individual life depends to a large extent on how free time is used, so the quality of a society hinges on what its members do in their leisure time. . . . We have seen that at the social as well as the individual level habits of leisure act as both effects and . . . causes. . . . When work turns into a boring routine and community responsibilities lose their meaning, it is likely that leisure will become increasingly more important. And if a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise. --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b. 1934) Finding Flow
In Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, Steve Martin, a true original and icon in the world of comedy, says of his years as a stand-up comedian, "I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps. I was not naturally talented--I didn't sing, dance, or act--though working around that minor detail made me inventive. I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head and never looked back, until now. A few years ago, I began researching and recalling the details of this crucial part of my professional life--which inevitably touches upon my personal life--and was reminded why I did stand-up and why I walked away." The quiet humor, surprising honesty, and economy of this passage are characteristic of what Martin calls his "biography" of himself during those early years. We learn that the "wild and crazy guy" was a carefully constructed persona, the result of both intellectual inquiry into the nature of comedy and skills honed through hours of study and practice. However, Martin also managed to be in the right places at the right times in his early career. We learn that Martin is actually a complicated guy. So what are the secrets of his success? Innate talent, in spite of what he claims? Simple hard work? The good fortune to be born into a culture that was developing a taste for the kind of comedy he offered? A few lucky breaks?
