Watch me read this:
I just finished The Long Loneliness. It was fine. As I said before, I’d probs have enjoyed it more if I’d had any idea who Dorothy Day was when I went in.
By the end, I honestly still wasn’t sure. I am quite certain that she was a Catholic, a mother, and a writer. She goes back and forth on whether and to what extent she’s a Socialist.
The funniest part of a very not-funny book was when she described her beliefs as libertarian because, essentially, that term has better PR. I don’t know what the situation was at the turn of the century but madam, I can assure you that that is no longer the case. And we have only ourselves to thank.
My favorite part of the book was how clearly horny she was for a man she worked closely with named Peter. There simply is no horny like Catholic horny. Southern Baptists try, and probably come close. But we eventually end up with STIs and babies because only sinners plan to sin (carry condoms). But a Catholic? Them bitches can maintain sexual tension across decades. I’m honestly in awe.
My second favorite thing about the book was how she takes the church to task for being all charity and no justice. There’s not enough root cause analysis for her taste. I, personally, do not actually want the Catholic church to be any more involved in politics and policy than they already are. I feel like we already tried Catholic theocracy a few times in a few places and the results weren’t all that great. I would suggest they clean up the whole child rape problem before telling electeds what to do. But I deeply empathize with feeling stabby when people in power put band aids on bullet wounds.
Despite being neither Catholic nor even a little bit Socialist — though if it’s a spectrum and I support a UBI maybe to a certain kind of doctrinaire libertarian I qualify — I felt a lot of kinship with Ms. Day. And not just on the horny stuff.
We both funneled an abiding, irrational, radical, consuming obsession with justice and the downtrodden into ideological screeds aimed at alerting people to reality and changing hearts and minds. I can only hope that in a hundred and twenty years some asshole ideologue takes a moment to mercilessly mock, and see themselves in, my memoir.
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Cathy reads books: The Long Loneliness