Here’s a fact I find hilarious: we only know about several early Christian heresies because we have records of people complaining about them. The original heretics’ writings, if they ever existed, have been lost.
I think about this whenever I am about to commit my complaints to text. Am I vanquishing my enemies’ ideas, or am I merely encasing them in amber, preserving them for eternity?
2.
The poet Paul Valéry said that, for every poem you write, God gives you one line, and you supply the rest. Amy Lowell, another poet, described those in-between lines, the ones you provide, as “putty”. You get no credit for God’s lines; all artistry is in the puttying.
3.
In the long run, every writer is misunderstood.
Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered his Sherlock Holmes stories “a lower stratum of literary achievement” and thought his novels were far better. (Can you name any?) Borges once remarked, “I think of myself as a poet, though none of my friends do.” (Didn’t even know he wrote poems.) Sylvia Plath derided The Bell Jar as “a pot boiler” (that is, a piece of art produced to keep the heat on). Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote poems about slavery and politics, but now the only poem anyone remembers is the one about how much she loves her husband (You know it: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”). After he published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn spent the rest of his life arguing with his critics (and—purportedly—throwing ashtrays at them).
4.
Gertrude Stein:
I remember a young man in Paris after the war—you have never heard of this young man—and we all liked his first book very much and he liked it too, and one day he said to me, “This book will make literary history,” and I told him: “It will make some part of literary history, perhaps, but only if you go on making a new part every day and grow with the history you are making until you become part of it yourself.” But this young man never wrote another book and now he sits in Paris and searches sadly for the mention of his name in indexes.
5.
The Wadsworth Constant says that you can safely skip the first 30% of anything you see online. (It was meant for YouTube videos, but it applies just as well to writing.) This is one of those annoying pieces of advice that remains applicable even after you know it. Somehow, whenever I finish a draft, my first few paragraphs almost always contain ideas that were necessary for writing the rest of the piece but that aren’t necessary for understanding it. It’s like I’m giving someone a tour of my hometown and I start by showing them all the dead ends.
Anyway, this reminds me of my favorite windup of all time:
White smoke rose over the Vatican this week, announcing the election of a new pope—an American, to much surprise. Here are a few reflections from across Substack on what Pope Leo XIV might mean for the Church, the U.S., and the wider world.
The Pillar: Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has been chosen as the 267th pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Leo XIV and proclaiming “Peace be with you all!” in his first greeting to the world.
Bishop Joseph Strickland: With the election of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, the Church enters a new chapter in her pilgrimage through history.
Freya Zank: While it was initially assumed (by me) that the pope chose his name in honor of Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently the significance of the name ‘Leo’ is because of Pope Leo XIII, who is known for supporting the Church’s immersion with modern society and promoted workers’ rights to fair wages, safe working conditions, and unions.
Zev Shalev: The 69-year-old Chicago native, who spent much of his life serving in Latin America, represents something unprecedented: the first American to ascend to the papacy in the Church’s 2,000-year history.
The West’s Awake: Prevost is also a naturalized Peruvian citizen and has spent a significant amount of his ecclesiastical career in Peru, serving as Bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023.
Jim McDermott: So, sure, he is an American—but he’s an American in the actual sense of the word, i.e. a person of the land mass that goes from the northernmost reaches of Canada to the southern tip of Chile.
Jeff Maurer: I’m not sure what direct benefits accrue to Americans now that one of our own is Making Poping Great Again; I think maybe we get a discount on the absolution required for venial sins, plus free Crazy Bread at Little Caesars.
Freya Zank: It’s controversial that American Pope Leo XIV has been selected at all, given there are many ongoing critiques of America’s hegemony. Before Pope Leo XIV was chosen, people argued that the new pope should be from a country that doesn’t already dominate global politics and influence. Basically, his selection will probably strengthen America’s influence, or at least voice, over the rest of the world for some time.
Jeff Maurer: [T]he fact that almost all Americans are greeting this as an interesting, positive development—kind of like finding $5 in a coat pocket—is a cultural marker. A hundred years ago, “WAR AGAINST POPERY LOST”-type headlines would have been everywhere. And I think it’s worth thinking about what Catholics’ arc in America tells us about the divides that exist in society today.
Jim McDermott: This conclave might have been even faster than the ones that elected Benedict or Francis. Everyone was wondering, How fast will a group of cardinals who largely don’t know each other be able to work? Turns out, pretty fast.
Freya Zank: Pope Leo XIV is considered liberal for a pope but moderate for an American. He is somewhat quiet regarding political issues compared to Pope Francis, because he’s previously stated that he doesn’t believe in using the Catholic Church to try to push a political agenda, and would rather the church focus on promotion of the gospel and Jesus’s teachings.
Dean Blundell: In a 2023 interview with the Augustinian Order, Prevost articulated a vision of unity that rejects ideological rigidity. “When an ideology becomes master of my life, then I can no longer dialogue or engage with another person because I have already decided how things will be,” he said. He critiqued polarization, emphasizing that “unity is not uniformity” and that diverse perspectives must coexist.
Christina M. Sorrentino: On a day like this, it is too easy to fall into a quick commentary, review his history, and hence make conclusions as to what kind of pope he will be for us Catholics; will he be more to the left or to the right? But the Church is not a political institution; She is the Bride of Christ. What we have witnessed today is not just a moment in history; it is a mystery manifesting itself within sacred time.
PAINTING
“Tulips” by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, 1920, shared by Plein Air Poetry
To shoot New York magazine’s recent cover, photographer Dina Litovsky spent weeks searching the West Village for the quintessential West Village girl—trying to pin down a figure who’s everywhere and nowhere at once.
I wanted the photos to poke a bit of cheeky fun at the picturesque West Village girl, albeit with kindness. The images had to deconstruct the trend without either demeaning the young women portrayed or flattering them.
In the end, the West Village girl isn’t a person so much as a lifestyle package and a performance, a sunlit loop of content, beauty, and brunch. Whether or not this young woman resides in the neighborhood is almost beside the point. She lives in an algorithm by representing a kind of aspirational femininity—polished, apolitical, and highly visible. All of that makes her an easy target for public ire. As I found out through my previous projects like Bachelorette or Meatpacking, it’s easy to dismiss young women enjoying themselves in public, especially if they are doing it in matching outfits.
There is nothing cryptic about the West Village girl. She embodies a version of youth that feels frictionless, almost corporate in its branding. What she is not, however, is basic. That’s part of what makes her compelling; she’s mastered the aesthetics of self-presentation without the burden of justification. She is not performing complexity, and in a culture thriving on micro-analysis and virtue signaling, that can read as naive. But it’s a choice. Young women have always been, and will always be, scrutinized for what they do or don’t do, what they wear, and what they say or don’t say.
The West Village girl is just a young woman out for drinks with her friends, but what makes her fascinating is the self-made fantasy she curates online, so alluring that it’s hard to tell where the performance ends and real life begins. This visual narrative became a kind of myth, and when I was photographing, I had to extract it from the clutter of the everyday. I wasn’t really looking for specific women but for the modern It girl, Clueless’s Cher Horowitz with a TikTok account.
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by Alex Posey out of Substack’s headquarters in San Francisco.
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Thanks for sharing my little lies. It was actually part of a little series that I wrote each year for many years as my kids grew older. That 3-year-old is 20 now. It's funny how words sometimes have a life of their own.
On lies I've told my 3 year old recently, here is something worth considering:
In the hiding place, Corrie recounts a lesson her father taught her when she was small. She asked a question and the answer was beyond her understanding as a child. So her father asked her if she could carry a heavy suitcase as they were getting on the train. Corrie replied that the suitcase was too heavy for her, but not too heavy for her father. In response, her father said that God knew when burdens were too heavy to bear and he would carry them until we were able. This story helped Corrie deal with the horror of the concentration camp and find God’s grace even in a place of death.
Thanks for sharing my little lies. It was actually part of a little series that I wrote each year for many years as my kids grew older. That 3-year-old is 20 now. It's funny how words sometimes have a life of their own.
On lies I've told my 3 year old recently, here is something worth considering:
In the hiding place, Corrie recounts a lesson her father taught her when she was small. She asked a question and the answer was beyond her understanding as a child. So her father asked her if she could carry a heavy suitcase as they were getting on the train. Corrie replied that the suitcase was too heavy for her, but not too heavy for her father. In response, her father said that God knew when burdens were too heavy to bear and he would carry them until we were able. This story helped Corrie deal with the horror of the concentration camp and find God’s grace even in a place of death.