Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:
“Fitness entrepreneurs” Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler co-founded Soulcycle, a chain of chi-chi Manhattan-based gyms whose aim is to sculpt spirits as well as bodies.
In their new venture, Peoplehood, members will pay to participate in 60-minute “gathers,” facilitated by influencer-type guides.
“Connection should be its own product,” Rice explains. “We are modern medicine for the loneliness epidemic.”
I sympathize completely with any and all real spiritual hunger.
But I couldn’t help but think of “Wise Blood,” the 1952 novel by Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor.
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.
Great novel! I’m amazed that O’Conner was only 27 when she wrote Wise Blood, it always struck me as a novel that is written at the later stages of a writer’s life. I thought that John Huston didn’t understand the novel, and the movie suffered for that.
Hi Fr. Matthew, I know, her insight was kind of preternatural, if that’s the word, for someone of her age…she must have begun to see the outline of her own coming Agony…I saw the film decades ago so would have to watch again–but in general, people seem to miss that Hazel Motes really was a prophet, and a Christ-figure, and that O’Connor felt great affection and respect for him. There’s a line toward the end when his glare-blue suit has faded to a softer blue (evoking the Blessed Virgin) and his hat has grown wheat-colored (“Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die”) that made my throat catch.