In light of the barrage of distressing and at times cataclysmic economic news and prognosticating, I have renewed my interest in Agrarianism, which was born in me in part because I was occasionally, but regularly, exposed to farm life as a child, and partly probably because of a streak of Southern chauvinism awakened in me through my reading of Fugitive poetry, New Criticism (very much still the critical assumptions informing those who taught literature at Sewanee when I was there), and Agrarian essays in college. This recipe has lately and naturally been supplemented by Communitarian and Distributist sources in 19th and 20th century Catholic intellectual history.
To shuck it all down to the cob (to use an Agrarian metaphor), this has all led me this morning to the Wikipedia entry on Hilaire Belloc. I thought this quote was hilarious:
A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.
Which would lead me to conclude: who needs them anyway? But I know a little of the disappointment of not winning an All Souls fellowship. That happened to a very talented friend, who was indeed very disappointed.
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