4.5
Letters to a Diminished Church
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesLetters to a Diminished Church Reviews
4.5
Abigail Krom
Created 4 months agoShare
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“This lady is a genius...but also I felt like I barely understood certain arguments in here”
Adam Paul Cooper
Created about 1 year agoShare
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Bryan
Created over 1 year agoShare
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Joel Cuthbert
Created almost 2 years agoShare
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“Another in my ongoing buds-from-the-college-days bookclub reads.
We dove into Dorothy Sayers as one of the cast and/or crew around the Inklings, that delightful bunch of spiritually minded intellectuals, with Tolkien and Lewis being the most widely read. Sayers is most remembered for a long-running series of Murder Mysteries that seem to fit comfortably with other British yarns. We read her best-known work Gaudy Night and I was pretty underwhelmed. I like a good thriller but this era of detective stories seems rather long in the tooth and full of unnecessary pleasantries.
So! That said, I was hesitant but morbidly (a-ha) curious about what her more philosophical or lecture-like prose would amount to. And I must say! This collection of essays really struck me quite pleasantly. It is a bit confusing what we're reading here, as to whether they were lectures given, published in some journal or just various correspondences. It seems to me the grouping of them under the rather "modern Christian non-fiction" name of "Letters to a Diminished Church" sounds rather like some posthumous marketing. I digress.
I am always struck (and I suppose also a bit discouraged) by how timeless some of these criticisms can be. Sayers is writing (often it seems) from that "temp l'entre guerre" or perhaps right at the outset of the second world war. There's some terrific writing in here about consumerism and the mechanisms that produce useless products for the sake of generating profit. Her criticisms of the western work ethic are, at times, utopian but still highly to be championed.
I found the continual references to "what we shall do when everything goes back to normal" (speaking of the war) to be shockingly relevant to the dialogues we have all had over the last few plague-like years and societal upheaval. Using the outbreak of war as a way to address some of our misguided systems of economy and some of the waste, not to mention exploitation, that come along with them. How shall we go back indeed?
Lastly, much of her thought around "Christian" art and aesthetic couldn't be more wonderfully articulated. As someone who generally feels ill and queasy around anything that attempts to hijack art for the sake of pushing a message (even more so when it is a moral message), it was so nice to hear a rich interpretation of the historical approach to art and expression. Much to mull over and cheer about.
I'm not sure I could recommend all of this, but a few of the essays were terrific and I would happily revisit them and forward them to others.
A rather good, and sometimes great, read.”
annikalayman
Created almost 2 years agoShare
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About Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a British playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. While working as an advertising copywriter, Sayers began writing
? (1923), the first Wimsey mystery, followed by ten sequels and several short stories. Sayers set the Wimsey novels between the two World Wars, giving them a realistic tone by incorporating details from contemporary issues such as advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health. Sayers also wrote theological essays and criticism during and after World War II, and in 1949 published the first volume of a translation of Dante’s
. Although she considered this translation to be her best work, it is for her elegantly constructed detective fiction that Sayers remains best remembered.
Other books by Dorothy L. Sayers
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