Reading and writing or Writing and reading

Since about the beginning of this year, I have been keeping a diary. I've been handwriting anywhere from half a page to two pages a day. I think I am finally at that time of life when I can do this honestly. Writing is a way to make sense of the world, of one's life.

Last night I finished the second of Philip Roth's so-called "Nemeses" novels. Roth, who died in 2018, wrote these four, relatively short, novels between 2006-2010. The first novel, Everyman, was (certainly for Roth), a rather tender story. Indignation, the second nemesis book, is not so tender and more in the literary vein Roth tended to mine. The ending of Indignation is nothing short of a crescendo! Since my local library does not hold the third book, The Humbling, on it shelves, I ordered a used copy.

I also finished Any Frykolm's book on Saint Mary of Egypt, Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for an Elusive Saint, all but her translation of Saint Sophornus' text, which I plan to read this weekend. In addition to The Humbling, next up is Matthew Rose's A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Far Right, published last year by Yale University Press.

I am also engaging Gerhard Ebeling's The Truth of the Gospel: An Exposition of Galatians. Ebeling's competently exegetical theological commentary on this important New Testament text, which is one of the undisputed authentic Pauline texts, is wonderful and very dense. This comes on the heels of finishing a re-reading of Luke's Gospel.

Since I know you're dying to know, the fourth of Roth's Nemeses novels is entitled...wait...for...it... Nemesis. I think reading Roth helps in keeping a diary. While Roth would not be happy with this observation, I must point out that I find his work, at least most of those I've read, including Everyman and Indignation, not religious exactly, but deeply and poignantly Jewish in the best possible way, a good way, a deeply good way.

Both in Everyman and Sabbath's Theater, Roth wrote amazing scenes that take place in rundown Jewish cemeteries. For those of us who are religious, Roth urges us not so much to take what we believe more seriously but to allow our religious beliefs to come into contact with reality. This can't do anything except aid us in losing any remnant of smug certainty and moral superiority.

What else am I going to choose for today's traditio other than Yazoo's (Yaz for short) "Nobody's Diary"?