Saints Alive!

This week on The “B” Side…

We look at three things, the first of which has nothing to do with the title but has become a running theme as I move from the written blog to the spoken vlog. The question is, “What is lost in the move?” Some writers at a conference I attended last week have an answer: nothing. They insisted, sometimes vehemently, that listening to a book is just as beneficial as reading one. They were so sure of this that disagreeing would have been disagreeable. Also, most said that audiobooks are best performed by actors rather than authors.

I’m not so sure. Historically, writing has proved to be transformational because it engages and retains information, while listening goes in one ear and out the other. I would say literally but maybe it’s better to say aurally. And sometimes you want to hear authors reading their own work, flaws and all. Think of T. S. Eliot reading “The Journey of the Magi” in that sharp, clipped voice as if he were annoyed at just being there. You want Martin Buber’s encounter (die Begegnung), not a performance by a “voice artist” (see “By Another Way”).

My second and third points have to do with Halloween now rivaling Christmas in decoration and spectacle. Halloween is no longer a confrontation with darkness in hopes of overcoming it, but a celebration of it. I have no doubt that it will become so commercialized as to be meaningless. It’s already there. Nothing puts the celebration in perspective quite like a blowup pumpkin with a smiley face, although I love the little kids waddling around in their Minion costumes.

Finally, in my missal I came across Saints Felix and Adauctus. Adauctus is the unnamed “added one” who followed his companion to the chopping block during the Diocletian persecution in AD 303. It reminded me of people who live and die sans gloire, without glory, as Charles Péguy put it: people like the fictional Eleanor Rigby, the real Unknown Soldier, and countless faithful whose names are forgotten.

All Saints Day belongs to them: the quiet ones, the hidden ones, the ones remembered only by God.

Photo by Fernando Santander. Audio 1962 Santiago recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In” by a Chilean jazz sextet, issued on the JV‑40144 label and preserved as Internet Archive item DV515960 — CC0 1.0 Universal. See also Plight of the Krell. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli.