The Fredösphere

It is astonishing that the student body president of any Ivy League would have both the wit and the desire to give the kind of talk that Noah Riner gave while welcoming the class of '09 to Dartmouth.  Jesus:  isn't he passé?

(If you want to read a review of the book in that last link -- that should have been titled Twilight of the Godless -- check the June issue of the New Criterion.  If you want to read the story of Christianity's astonishing spread in all kinds of improbable places in the non-Western world, read The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.  Its spread is quick, quiet, and all very disturbingly unsupervised.)

I started to read February House because Terry Teachout said I had to, but I confess I put it aside after one chapter due to reading list bloat.  (The book tells the history of the NY boarding house shared briefly by Auden, Britten & Pears, Carson McCullers, Paul & Jane Bowles, George Davis of Harper's Bazaar, and Gypsy Rose Lee.)  Now I'm slowly catching up as I work through the June (June!  And here it is, almost October) New Criterion, only to receive confirmatory orders from Brooke Allen.  I liked this part of his review:

Relatively anonymous in America, he [W. H. Auden] was working out a bizarre scheme for his personal salvation which included a “spiritual marriage” to Kallman. As Tippins points out, a more unlikely partner for a spiritual marriage than this mercurial, fickle, ambitious boy could hardly be found: in fact, the Middagh Street era saw a crisis in their relationship, and though they continued to be more or less a couple for the rest of their lives, Kallman refused to have sexual relations with Auden ever again, amusing himself elsewhere. Auden was also sneaking off to...

Here,  the reader's titillation antennae become fully erect -- particularly if he is sophisticated, yet somewhat ignorant of key parts of Auden's biography.  Oh, what juicy bit of gossip could possibly finish that sentence?  I bet it's outrageous.  I bet its transgressive!

...sneaking off to take communion at a nearby Episcopal church. It was the beginning, in fact, of his famous return to the Anglican fold.

Cue the muted trumpets:  whaaa, whaaa, whaaaaaaaaaa!