#manalive

[fictionadventurer]

Manalive by G.K. Chesterton

There once was an Innocent man Who had remarkable plan At the point of a gun He made dull cynics run To declare that existence is grand

[apesoformythoughts]

“…this was the primary problem for me, certainly in order of time and largely in order of logic. It was the problem of how men could be made to realise the wonder and splendour of being alive, in environments which their own daily criticism treated as dead-alive, and which their imagination had left for dead.”

— G.K. Chesterton: Autobiography

[anonymous-witness777]

Innocent Smith to Emerson Eames and Dr. Warner

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin, 2022)

[guldaastan]

manal's family is starving!

there are four kids and two adults in the family.

the kids are in severe pain because of a foot infection, they need medicines which are very expensive.

the family has been displaced more than ten times and doesn't have ANY shelter!!

the kids don't even have a bed to sleep on.

they're unable to buy food because they don't have money right now.

the cold and insects are hurting the family, manal nearly lost her life because of hepatitis.

please, I urge you to donate what you can. this family has gone through a lot and needs your support to stay alive. this is a matter of life and death.

donate here

verification [#184] || @manal-ghorab3

[gwm247]

Manal Ben Jabeur

[hugefbb]

Manal Ben Jabeour

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

This is the cover of the current issue of Harper's (not yet online):

The 14-page propaganda piece, by Ben Ehrenreich, is remarkable in how one-sided it is - even for him. The theme of the article is that Palestinians in the West Bank tried non-violence but the evil Jews kept attacking them for no reason, so now they are sadly forced to become violent.The central falsehood of the article is the myth of historical Palestinian nonviolence.Some version of what has come to be called nonviolent resistance dates back more than a century....The idea is simple: to stand together, to refuse the fate chosen for you by your oppressor, and with your courage inspire others to do the same. That was the basis for mass mobilization during the uprising of 1936, throughout the First Intifada in the late Eighties and early Nineties, and in the early weeks of the next one, the fall of 2000. As the Second Intifada dragged into its third year and the losses piled up, nonviolent tactics gained their appeal.

About 400 Jews were killed in the 1936-39 "revolt." About 277 Israelis were killed in the "non-violent" first intifada. And the "early weeks " of the second intifada featured the murders of about 12 Israelis including the vicious lynching of two Israelis who made a wrong turn into Ramallah. 

This is the tone of the entire article. The atrocities of October 7 are not mentioned. Terror attacks against Israeli civilians since that date - at least 30 killed by West Bank Palestinians - are not mentioned at all. The article implies that the only "resistance" since October 7 is militants defending their homes in Jenin and Tulkarem, not murdering Jewish civilians.

Astoundingly, the word "Hamas" is not mentioned once - even though it is the most popular political group in the West Bank. Not only that, but Hamas tried to spread the October 7 attacks into the West Bank  and wanted to activate sleeper cells there, which would explain Israel's aggressiveness in the territories in the weeks and months afterwards.

Of course, Harper's and Ehrenreich don't want their readers to know this.

The entire article is riddled with falsehoods - claiming that 70,000 were killed in Gaza, way beyond what even Hamas claimed. Or even small details like this:

Shireen Abu Akleh was shot to death by an Israeli soldier in May 2022. The monument erected to her had been bulldozed. Across the street was the new martyrs’ cemetery, built for Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. The earliest graves dated to July 2023, and it was already half full.

The cemetery was there when Akleh was killed. 

Manal Tamimi is presented as a non-violent peace activist, while her social media is filled with celebrations of terror attacks. And Ehrenreich knows this quite well, because there have been articles criticizing his praising of the Tamimi family in years past.

This is not journalism. This is curated anti-Israel propaganda. 

That this level of distortion passed editorial review at one of America’s most prestigious magazines says more about Harper’s than it does about Ehrenreich.

[gael-garcia]

يد إلهية Divine Intervention (2002), dir. Elia Suleiman

watch

[fictionadventurer]

I saw your post from 2020 about your Four Quadrants and I absolutely love them! I have wanted to get into Chesterton for a while but have never actually done it bc I have no idea where to start. I decided that you’d be likely to know where I should start based solely on my relating so much to the rest of what your post said. Do you have recommendations?

There are several answers to this question, depending on what type of writing you're interested in, because Chesterton wrote in a lot of different formats.

Novels: My favorite (and the one that feels most "Chestertonian" in the sense of embracing the joys and paradoxes of modern life) is Manalive, which is about a boarding house full of disaffected young people whose lives are upended by the arrival of the energetic and eccentric Innocent Smith, who may or may not be a dangerous lunatic. I'm also fond of his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which is set in the far future of 1984, where the actions of two eccentric guys get London caught up in medieval warfare. That book addresses Chesterton's common theme of the tension between taking life too seriously and not taking it seriously enough, but it is a very odd book that's a bit more of an acquired taste.

Short stories: Chesterton's most enduring legacy in pop culture is the Father Brown mysteries--one of the few detectives at the time that wasn't just a Sherlock Holmes clone. These stories are half mystery and half philosophical essay, and I love them (and they're nothing like the TV show). I always tell people to start with the first collection, The Innocence of Father Brown, because the first four stories there--"The Blue Cross", "The Secret Garden", "The Queer Feet" and "The Flying Stars"--form an arc that should be read in chronological order, and the rest of the stories can be read in pretty much any order.

Poetry: Chesterton's big achievement is "The Ballad of the White Horse", a novel-length epic poem about the legends of King Alfred the Great and his war against the Danes. But if you don't feel like reading something so long, his other masterpiece is "Lepanto", a stirring poem about the Battle of Lepanto that saved Europe from a Turkish invasion (though that one is much better if you know the historical context). He also wrote this short, rather biting anti-war poem "Elegy in a Country Churchyard".

If you want something not about war, Chesterton was known for his love of Christmas, and he wrote several excellent Christmas poems, including "A Christmas Carol", "The Wise Men", "Gloria in Profundis", "Joseph" , and "A Child of the Snows".

(As long as we're talking about Christmas poems, I'm going to mention that his wife, Frances, was also a poet, and she wrote a Christmas poem every year for their family Christmas card, which include, "How Far Is It To Bethlehem" and "The Shepherds Found Thee By Night".)

Essays: Tremendous Trifles contains several of the humorous, insightful essays that are among the first things I think of when I think of the Chestertonian mindset, including "A Piece of Chalk", "The Advantages of Having One Leg", and "On Lying in Bed" . Perhaps my favorite Chesterton essay, "On Running After One's Hat" isn't in this collection, but feels like it should be.

Nonfiction: "Orthodoxy" is probably Chesterton's most famous and most accessible religious book, which outlines the worldviews that led him to embrace Christianity.

This last recommendation doesn't fit into any of the categories, but I can't finish a Chesterton introduction post without begging you to read this letter he wrote to his wife, Frances, not long after their engagement, because it may be one of the best love letters ever written.

[eruanna1875]

Decided to celebrate a bit

via chestertonsociety

[musclebabes33]

Manal Ben Jabeur

[shesnake]

Divine Intervention (2002) dir. Elia Suleiman

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin, 2022)

[dance-world]

Raul Gordillo - photo by Manal Ortega

[gwm247]

Manal Ben Jabeur