Hi,
Welcome to the Hardihood Books July Roundup. For those of you in the United States, I hope you enjoyed the holiday earlier this month. As I did last year, I had something of a patriotic theme to my posts this month. To those few of my readers from outside the States, please bear with me. August’s content won’t be U.S.-centric.
That said, I’ve long been a believer that patriotism properly understood (rooted in a love of one’s home) is something people from all over the world can share in common. One of the last things I want to hear from someone is that he hates his home. Several years ago, I lived in Scotland (Glasgow) briefly. I really enjoyed talking to Glaswegians who were proud to live there. One young man explained to me that (according to him) Glasgow was so much friendlier than London, despite Glasgow’s reputation as a “tough” city. In Glasgow, he told me, people smiled to you on the street, whereas in London they kept their heads down and moved along. My apologies to any Londoners reading this – I’ve loved London every time I’ve visited.
The point is that, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we can each love our homes without begrudging anyone else’s love for theirs.
What I Published in June:
My first story, “I Shouldn’t Need a Reason,” is free to the general public. Inspired partly by the fact that I was reading Sallust’s collected (surviving) works at the time I wrote it,1 it takes place at a patrician dinner party during the Roman Republic. My story isn’t meant to be terribly historically accurate, but I did try to hew somewhat close to the customs of the time. Republic Rome seemed to me to be an interesting context in which to place a story about patriotism and loyalty to home.
My next story is also outside the paywall. “A Little Spot to Call One’s Own,” is perhaps my most overtly Fourth-of-July-themed story this month (although it doesn’t take place in July). I realize that there are other sides to America and that there are more bombastic conceptions of patriotism than the one I portray. But Independence Day isn’t the time to focus on the ugly underbelly, but the time to celebrate the good.
After that, I put out a short story called “Still All There,” which isn’t a great title, but which reflects the content of the story. It’s about home, and returning to one’s home after a long time away, and about a couple’s realization that perhaps their home isn’t quite as in decline as they had imagined whilst away.
My final story this month was the third installment of “System Sanctus.” I’ll try to wrap up this story in 2-3 more installments. I do plan to write another story or two in the same science fiction universe, perhaps including a few of the same characters.
My first essay this month was called, “Defending the American Literary Tradition.” I’m not a literary critic (at some point I may write about my posture on criticism generally), but I do enjoy reading and studying literature. And I thought it would be appropriate to write a little celebration of what I consider to be a fine and noble literary tradition, one Americans can feel proud of.
Finally, I wrote an essay called, “We Still Have More in Common than We Realize.” It’s based on the impression I get from traveling around America in recent years that – for all we pretend there are irreconcilable differences between red America and blue America – we really are still one country. I wish I’d grounded it a little more in anecdote and experience, but for sake of length I kept out some examples I could have added. It isn’t meant to be profound. I just think that people read more into our differences than are really there, and it saddens me when I hear Americans (including friends) tell me they can’t share a country with people who vote differently than they do.
In Closing:
Thanks for subscribing. Please feel free to email me with any feedback. If you’re on the free list and you’d like to respond to one of my stories or essays, you can email me (hit reply), or reach out via Twitter (@benconnelly6712) or LinkedIn.
If you’re a paying subscriber, please keep an eye out for the newsletter tomorrow.
Thank you for reading and subscribing.
Cheers,
Ben Connelly
A Roman historian living in the late 40s B.C. (between Julius Caesar’s death and Augustus Caesar’s rise to power), Sallust wrote Catiline’s War about the Catilinarian conspiracy during Cicero’s consulship, The Jugurthine War about a war in North Africa, and Histories (which only survives in fragments).