Insight into a childish heart of darkness

Bruce Feiler seems like an author whom I would want to read.  I see his name mentioned with some frequency among other writers and thinkers whom I enjoy.  I even have three books of his I have purchased over the years.  But the spark has never taken hold.  Sometimes it happens that way.  Sometimes you just have to have the right circumstances for the spark to catch.  I probably started The Hobbit three or four times before it caught and then I consumed the entire oeuvre.

Recently I came across The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us by Bruce Feiler.  Looks like an interesting idea.  Maybe this one.  Well . . . perhaps not.  More likely, there are no more Feiler books in the future for me.  Killed off by the tincture of Woke absurdity.

And it is a very particular passage.  Right there on page 8.

All these issues came to a head unexpectedly one day when our eight-year-old girls and I tagged along with Linda on a business trip to Rome. On our first day, I had the brilliant idea to take our sleep-deprived daughters to the Vatican. See some art! Learn some culture! It didn’t go well. As I tugged the girls through the tapestry-lined hallways of the museum, filled with stunning Greek nudes and Raphael frescoes, they were in full-on rebellion. “We hate carpets! My feet hurt. This is boooooring.”

Finally we made it to the Sistine Chapel. I insisted they look down, led them to the center of the room, and finally said, “Look up.” One of my daughters took one glance at the magisterial image of God, flying superherolike through the air, reaching his index finger toward a listless Adam, and said, “Why is there only a man? Where am I in that picture?” Her sister, meanwhile, not to be undone, pointed out something I had never seen before. “Who’s that woman under God’s arm? Is that Eve?”

Feiler's contention is that it is his daughter's insight which is the genesis for the book.  Perhaps. 

Perhaps this really happened.  Perhaps she really said those words.

But it sure doesn't feel credible, and even if credible, certainly not reflecting well on the daughter or her education.

A young one-percenter child flies all the way to Rome on a tag-along holiday, a circumstance which would be a rich and marvelous opportunity to most.  Feiler has already inadvertently painted as the very child of privilege.  She is exposed to one of the great art works of Western Art, and her primary criticism is that it is irrelevant to her because "Where am I in that picture?”

What profound closed-mindedness.  She is just a child so the culpability lies with her parents and her education.  She is in Rome where the veneration of the Madonna is everywhere evident.  If she is seeking herself as a female, there you have it.

But it appears that the criticism is that she should be able to "see" herself in every painting - a profound self-centeredness.  And closed-mindedness.  One of the gifts of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment was the opening up of the human mind to the whole world and to all humans.  It was a long and arduous journey and now Miss Feiler is traveling backwards to an atavistic micro-tribalism where her openness is determined by whether the observed thing happens to map to her own childish self-identity.  

As I say, the fault lies with Feiler pater.  He is the one who seems impressed by this privileged closed-mindedness.  

I have a near reverential regard for books but I made it only a few pages past this grotesquerie.  I feel comfortable abandoning this book as unreadable.  I feel almost compelled to throw it away so no one else infected by this immoral arrogance, conceit and closed-mindedness.  I guess I will donate it to charity but only with reluctance.

Bah.  

At least I can save time in the future and dismiss anything else by this particular author.