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Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Radcliffe Biography Series)

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Biographers frequently become lost in minutiae.

Dorothy Day poses a particular challenge to the discriminating writer, because of the sheer volume of material about her life, including an autobiography, an autobiographical novel, a huge mass of journalism, biographies, and the writings of a number of her contemporaries. Given such a prolific writer, the reader might expect with dread to encounter 900 pages of occupations of great-grandparents, musings in correspondence, and constant press quotes--the fodder of the "I've got a book deal and I'm gonna put out a tome" kind of bio writing that we see all too often.

Coles' book is a breath of fresh air. In a hundred and a half pages he gives us an overview of her life and ideas, framed by excerpts from his own interviews with Ms. Day in her later years. Coles' editorial voice is always present, but generally open-minded. This is not a literary biography, evaluating the merit of Ms. Day's writings, nor a social biography, intending to give us all the inner workings of the Catholic worker movement. Instead, this is a meditation on the inspirations and contradictions inherent in this very rich life, told as often as possible from Mr. Coles' impression of Ms. Day's own take on her life-as-lived.

I read this in an evening and a day, and found it inspiring, satisfying, and altogether well written. Sometimes I wished Mr. Coles had put a little less of his first person impressions into his reportage of interviews with Ms. Day,but other times I wanted more of Mr. Coles' touchstone analysis of what Ms. Day was saying.

A reasonable critique of this book is that one could read it and still fall well short of understanding Ms. Day's thoughts or the details of her life. The somewhat sunny tone may be perceived as uncritical. For me, though, this was a great bio--get in, get the job done, get out, leave an image as clear as a descriptive poem. This is a good read--I highly recommend.

Robert Coles' friendship with Dorothy Day began in 1952 and continued through almost three decades until her death in 1980. Coles kept notes on his many converstations with Day, and in this book shares with his readers his intimate knowledge of this extraordinary woman. He quotes extensively from these converstations in which Day spoke simply and openly about all sorts of issues, and Coles says that he writes "in the hope of giving readers the benefit of her distinct, compelling point of view." In keeping with this, the organization of his book is topical rather than chronological, although the first chapter does provide a brief overview of the events of Dorothy Day's life.

The remaining chapters center about the issues that were important to Dorothy Day: her conversion to Catholicism, her relationship to the Church, politics, her daily life in Catholic Worker houses, and more.

What is special about Coles' work is that the reader comes to experience Day, as she revealed herself to her friend. We encounter her in all her complexity and even contradictions, and above all, in her stunning fidelity to her ideals and beliefs.

Coles bases his biography on a series of interviews with Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker. He explores her youth which she didn't look back fondly upon and her devotion to major social causes that her conservative fans don't want to focus on. Ms. Day truly strikes you as a dedicated, sincere, intelligent and good person. While she may not have wanted to be a saint, she often comes through as possessing the modesty, self-criticism, concern for others and devotion to the Lord that one should expect in a saint. Coles' writing isn't great but is at least average for a biography, and given the subject, this was a book well worth reading.

Robert Coles tells Dorothy Day's tales in such a way that readers get a balance between autobiographical reflection and biographical bias. Coles' biography of his friend includes many long quotes from Day herself, adding a sense of truth. Through these quotes, Day reflects on various aspects of her long career in writing, her conversion to Catholicism, and her continued activism. Readers get an idea of what Day wanted other people to know about her life. Her words seem truthful and extremely reflective - it seems she has nothing to hide about her very interesting life journey. As far as the self-reflecting aspect of the biography, it is definitely a book to take a look at if you want a candid view of Dorothy Day.

However insightful Day's reflections were, Coles' interjections in her quotes and his descriptions of certain events were sometimes too biased. He essentially praised Day throughout the book (rightly so, if you were giving a speech honoring her), instead of giving readers a more clear-cut look at her life. I am not trying to say that the praise is not well deserved or well written, but for a biography I would have liked a bit more of factual information inserted among Day's quotes. I suppose this style of writing is to be expected, because he saw Day as

This is a good book, but it's in an interview format, with extensive quotes from Day. That's great, but I was hoping for more of a critical and intellectual analysis of her body of work, and of the development of her thought.

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

"And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

"If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

"It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

"Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

"For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

"When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

"At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

"So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

I Corinthians 13: 1-13

the fatal error in reifying desire: a "faith" in being chosen...
As activist Dorothy Day lived it--her "message," then--loving has nothing to do with liking...

What is gained, then? That is, what part of our make-up is gratefully, joyously transcended in loving as Paul reveals it?

Desire.

We inflect from the dis-ease of desire when we love--when we love truly.

What is taken, too, as desire's adjunct, is fear, i.e., we live without fear if we love. Desire is of the Self. Like an infinite regression seen in mirroring desire replicates itself solely for its own sake. That is, the desiring Self seeks solely, endlessly, to be desired--i.e., to be chosen. No desire (it being literally a longing for what is not there) and fear--i.e., the impossible fear of not being chosen as a personal belief in death (that is, punishment)--is burned off as the sun burns mist.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love."
I John 4:18

We are called to mature in love, for both ourselves and for our neighbor (caritas), a radical learning which entails revisiting the ur-hunger first compelling the "I," or ego construct. Then, as now, we "suggest" to our nascent Self that in unremitting desire only does there exist life. The supreme, tragic irony is that the "I" by itself is capable of nothing but engendering destruction, for example Narcissus' own self-annihilation.

The still-inchoate consciousness first experiences itself as a sensate object, with absence or lack eventually suggested as a real possibility. And, in that dyad of "need" (that is, a sensed "I need!") and of existence emerges the nascent Self. On some level, then, the Self is borne in negation or lack. By continuing to live in that "I" = "lack" moment, however, our lives become an investment in death (Thanatos), i.e., we are "devoted"--in thrall--to a thought-of death (as valorized by the "I") to avoid a physical death (a believed-in Self destruction). We entertain the idea that there is nothing more than the ego-derived nightmare-echo endlessly calling to itself.

Yet, by revisiting that originating moment in and with Love--for example, Dorothy Day's living out of voluntary poverty in community (q.v., her The Long Loneliness), we transcend our own radical faith in unremitting desire and assured death--the assured infinite regression of the mirrors--and, inflect from the nihilism of exclusion to what we are invited to be. We forego a false, mere echo-like "calling" to answer that authentic invitation to become via a dialogue with the Love of I Corinthians. The invitation is to a novel third possibility not considered in the mirroring scenario--becoming. We are now authentic participants in a dialectic of Life endlessly transcending itself. We have moved--been moved--from an exclusive, echo-like Self focus to one of a dialectic of inclusion.

The site of voluntary poverty--i.e., material poverty--even if assented to for only a time, is, paradoxically, fertile as it entails a community of participants which valorize the unique individual, the fulfillment of his potential and, ultimately, his contribution to the well-being of the collective. In contrast, Power--i.e., socio-political desiring--as the immediacy of fear, exclusion, domination, sacrifice, avarice, etc., cannot countenance the community of unique individuals as the individual-in-community prescinds from solipsistic fear, exclusion, etc. The conflicted Self in isolation, nevertheless, exists in that incessantly antagonistic, anxious state, competing amidst what is delimited by simple diffuse greed. Fear, in this milieu, is catching.

Power/desire and the anticipation of consuming...

More specifically, Power is a momentary construct negotiated outside of the community. Its attendants answer, not a call of transcendent participation in becoming but, rather a simple zero-sum shifting of the always-finite coffers, i .e., now this one has the Power, and now another, in ongoing exclusion. There obtains a false Siren seduction "calling" to Power in the sense that unheeded destruction, dominance, and theft are the norm as primal fear--its source--is left unnamed and volatile.

Again, the tragic irony is that it is effected in the service of that which it asserts it can avoid--radical, personal ruin. It has deceived both the momentary master as well as the slave, and both tend towards a narcissistic Self annihilation. And, again, both are in thrall to a thought-of death (as valorized by the "I") to avoid a physical death (believed to be a Self destruction). What was suggested in the nascent Self at the earliest moment of inchoate "consciousness" is determinate. In his fear he is resolute, and in his terrors he has absolute confidence. In this state there is no becoming, only the immediacy of "negotiation" and an utterly willful straining against whatever tends towards some deferral--i.e., he is fixated, even as he is transfixed (q.v., auto-crucifying) by a mirroring echo.

the abject Self: "to be sated is to forego desire and, thus, invite death upon oneself..."

Those in thrall to Power/desire are waiting to be chosen (they must be chosen). They are not so much participants as much as they are in abeyance--those in thrall to desire (and, contrary to all striving) then do defer their lives to the internalized echo. The so-called "corridors of Power"--considered as a collective--is a grotesquerie in its deceit, i.e., a house of mirrors.

In this regard, the social theorist Marcuse, then, writes of the one-dimensional man, and the ongoing consuming (q.v., capitalism as handmaiden of Power)--or, even the anticipation of mere consuming as end-game of desiring--necessary to the myth of the "promise" of Power, endlessly deferred. The always-already decaying corpse of consumerism must of necessity receive fresh lipstick in order to shore up the "dream" (nightmare) of those in thrall to the praxis of the marketplace, the rigors of its demands and its exchange value. Marx, for example, cites a fetishism of commodities, whereby the object being marketed is seen to possess an inherent value, which prescinds from the labor--i.e., another human being--needed to fashion it. The abject, desiring Self, therefore, acquires to himself a thing believed to valorize his own existence, i.e., to confer Self worth in the mere possessing of it. Power-amidst-capitalism, then, obviates the community in favor of the isolated, desiring Self endlessly consuming to sustain his essential life. It sustains, therefore, the primal fear by reifying product consumption--i.e., not community--as the essential fact of man's existence.

Again, as desire is literally a longing for what is not there, like Tantalus, no one may ever be sated--to be sated is to forego desire and, thus, invite death upon oneself--let alone be at peace. The seduction of Power is akin to an existential Ponzi scheme, with its attendants driven by their own primal fear and belief--now ideational investment--in death. In a word, they are living a lie. Considered over the course of one's lifetime, however, that fantastic belief may become appalling.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love."

If, then, Power is a momentary construct negotiated outside of the community (i.e., there is no dialogue--only the rigors of the marketplace, its demands, enduring impoverishment, and its "exchange value") then those, like Day, who respond to the calling of voluntary material poverty and community can be said to forego what is merely imagined--a mere idea of a life and the ephemeral--in favor of an inviting to an authentic life and something enduring: the ongoing becoming of community, its individual, unique members and the organic body. Participants in that community are more than sated, i.e., their lives may be fulfilled. And, although some may, in fact, move on for a time from that beatific, nurturing event, the nurturing goes with them to be demonstrated and shared elsewhere, as seen in the rhizome model of mutuality, inter-dependence, and equity.

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Again, this is an invitation to a becoming, an unfolding of an ever-greater moment for the unique individual within the still-broader community. It is the beatific inflecting away from the primal fear of the solipsistic Self, its nihilistic faith, and dis-connection. Day, for example, cites Buber in his remarks upon the State: the State should be, in fact, "a community of communities." The arborescent, "top-down," centralized, hierarchical model of the current socio-political construct will yield, then, to the rhizome model of a decentered, an-archical, laterally-developing commonwealth. There is an "anticipation" here, of course, which nevertheless prescinds from the desperate, enduring impoverishment of Power/desire mere consuming in favor of an anticipation-as-becoming inflection away from the primal, radical fear of the nascent Self as inchoate consciousness. We become aware of there being something more than the always- momentary Power/desire construct in concurring with Love: "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him."

Yet, the writer goes on to dispel any possibility of this, too, being merely a "dream" (nightmare) construct, i.e., via the ideational Self, with its attendant terrors and unremitting negotiation. Rather, the writer points to the reality of community with a beatific praxis as its core: this is not a mind construct but, rather, an Other-initiated prompting (agape) to personal, ongoing involvement in community: "If anyone says, `I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" [I John 4: 20-21]. And, again: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength," and, "The second is this: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" [Mark 12:30-31].

The Power/desire impoverishment of anticipation in mere consuming, cultivated in one's lifetime, is also enduring. It is a vow, fearfully, awfully taken, to nothing, a solipsistic echo one day heard outside of time. We negotiate with the primal fear, convinced that in doing so Self destruction has been forestalled. The option of becoming--the beatific unfolding of the individual-in-community--is forfeited, possibly for all time, in favor of the preferred "safer" stasis, an eternity of nihilism, i.e., the abiding death of a Narcissus.

"We love because he first loved us"
[I John 4:19].

The voluntary poverty of Dorothy Day, however, is giving assent to experience a temporary fasting--akin to a Spirit-grounded "pruning"--wholly in the service of realizing something far greater, the caritas of the unique members of the collective as participants in a mystical project of Community, or, ultimately, Communion. We are called, then, to break the narcissistic cycle--to inflect from desire--borne of the primal fear, by assenting to experience a temporary voluntary poverty, e.g., a denial of Self, in the service of an Other encounter. We move, then, from the Power/desire solipsism of I-as-object/object to Buber's I/Thou in community. Yet, the option to freely deny the one call to caritas in favor of the other, more primal, suggestion is our ever-present reality. And, we do deny the call. And, again, considered over the course of a lifetime the effects of the denial are ruinous, i.e., the fatal error of Thanatos.

"Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion" was a good book because it showed Dorothy's imperfections and her good points. Some authors only tell about the good points of people's lives, but this book shows that Dorothy Day wasn't perfect. She made mistakes in her life. I learned a lot of interesting facts that I never knew about Dorothy Day. This book shows how Dorothy was devoted to helping the homeless. She established thirty three homeless houses across the whole country. She was brave when she left her husband to convert to Catholicism. Her husband didn't approve of God. Her daughter was baptized. My favorite part of the whole book is when the homeless man comes into the hospitality house and he has a gun with him. He threatens to shoot the gun. Instead of calling the cops, Dorothy goes over to the man and introduces herself. This shows how brave and courageous Dorothy is. The man then talks to her. All he wanted was for someone to appreciate him and someone to talk to him. He visited her often. Dorothy was there for him. This book gave me hope because it shows that an immoral person such as Dorothy Day turned into a woman who had great morals. She went from having an abortion to establishing hospitality houses. If a person knows someone who has no morals, they shouldn't give up on them because if they have enough faith in God, they can turn themselves around like Dorothy Day turned herself around. Having faith in God can help a person through anything. We all make mistakes in our lives and do things we shouldn't but we have to learn by these mistakes and try to better ourselves. Also, like Dorothy we have to do what makes us happy and not listen to other people. She lost her husband and gave up a lot of material things, but this is what made her happy and she helped a lot of people.