All posts filed under: Great Fragmentation

The Shipwrecked Mind (Mark Lilla)

Published by Charles

Let us talk of many things, as the Walrus said, but primarily, of neoreaction.  What follows is the start of what I hope to make an extended exploration of this line of thought, for which I have much sympathy.  I embark on this project for four reasons.  First, to amuse myself.  Second, in order to make my own thinking coherent, for confusion already stalks the land, and why add to it?  Third, in the hope that what I say may bring value to others, since a man should not bury his single talent.  And fourth, so that in some small way, in a manner yet to be revealed, this combination of analysis of others and thoughts of mine will help to either forge the future, or smash and remake the present.

Resurrecting The Idea Of A Christian Society (R. R. Reno)

Published by Charles

Already before I began writing this review, I was worn out reading books with a similar theme, that  of Christian renewal, including Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option and Charles Chaput’s Strangers in a Strange Land.  I was already going to retire and turn to reading biographies for a while.  It is not, of course, Reno’s fault that this is the final book I read in the chain.  I have tried to ensure that my being worn out does not color my perception of the book.  Nonetheless, I was disappointed in this book.  While what it says has value, and Reno’s heart is in the right place, his book is largely derivative and superficial, and it omits, for all practical purposes, any real plan for achieving the goal of its title.

Age of Anger: A History of the Present (Pankaj Mishra)

Published by Charles

Twenty years ago, that liberal Baal, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, assigned me to read The Golden Bowl, by Henry James.  She said it was the best book she had ever read.  Maybe it was, but it was unreadable, and I am just as smart as Nussbaum.  The problem with The Golden Bowl is that you know Henry James is very bright, yet you have to struggle so much to get at the meaning that you wonder if there is any meaning there—or is it all just a parlor trick to gratify the author’s vanity and flatter the reader who claims to understand?  But, certainly, the weight of learned opinion favors Henry James as a genius and me as an imbecile.  A similar freighted opacity characterizes Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger.  As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on who’s the imbecile.

The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age (James Kirchick)

Published by Charles

This is a silly and shallow book.  But it is not worthless, because it serves to exemplify and clarify modern political fracture lines.  In the West, the major political split today is between those who view the modern liberal project of maximum individual freedom and maximum democracy (as long as the voters make the correct choices) as the ultimate and unquestionable good, and those who view that project as either inherently defective or sharply limited in the good it brings to humanity.  If Ryszard Legutko, in his criticism of European “liberal-democracy” in The Demon in Democracy, had conjured that demon to physical form, it would be James Kirchick—although, perhaps, Kirchick would manifest only as an imp or familiar, in thrall to some greater demon lurking in the wings, such as George Soros.

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Rod Dreher)

Published by Charles

The Benedict Option is, as I expected, an outstanding book.  Rod Dreher has definitively shown that he is the Pope Urban of a new and dynamic movement, and this book has occasioned much commentary in the mainstream press.  Unfortunately, the main point of Dreher’s book—to make a countercultural call for individual and group Christian renewal focused on communities of believers—has been somewhat lost in a secondary point, the real and growing persecution of Christian believers in mainstream society.  This was inevitable, I suppose, because persecution is more interesting to outsiders than a call to holiness, but unfortunate, because it caricatures Dreher and tends to erode receptivity to his message.

Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Anthony Esolen)

Published by Charles

Reading this book is like wearing sackcloth and heaping ashes on your head. It certainly brings home to you that things have gone wrong, but unless the act of penance itself calls forth redemption, which sadly today it does not, without further action it only makes you feel bad and gets you dirty.

Conserving America? (Patrick Deneen)

Published by Charles

This book, a book of essays, is effectively a companion to Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon In Democracy.  The core theme of both books is that “liberal democracy” is inherently defective; the books explore why and what that implies.  Whereas Legutko’s project is to compare liberal democracy to Communism, to explain their similarities and what that has meant for post-Communist Europe, Patrick Deneen’s is to explain how the American founding itself implies liberal democracy, and therefore, in a culture that needs renewal from the evils created by liberal democracy, conservatives are wrong to call for a return to the Founding—for, like the serpent in the Garden, the evil has been there since the beginning.

Strangers In A Strange Land (Charles Chaput)

Published by Charles

This is a self-help book.  I don’t mean it’s to be found in the bookstore under the sign “Self-Help,” where people gather to remake their lives by unlocking the secret of costless auto-regeneration.  Rather, this is a self-help book because it, like the famous Kitchener poster, points at the reader and says, “You—there is a problem, and you are the solution.”  Of course, since the author, Charles Chaput, is a bishop (and an archbishop at that), and this is not Pelagianism, the reader is not expected to act in isolation, but with the guidance and help of God.  He is to act nonetheless, and much hinges on what he does.

The Weapon Shops of Isher (A.E. van Vogt)

Published by Charles

The right to be armed is the right to be free!  This call, like the battle cry of the Archangel Michael, Who is like God?!, echoes down the ages of Man.  If you are not armed, you are always wholly at the mercy of tyrants.  Who can argue with such a truism?  A lot of people, actually.  For the phrase does not, in fact, echo down the ages of Man.  It dates only to 1941, when this book, a now obscure science fiction classic, was first published—and the principle itself is not much older.  So, rather than making this review the pro-weapons screed my (few) readers doubtless expect, I will explore the principle itself—in particular its limitations within a conservative philosophical framework.

The Demon In Democracy (Ryszard Legutko)

Published by Charles

There is a scene in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, in which a character comes across a book of philosophy (Schopenhauer) and realizes in a soaring epiphany that it contains the answers to all of life’s questions.  For me, this book served much the same purpose—it explained to me why certain things are the way they are in the modern world.  Although, sadly, it did not explain “all of life’s questions,” such as what is contained in Area 51.  (I will also gloss over that the character in Mann’s novel quickly forgets the supposed answers and then drops dead of a tooth infection.)