The Tory Anarchist

I haven’t read enough of the New Critics to have a well-formed opinion on them. I’m skeptical of the rote denunciation of more recent trends in literary studies in this Wall Street Journal piece, however — not because the new trends aren’t awful, but because such “conservative” moaning about liberal or radical or leftist literary criticism is usually a cover for philistinism of the right. I don’t know whether that’s the case here. In any event, this article does good by bringing attention to a new anthology of the New Critics, and I like this passage:

The New Critics … thought that the study of literature — especially poetry — was a valuable activity because, as Allen Tate put it, “the full language of the human situation can be the vehicle of truth.” In his lively foreword in “Praising the New,” William Logan notes that the most important objection to contemporary theorizing may be that, in the end, it offers “a very dull way to look at poetry.”

Christopher Buckley’s 1983 Esquire essay on his ambiguous feelings about not going to Vietnam — referenced by R.J. Stove in this comment thread — is included in Buckley’s splendid collection Wry Martinis. The book also contains a follow-up, “Incoming,” written in the Washington Post and responding to the avalanche of mail Buckley received about the Esquire piece. This passage from the second article particularly struck me:

Then came two letters from the same person. The first is dated September 10 and explains that after years of malaise over having been in the Special Forces in the late ’60s but not having gone to Vietnam, he is volunteering, at age thirty-six, for the Airborne Rangers.

The second letter is dated November 15. It begins, “Whatever guilt I might have felt by my not participating in the Vietnam War has all been erased by recent adventures in Grenada. … Unfortunately, we lost three killed and six seriously wounded in three helicopter crashes on our last raid before pulling out.” It ends, “Please continue doing whatever you can to further the cause of Vietnam vets.”

They’re run by an all-powerful international committee, and whatever luckless city hosts the games becomes a police state for the duration. So why exactly is anyone upset that the Olympics are coming to China?

The Onion captures the hysteria:

The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?

I can’t wait to see this — Oliver Stone’s “W.” Link via LRC.

What kind of people is the Associated Press hiring these days? Christopher Sherman reports luridly on dangers lurking in Texas floodwaters — “stinging fire ants, snakes and even deadly tarantulas.”

Even deadly tarantulas? I suppose the emphatic adverb is appropriate, because a deadly tarantula would be real news. There is no such thing: no tarantula is known to be deadly to humans, unless the human being happens to be allergic to tarantula venom. And even then, death is unlikely and ginning up hysteria about deadly tarantulas is about as sensible as admonishing us to watch out for deadly halibut — some people are allergic to fish, after all.

I wonder if next time Chris Carter could shoehorn a few more fashionable causes into his generic (and thrill-less) thriller script masquerading as an “X-Files” movie. The new one, “X Files: I Want My Money Back,” only touches on gay marriage, stem cells, and pedophile priests. And a bit of Russophobia, too, though nothing linked to Putin.

This is a film that will appeal to no one, as its dismal box office is proving. You don’t need a graduate degree in “X-Files” lore to get the plot, but if you didn’t watch a decade’s worth of the television show, you’ll spent your 104 minutes staring at the screen wondering why you should care about any of these talky, self-important characters — who seem to have very little character and a whole lot of back story. If, like me, you have seen most or all the of television show, you’ll wonder what makes this a sequel to the “X-Files” rather than, say, a poor knock-off of “Seven” circa 1996. There is not an ounce of suspense in the film, never once anything to quicken the pulse or raise a fear for any of the protagonists. Nor, unlike the classic TV series, is there ever any interest in whatever it is the villains are up to. None of the themes that made the series intelligent are present. (No, all the crosses and nuns and child-hating priests don’t count: the series usually handled agent Dana Scully’s Catholicism with a bit of sympathy and tact. What’s on offer in the theaters is a parody.)

A common complaint about the show was that it carried on too long, past the point of diminishing returns. I don’t really agree with that — the later seasons might not have been as good as, say, the second, but they were still better than almost anything else on the air (then or now), and the final episode, which effectively parodied the War on Terror while still remaining true to the series, was superb. To follow it up with this cinematic atrocity is a crime.

Is there nothing to be said for “X-Files: I Want To Believe”? Well, it has Billy Connolly in it, and I found myself wishing Agent Fox Mulder would ditch Dana Scully and investigate the spacemen and monsters with Amanda Peet’s Agent Dakota Whitney instead. Come of think of it, if Carter wanted to do something really daring and transgressive, he’d dump Mulder and Scully both and start a new series with Peet and Connolly. At least then even if the results were dire, it wouldn’t tarnish the memory of the “X-Files.”

TAC began its summer break yesterday, after sending to print the new issue (Leon Hadar has the cover story, on the failure of nation-building in Afghanistan). While the other editors have had the good sense to disperse far and wide — with literary editor Freddy Gray getting as far as Rwanda — I’ll be lurking around the D.C. area for most of the break, bar an excursion or two north and east.

After seven months, I’ve finally decided to get an internet hookup for my apartment. Until now, I was getting by on my connection at work and on the WiFi available at the mall a few blocks from where I live. Balancing out the inconvenience of not having internet at home was the convenience of not paying Comcast $60 a month. But now I’ve broken down and made a deal with the cable-monopoly devil. The company should have a technician coming by on Tuesday, even though I would have preferred to install the thing myself. (I already have the cable, the modem, and everything else I need, and I absolutely don’t want any of the bloatware the Comcast goons might want to install on my computers. But they’re coming anyway…)

Several projects will keep me busy during the TAC break. On Sunday, I’m giving a talk to the Leadership Institute’s Student Publications School. (I’ll be doing that again on Aug. 4-5, for LI’s Advanced Student Publications School.) Around the same time, I have to send in a review for a forthcoming issue of the University Bookman, and there are a few other essays and reviews I ought to finish by early next week. I have a bigger project or two to work on as well, but mum’s the word on those for now. And if all goes well with my Comcast installation on Tuesday, I may even pick up the pace of blogging. Stay tuned.

I’m on a Christopher Buckley binge at the moment: read Florence of Arabia earlier this week; now I’m on Little Green Men. Flo only takes an afternoon or so, and it’s excellent. Consider this passage about American opinion regarding a crisis in the Middle East:

There were those who urged caution, and those who urged that now was a time not for caution but for boldness. Then there were those who urged a middle course of cautious boldness. There were extremists on both sides: the neo-isolationists, whose banner declared, “Just sell us the damned oil,” and the neo-interventionists, who said, “Together, we can make a better world, but we’ll probably have to kill a lot of you in the process.”

Speaking, or writing, of Buckleys, I review Reid Buckley’s memoir of the clan, An American Family: The Buckleys in the forthcoming (July 28, 2008) issue of The American Conservative. I won’t be spoiling too much if I say the book is a delight — and includes a showdown or two between Will Buckley, the family patriarch, and Pancho Villa in revolutionary Mexico.

I’ve blogged some of my general impressions of the rally, which was yesterday, here. I heard a 6,000-attendee estimate from a couple of sources, though Kelley Vlahos may be right in thinking it was fewer. (I don’t really know what 6,000 or 2,500 people would look like.) In any case, it was a great event. Entirely grassroots organized, too, so not everything at the rally should be taken to reflect RP’s own views.

It was an ecumenical event, as Naomi Wolf’s talk might suggest. Video below, via Going Down Bitter in the Hinterlands. (Content warning: there was just one homemade sign during the whole event with a vulgarity scrawled on it, and unfortunately it pops up this this YouTube footage. Several people tried telling the guy with the “F— Your Government” sign to get rid of it, since this was a family event. Perhaps he was an agent provocateur.)

Naomi Wolf speaking to several thousand constitutionalists and libertarians. That’s not something you see every day. I’m charmed by the whole thing.

(Googling around a bit, I see that the video was shot by Charles Davis, whose blog about the event is here.)

Two “Predator” actors — Ahnold and Jesse “The Body” Ventura — have already become U.S. governors. Now Sonny Lanham is running as a Libertarian for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in Kentucky. Slate has produced this so-so video about “Predator’s” political legacy. (Hat tip to Lew Rockwell.)