Conservative novelists

Re: conservative/libertarian fiction from the other thread.

This is an interesting subject. I understand there is an entire genre of libertarian science fiction. oakesspalding has a tag for them. See his profile. I would include Rand under sci-fi. And, I think, Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card. You can sometimes find Card on the libertarian leaning Wall Street Journal editorial page. Otherwise I am unfamiliar with others in that genre (Heinlein, etc.)

If you ask English professors today, they would say “no novelists are conservative.” And yet I had a professor who once told me, “All of them are.” Once again, we are at a crossroads because of problems of definition. I can’t solve that here.

Moreoever, do you mean a novelist who votes Republican? Or who is conservative and votes Democrat? Or do you mean that there is something inherently conservative about his work?

William F. Buckley is fairly libertarian. But would we classify his spy novels that way?

Nabokov subscribed to National Review. But to what degree would one consider Lolita a conservative novel? Maybe this way: There is a moral backbone to this story of a pathetic French professor who seduces a pre-pubescent girl. Suffice it to say, life doesn’t work out happily for either one, as we would expect in a world governed by moral standards.

Of course, there are some obvious ways of locating a conservative mind. Mark Helprin wrote speeches for the Dole campaign; Thomas Mallon wrote an essay praising Dan Quayle; Walker Percy admitted to voting for Reagan; Saul Bellow wrote the introduction to The Closing of the American Mind; and John Dos Passos’ name disappeared from universities after he joined the Goldwater campaign.

But there is no definitive conservative novel or novelist. It is almost impossible to make a definitive list of conservative fiction authors -- more difficult than, say, a list of radicals. For example, Nobel-prize winning playwright Harold Pinter recently called President Bush a terrorist and demanded that he and Tony Blair be tried for war crimes. Not too tough to see where he tilts. And it doesn’t say much for the Nobel prize.

At the same time, could one be a committed leftist in politics and still write a novel that is socially or culturally conservative? Probably. It depends to what degree the author lets his politics intrude into his work. And it depends, again, on how you define those politics.

Then there is the matter of technique. As Robert Nisbet wrote in Conservatism: Dream and Reality, it has been possible to be conservative in politics while being original, even radical, in one’s literary technique, as in: Yeats, Joyce, Mann, T.S.Eliot, Faulkner, and Frost.

If you go to amazon, search for In Fact by Thomas Mallon and click on deniro67 for my profile page. I once tried to compile a "Listmania" list of conservative authors, limiting myself to recent or living ones. It would take too long to explain what other standards I used. And I don’t think I was entirely successful.

But (finally we come to an answer) if I had to make a list of the more obvious candidates (novelists) it might include: Mark Helprin, Thomas Mallon, Saul Bellow, Walker Percy, Tom Wolfe, Mario Vargas Llosa, V.S. Naipaul, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, James Gould Cozzens, and Flannery O’Connor. You might also add Tom Clancy, Patrick O’Brien, Claire Berlinski, Frank Schaeffer, Patricia Cornwell, Fred Chappell, Larry Woiwode, and Chris Buckley.

I could make an argument that J.D. Salinger was a conservative. But that would take too long.

And I didn’t even mention poets and playwrights.

The previouis mini-essay alone was worth the 25 bucks I paid to join librarything. Although it will cost me hundreds of dollars in new books bought.

On a tangent, we might ask: is there, can there be, great Fascist fiction? As a young Marxist, I once confidently asserted that there could not, only to be directed to this novel by an older, wiser and less dogmatic comrade:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/
1586170465/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/103-8201178-6529433?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Wow, thanks.

I guess we come up against the same traps regarding fascism. Is fascist fiction something written by a fascist? Or is fascist fiction a work which contains principles of fascism, or is supposed to convert one to fascism? Some people said Atlas Shrugged was fascist because it praised the idea of strong leadership.

When I was in graduate school, in one class, my classmates insisted that Tennyson’s poem "Charge of the Light Brigade" was fascist because it celebrated what we might call martial virtues -- goods words about the soldiers and the military, in other words. They would probably also dismiss the Knute Rockne-like speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V. Needless to say, I disagreed with them -- at least, until they write something at the level of Shakespeare or Tennyson.

Is Mein Kempf fiction? I mean, given that Hitler made up some of his own autobiography, maybe so. Does the fact that Hitler liked Wagner prohibit us from listening to his music? I don’t think so, but some do -- you can hear that ominous theatricality that appealed to Hitler, the failed painter and actor. Shelby Foote once remarked that he could see why his black friends took offense at the Confederate flag. And yet he added that the flag meant a great deal to him, and that we should not dismiss it simply because some Klan yahoos in the 1960s tried to turn it into a symbol of bigotry.

I read Death of a Salesman in high school, long before I learned that Arthur Miller had flirted with Communism. Is it a Communist play? Well...you can see the influence. You could easily argue that it is anti-capitalist. The America portrayed by Miller is one in which the little man (Willy Lo-man) is always getting trounced and the refrigerator always needs repairing. It is, to say the least, an extremely negative view. Well, my mom’s father was a traveling salesman during about the same time portrayed by Miller, and he was poor but he did all right. He made enough, anyway, to raise a family out in the country. He was well liked by all he came into contact with on the road. And he was not a sad sack like Willy Loman.

One of my favorite books is The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Something clicked when I learned that Wells was a socialist. Many of his books are preoccupied with dividing the world into the haves and have-nots, the old Marxist oversimplification. In the Time Machine, the Eloi (the leisure class) live above ground, while the Morlocks (the working class) live below ground, exploited by the Eloi in order to maintain the idyllic, above ground existence.

Steinbeck too, another fellow traveller. The Grapes of Wrath tells us something about the Depression. But I had grandparents who lived through it. Although they were poor, they were nothing like the Joad family. The impoverished Okies (the have-nots) left Oklahoma in search of the greener pastures of California and in doing so (to paraphrase Will Rogers) raised the IQ of both states. When we think of America at that time, we tend to think of everything dirty and gray, nothing but long bread lines. That’s a partial view, a half-truth.

Perhaps this is what’s wrong with politicized novels. They have a narrow view. They see the world through a political or economic lens only. There is always a bigger picture, a more complete story to be told.

Doug, I never heard of that book. I know nothing about the Spanish Civil War except that Hemingway was on the wrong side (he was on the wrong side of a lot things).

Could you put a return in that URL to shorten it? Long URLs send the text for the rest of the page off the screen.

Here's another that slipped through the cracks: The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. have not read it, but it sounds like a real firecracker in light of today's politics. See amazon.com

The title is:

The Cypresses Believe in God

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1586170465/
ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/103-8201178-6529433?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Urgent question for the computer-literate: how can I encapsulate URLs such as the above inside hyperlinks, as was done with The Camp of the Saints above? Is it the same as when you're doing an HTML document?

I think of political fiction as fiction that manifests, persuasively or not, a particular political worldview. This manifestation can vary along the spectrum of overt/covert. For instance, it can simply highlight those aspects of the world which reinforce a particular political outlook, or it can, perhaps via its characters, explicitly draw political lessons from the world it depicts.

I personally like the more subtle examples, which let me draw my own conclusions -- which is why I like Mary Renault and Patrick O'Brient novels, even though there is little overt political preaching in them. They realistically protray human beings as they are, and this portrayal tends to undermine the utopianism which is at the heart of the Leftist project.

Good Leftist political fiction, on the other hand, also appears simply to portray the world as it is, but a different aspect of it: the inequality and unfairness that exists, thus predisposing its readers towards wanting to "do something" about it.

But in both cases, the really good writer's hand will not be visible. It's one reason I like Mikhail Sholokhov, the chronicler of the Don Cossacks. I read his two great novels when I was a Marxist, and they enriched my Marxist view of the world. Then I read them again, as a conservative, and they enriched my conservative view of the world.

Doug

Thanks for the response. I meant edit your original post to shorten that URL.

Duh! Done.

By the way, as an illustration of how variously and unpredictably complex the world is, conservatives might like to read a short article published in Australia's only national newspaper, The Australian a couple of days ago. The link is here:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/
0,20867,20469179-7583,00.html

It's a defense of US war aims in Iraq. Nothing new there, but what makes it interesting is that the author, an acquaintance of mine, is a Marxist-Leninist.

Hey, we need all the friends we can get!

She is part of a group of rather intelligent people, who have their own website: -- www.lastsuperpower.net -- and who have invited conservatives to discuss various issues with them.

So if you want to enter a whole different universe, check them out. I am going to, but I will avoid rehearsing for the millionth time issues like the superiority of the market for rational allocation of resources, and rather ask them what books they like to read, and in particular, what fiction.

Hopefully, it will not be How the Steel Was Tempered or The Red Detachment of Women

Doug

There's a literary critic and professor named Eugene Genovese who is often cited approvingly by (literary/cultural) conservatives for his work about the south. One of his books was called something like The Achievement and Limitations of Southern Conservatism.

Here's the catch. He calls himself a Marxist. Where would conservatism intersect with Marxism? In agrarianism, perhaps? But didn't Marx put down rural life? I don't know.

If you go far enough in one direction, you come round the other side, I guess.

Welcome to the group. Conservatism is a house with many rooms. More, I think, than the left. I hope we can welcome others, recommend books, and avoid rancorous debate. I'm surprised LibraryThing began these forums, because in my experience they nearly always collapse into hatred.

I voted Reform too. Even went door to door to get Buchanan elected. But 9/11 changed all that. The past five years I read a lot about the Middle East. That meant I left Buchanian isolationism (and most of the Kirkean conservatism) behind. Maybe I'll start another thread to list those books.

I like Bush. I know people don't always consider him a conservative. But I also believe 9/11 shook out many of our old assumptions and definitions. The anti-modernity project, for example, has taken a real blow.

Which brings me back to the topic of the thread: What many of the novelists mentioned here have in common, such as Waugh and Percy, is to question whether modernity is all it is cracked up to be. What has been changed? Are we sure we want to change it?

And so on.

If you look at Waugh, the more he questions modernity the less impressive his novels become. Brideshead Revisited, for example, is a novel of rampant snobbery and sentimentality, a look back to the good old days when everyone knew their place. The best novels are those, like A Handful of Dust, which are written with a scathing, sometimes cruel humour.

The real Waugh was closer to the BR than to AHOD, an unpleasant individual who still believed in little Olde England and it's class system. And when it comes down to it, that's why he was uncomfortable with modernity - he was a snob who had no time for the ordinary man, unless it was to tell him to remember his place.

What Waugh rejected most about modernity is what most of us would say were some of it's main benefits - democratisation, rationalisation, secularisation. He wasn't mourning the loss of community, he was mourning the loss of status.

Having said all this, I still think Waugh is a great novelist, at his best his art transcends his everything else.

Writers in general are an unlikable bunch. If we judged a writer by his personality, no books would ever be sold.

By the way, I liked Brideshead Revisited.

There's a tendency to dismiss as nostalgic anyone who finds value in the past. I find this a narrow, even suicidal view. It is usually conservatives who ask, amid all this progress, what ought we to keep and what ought we to leave behind.

Waugh thought we were in a car out of control.

Anthony Powell is often mentioned as a "conservative" novelist, although I haven’t read enough about him to know if this is a reference to his own political views or his books. I can see conservative values presented in A Dance to the Music of Time, along with some mild satire of "the Left," but I didn't find them to be particularly political novels one way or the other.

Robert Ferrigno took a lot of grief prior to the 2004 election when he was the only author polled by slate.com who admitted he would be voting for Bush. His latest novel, Prayers for the Assassin is set in the not-so-distant-future when America has been become an Islamofacist republic. It's safe to guess what his stance is on the war on terror.

Finally, although Michael Crichton is first and foremost a money making machine, he should get some credit for taking on the global warming fanatics in State of Fear and the politically correct gender warriors in Disclosure.

Thank you, Doug1943, for the reference on The Cypresses Believe in God. I had never heard of the book so obviously have not read it. I would say that it is a mistake to identify Franco or the Catholic side in the Spanish Civil War with Fascism. They used it, were allied with it, etc. but, as I understand it, most of the anti-republican side were not Fascist. At the beginning of the hostilities the party itself had only a few percentage points of support although Franco sort of co-opted it for his own ends. Also, perhaps, Franco felt he couldn't really oppose it or stop it. Thus the party and movement became stronger as things went on. Of course, I do not know where Gironella comes down on this and would be interested in reading the book.

The other day I read someone who said that Franco didn't really approve of any ideology which originated later than about 1600. I believe this was in a discussion on whether or not the appelation "fascism" is properly applied to the radical Islamists.

In any case, Franco did not set up a classical fascist state, although it was a very repressive and authoritarian one, with respect to political freedoms.

I think Leftists who are genuine democrats have real problems with the Spanish civil war -- in fact, this conservative who is also a genuine democrat has the same problem. A good book to consult on this is Spain Betrayed by the former Communist sympathyzer Ronald Radosh, and others. http://www.amazon.com/Spain-Betrayed-
Soviet-Spanish-Communism/dp/0300089813

-------------------------------------------

Conservatives don't need to read it so much as knee-jerk leftists do, most of whom know little more about it than that which they have learned through Peoples Artists folksongs.

The final sentence in the post above should begin "Conservatives don't need to read it ..."

For some reason the editing software swallows up the word "Conservatives"!!!

The Spanish Civil War is probably the most romanticised war in history, thanks to all the writers & artists who produced work on it. The problem is that much of this work states that it was evil fascist Franco against the understanding democratic left. A few historians have pointed out that it was a choice between two distinct types of repressive and authoritarian governments, in which the people were always going to lose.

Anthony Beevor in his book The Spanish Civil War posits the idea that the reason Franco won was because the Communists were crippled by their own control structures.

It is only the last few years that Spain has started talking about the Civil War & Franco, which shows deeply divided the country was, and in some ways remains (The Catalans, especially, want independence, or at least local control within a Federal Spain, while other provences are waiting to see what happens before making their move).

Yes, but the interesting thing about books such as Spain Betrayed is that they imply that the really bad thing was the Soviet support. But, in my readings, the Soviet supported faction, while bad, was in some ways less bad than the Anarchist faction--the side that did the bulk of the killings of the priests and nuns. So if the Republicans had been left alone by Stalin, it isn’t clear to me that their side would have been any “purer.” Or rather, the homegrown anti-Catholics were plenty pure but their pure ideology was thoroughly evil.

It just occurred to me that somehow the novels by William F. Buckley had not been mentioned so far (I didn't re-read the whole thread, but didn't see him in the touchstones). Sure, his books are mainly spy stories, but he's certainly a bona fide conservative who also happens to produce the occasional novel!

Personally I do not like the present administration--never have. I'd consider myself conservative in the sense that I believe in things such as balancing budgets and not running up debt. My last three presidential votes were for Perot, Nader and Nader and were happily so.

Anyway of interest to me is the Spanish Civil War--have very recently reviewed Noam Chomsky's Objectivity and liberal scholarship a 1969 book which focuses its first part on our Southeast Asian policy of the time and the second part on the politics of the Republican (left) side of the Spanish Civil War.

Beevor's book on the subject as mentioned above is very good. I also like Hugh Thomas's. In any case one reason for the romanticization of that particular war is that it is a precursor to the World War that followed. Mussolini sent army divisions to help out Franco, Hitler sent military planners and the Condor Legion--an air wing. The Germans especially used this war to test out strategies and equipment that they would later use to invade Poland, France and Russia. Franco also depended very much on the recruitment of Muslim soldiers from Morocco who were greatly feared for their brutality and were often allowed free rein after a town or city were liberated. The left leaning and fairly elected govt. first turned to France for arms. International arm twisting especially from their British allies (think Chamberlain) more or less cut that source out. That is why they turned to the Russians for arms. Keep in mind here that the Republican side had very few real troops. The majority of the army were on the side of the coup. The republican militias that fought regular army troops for practically 3 years were made up mostly of members of the UGT (a large Socialist union bloc) and the even larger CNT (an anarchist union bloc). The Govt. wound up paying Stalin for weapons and they wound up giving control of the distribution for them to what at the beginning of the war was a very tiny communist party which used this power to grow itself and to sabotage those elements of the left that wouldn't kowtow to them. That situation was described more or less accurately by George Orwell who fought with the POUM (a small Trotskyist outfit) in a book called Homage to Catalonia.

In any case for those who think Franco wasn't so bad the estimate of executions in the first two years after the war has been placed in the 200,000 range. That's a lot of political enemies. Franco did maintain neutrality during the second world war--a fact that very much irritated Hitler however Franco did provide an army division to the Germans--with a proviso (I believe) that they be only used to fight the Russians.

As for Gironella he was moderate right. The Cypresses believe in God is one part of a trilogy he wrote about the war mostly from the perspective of the Nationalists (Franco's side). That book is the first and deals mostly with the prelude to the war. One million dead--is the second book and deals with the actual war--and there are atrocities on both sides. The third is called Peace after War. There are a number of other fiction works that deal with this conflict. The Nobel writer Camilo Jose Cela who fought on Franco's side with the Spanish Foreign Legion--has two books translated into English that I know of which deal with the war. They are San Camilo 1936 and Mazurka for two dead men. I should note with him his fictional technique some will find difficult. I like his writing a lot. Another would be Miguel Delibe's The stuff of heroes. Delibes was on the Franco side also. He was a 16 year old on a cruiser I believe. Delibes book entails a lot of street scenes telling the story of a family split apart in its loyalties and the numerous atrocities by both. Another this one from the left would be Ramon Sender's Seven Red Sundays the events therein described are actually just previous to the Civil War.

As for Hemingway he was something of a political gadfly. His For whom the bell tolls is great novel as a novel but objective it was not. He made a lot of Comintern friends there and he pretty much parrots their political line especially toward the 'enemies' (in particular the Trotskyist POUM and the Anarchist CNT and FAI). Another very interesting writer that was captured by the Nationalist forces was the Comintern (at the time) agent Arthur Koestler who was later exchanged for an army colonel's wife. Koestler later went on to write Darkness at Noon shining the light on all of Stalin's purge type of show trials.

In my humble opinion, the Spanish Civil War was just a particular example of the great tragedy of the Twentieth Century, namely, the attraction of a whole generation of idealists to a cynical totalitarianism, and the polarization of emerging democratic orders between extremists filled with passionate intensity.

Have we learned anything from it all? Well, few leftists I know want to repeat the Stalinist experience. Few conservatives I know have much in common even with the sort of people who supported Franco, much less outright fascists.

In fact, in the face of the on-coming head-hackers, our differences look downright trivial, although of course they are not. In any case, the fiery trial through which we are beginning to pass has little to do with Left vs Right.

Well said Doug. One thing though and it becomes a problem in all societies sooner or later and that is that sooner or later ambition and greed or avarice if you will become unhealthy whether it is on an individual level or a corporate for that matter. There is such a thing as a healthy society--getting ahead at any cost is not healthy--it is cynicism plain and simple. I have to say I have sympathy for those leftist UGT and CNT members--they were for the most part ordinary people (their side certainly committed some atrocities too) bakers, taxi-drivers, machinists, construction workers, miners, waiters. They weren't really soldiers. Even so they fought bravely and Anarchists, Socialists whether you like it or not they thought it was their country--they were patriotic and they were willing to die for their idea of it and they were the first to experience the Stukas and Messerchmidts. Hemingway made out the Anarchists to be nothing but drunks and not a disciplined army. The communists refused to arm them. They and the POUM were fighting a war with hunting rifles and shotguns and little ammunition because their communist 'allies' had their own agenda part of which was to see them wiped out. Meanwhile the same communists were conducting pogroms behind the lines. An interesting individual--the head of the POUM was Andres Nin--there are several stories of how he met his end and I don't think there's anyway to be sure about it but there's little doubt that he was tortured to the fullest extent you can use that word and that he didn't give anything or anyone up was attested to by many of his comrades afterwards.

Inley: I cut my political teeth nearly fifty years ago on Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, and am still deeply moved by his description of Barcelona that ends "I knew at once that it was a state of affairs worth fighting for".

Which is how I now feel about liberal democracy on the world stage.

Had the French, British and Americans moved immediately and massively to intervene militarily on the side of the Republic, they could have displaced the Stalinist influence, and restrained the savagery of the anti-clerical Left. But they sat aside, and guaranteed that one of two rival totalitarianisms would win there, just as they sat on their hands and watched Hitler take over in Germany, when a couple of divisions would have sufficed to destroy him in 1934.

James Burnham rightly called liberalism "the ideology of Western suicide", but it is clear that it has competition from head-in-the-sandism as well

Well Homage is a good reference for it but I make the more or less accurate remark above about it because as Claude Simon's book 'The Georgics' points out foreign mercenaries just weren't walking into a barracks without any idea who they were joining up with either. There may not be a lot of moments like that in Homage where credibility is stretched but there are at least a few.

But I agree very much that both Hitler and Mussolini were very encouraged by what happened in Spain and the roles their respective militaries played in it. As for the anti-clerical left there seems to have been a strong almost messianic streak in the convictions and rhetoric of especially the Anarchists. It was anti-religion but it was very much about creating a heaven like society on earth--a kind of liberation theology without religion.

From the reading I have done on the Spanish Civil War in the last few years I have come to take a position perhaps a good deal more anti-Republican than perhaps some of the other posters. I think, actually, that the war illustrates that one cannot properly debate the moral questions in a conflict by looking primarily at the means used in the conflict but must also look at the ends. Let me give two examples of what I mean:

1. In the first few pages of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell describes Republican occupied Barcelona in 1936: The Catholic Churches have been closed, all businesses have been taken over by worker committees, there are revolutionary banners everywhere, loudspeakers blare out slogans, etc. Orwell, who in many ways I greatly admire, writes that he found this generally attractive and, indeed, as Doug commented, a state of affairs worth fighting for (and therefore, by extension, worth killing for). Now, note, in the above description, there is no mention of political prisoners or military atrocities on either side. Presumably, there were already many of each on both sides, but the point is that it was the end--whether or not to have a “worker-controlled” city or society--that was the issue at hand. Now, Orwell would fight to preserve it, and would be ready to kill others who directly opposed that. I, however (along with, presumably, many in this group) had exactly the opposite reaction upon reading his description. If a group of people wanted to create a Barcelona situation (so to speak) in, say, my home cities of Boston or Chicago, I would be ready to fight and kill them to stop it. And that would apply, not just to the guys coming at me with guns, but to the more “political” people behind them supporting those guys with guns. So in one sense, I can understand the ferocity of both sides in the Civil War and how violence so easily spilled over into including noncombatants. Each side was fighting for a vision that was almost diametrically at odds with the other--in each case, a vision that was so obviously right to each side, and therefore implied that the opposing vision was so obviously wrong to each side, that each would kill for it. But, of course, the actual morality of the vision in question matters, and I believe that the Republican vision was evil and awful.

2. The triumphant Franco and his government imprisoned and executed tens of thousands of Republicans. Some were military, some were political--and within those groups, some had presumably been directly responsible for atrocities such as the murder of clergy, and some had not--and some were, as in all situations such as this, probably largely innocent of politics and had merely been “swept up” in the events. This might seem vengeful and unjust to an outsider, and obviously it would seem particularly vengeful and unjust to a Republican sympathizer. But, from my point of view, it is no worse than, say, what happened to Nazi collaborators in France after the Second World War. (If I am not mistaken, tens of thousands of them were killed). No one sheds many tears for the Nazi collaborators (and largely, rightly so) for the simple reason that they had been guilty of supporting an evil system. And it isn’t just a matter of vengeance in either case, but a question of making sure that the evil guys don’t come back. If an Anarchist band had come into my town in 1936, had shot the priests, stripped the church and dug up the corpses of buried nuns to then dance with in the streets (all of these things happened in a number of places), I wouldn’t be too concerned with exactly what happened to the leaders or supporters of that group after my side won. Or rather, I wouldn’t really care what was done as long as what was done had the effect of making sure that the evil those people caused could NEVER happen again.

I feel that I may be coming off as overly harsh here. Clearly in wars and civil wars, people have a moral obligation to not get swept up in the hysteria of events and to make sure that injustice is not done to the innocent. And we should, of course, bend over backwards to exercise our duty here. There is also sometimes a role for forgiveness and reconciliation. I guess my point is that the definition of “innocent” is not always clear, and also that the actions of Franco have come in for a much more critical assessment than, say, the similar actions of the victorious allied governments after the Second World War. As a libertarian, I cannot approve of Franco’s authoritarian (though, as has been pointed out, not Fascist,) rule, but it my view it was motivated by the not entirely unfounded fear that unless there was extreme vigilance, the really bad guys could always come back.

As far as sources go, I think Antony Beevor’s history is biased towards the Republicans. And even the supposedly evenhanded The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas does not really give Franco and his side their proper due. As a sort of Catholic antidote to the mainstream histories, I would recommend Warren Carroll's The Last Crusade: Spain, 1936. Catholic Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Justo Pérez de Urbel focuses (as the title implies) on the anticlerical atrocities--there is an awful photograph of the disinterred nuns on the cover. The best short description of the Anarchist anticlerical fury of 1936 is contained in Robert Royal’s Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century. Though, few outside of partisan Catholic circles are really aware of this, the violence against the clergy in Republican Spain was the WORST such instance in history--outstripping the French Revolution and the various Communist Revolutions in terms of the proportion of clergy killed.

In the past I read that Jack Kerouac was a subscriber to National Review. I doubt that he was a conservative, but I did wonder what would bring him and Buckley together under the same roof.

Marijuana legalization perhaps?

I feel much more confident in claiming Joseph Conrad as a conservative novelist.

I mentioned this in the V for Vendetta thread. The conservative tradition, for the most part, has been to side against revolution. All we need do is consider the influence of Burke's anti-revolutionary Reflections on the Revolution in France. (I make a clear distinction between the French Revolution and the American variety).

Conrad was fiercely anti-communist. I consider his novel The Secret Agent to be counterrevolutionary in part because the anarchists in the novel are portrayed unsympathetically. It is a fascinating little book, written one hundred years ago but very much a novel that speaks to our time.

As concerns the Catholic clergy in Spain during the Civil War--they also took sides for the most part with the military, the estate (plantation) owners, the Bankers and Industrialists against a govt. they certainly did not approve of but like it or not was as fairly elected as prior more conservative ones. In one region however--the Catholic clergy remained in tune with the basic population and that was in the Basque region--these priests though were held accountable for that afterwards by the Franco govt. Franco himself--came to his position of power through a whole host of coincidences as this general or that political rival died one after another starting with General Sanjurjo and including most notably the son of the former leader Primo de Rivera who was the leader of the Falange--a fascist type of organization modeled on Mussolini's black shirts. As it also happened this war gave Franco a spiritual reawakening as prior to his ascension he was not someone noted for being particularly religious. Again keep in mind here he might never have won without the assistance of Hitler and his Condor Legion, Mussolini and several of his divisions, and a quite a large number of Moorish troops (who were Muslim). A very odd coalition that was favored by the West--the same West that a couple years later would be fighting for their lives with some of that coalition. It is however not odd for the Catholic church to support someone such as he and as it works out Spain of the 40's, 50's and 60's had pretty much two rivals for backwardness in Western Europe--Portugal and the Republic of Ireland.

It is fair to say however that Franco's excesses pale in comparison to Hitler, Stalin, Mao and maybe even a couple others. Even so--he was at least IMO a very evil man.

As to particular atrocities commited in this place or that place--I'm afraid that both sides were guilty over and over again. This is not uncommon in Civil Wars. As to who was the most brutal, most vicious what have you that question is easy to answer--the Moors.

While I own and have enjoyed almost all of Buckley's non-fiction, I haven't liked his fiction very much. My taste in fiction runs in the direction of puritanical, prudish, PG-rated prose: Austen, Dickens, Tolkien, Chesterton, Dostoevsky, George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, etc. Stuff that I could read aloud with family without embarrassment.

Does anyone know if there's a LibraryThing group that caters to those with socially conservative tastes in fiction like mine?

Of course. This one.

Thanks, deniro. Can anyone recommend modern fiction that would be in line with the tastes I mentioned above? Buckley's out, and from what I can tell, so is Tom Wolfe. What about The Emperor of Ocean Park? Is it interesting? PG-rated? I've looked at Russell Kirk's Ancestral Shadows in the bookstore several times, but I'm not really into horror.

Maybe we could change the name of the group from "Political Conservatives" to "Conservatives" to be more inclusive.

Is Dostoevsky PG rated? Crime and Punishment?

I think you are mischaracterizing your tastes as puritanical and prudish. Our prurient times have made you feel unnecessarily guilty. People used to ask Walker Percy about the lack of sex in his novels compared to those in other books. He replied, "Those books stimulate different organs than mine do."

How about:

Fred Chappell More Shapes Than One and Brighten the Corner Where You Are.

Willa Cather My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop

Mark Helprin Winter's Tale

Thomas Mallon

Ray Bradbury

You have many choices. I'll have to give it some thought. I want to narrow it down to your tastes a little more. Do you prefer the romance of Austen, the fantasy of Tolkien and Lewis? The heavy existentialism of Dostoevsky? Something positive rather than pessimistic?

The authors I listed above are, I think, all family friendly.

I would like to continue the discussion of the Spanish Civil War but feel that Conservative Novelists is not the place for it. So I have started a new thread called, not suprisingly, The Spanish Civil War. I hope a few of you shall be tempted to post.

Thanks for the recommendations, deniro.

I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't finished Crime and Punishment, but in what I have read (Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, The Possessed), Dostoevsky deals with adult situations in non-explicit ways. Not stuff I'd read to kids, but I'd unhesitatingly recommend these books to my adult friends without fear of offending them. (Whether they'll like his style is another matter.)

I've read through the Austen canon in the last few years. I like the fact that I can pause after just about every sentence Austen writes and marvel at its artistry. I also admire her heroines and their sense of right and wrong, their willingness to sacrifice for others, etc.

I'm about halfway through the Dickens canon, which has been the main recent focus of my spare-time reading. I think he's wonderfully witty, and I strongly disagree with the typical criticisms of him. I do not at all get a sense of him adding unnecessary description to pad his word count. What others criticize as his sentimentality is possibly the same thing as what I celebrate about him: he depicts decent people who love each other and let that love guide their actions. And I am surprised at how unannoyed I am by the eccentric characters that populate his books.

Chesterton's characters are *much* more annoying, but reading his books is worthwhile simply for his descriptions of the English skies, if for no other reason. I like C.S. Lewis's nonfiction and quasi-fiction (Great Divorce, Screwtape Letters, Pilgrim's Regress) more than his fiction, but That Hideous Strength is quite good. I'd had people share with me many beautiful Christian images from The Chronicles of Narnia before I finally sat down and read the series as an adult hoping that I would find more such images where those had come from. (I didn't.)

I'm not a big fantasy fan, so I put off reading Tolkien until I was in my late 30s. The mythology of Lord of the Rings was interesting to me only as the vehicle through which he conveyed images of amazing valor and beauty.

So what am I looking for in modern fiction? I guess character-driven fiction appeals to me more than plot-driven fiction. I'd be very happy to discover a modern author with half the talent of Austen or Dickens, who used that talent as they did to portray admirable characters (interacting, perhaps, with less admirable ones) and who keeps the story clean. No bathroom humor, no explicit sex, etc. If South Park Conservatives like it, I probably won't.

I do not have much time to comment, however, I did want to correct a statement by a previous poster. Atlas Shurgged is an allegory not sci fi! Ayn Rand's novel is best understood (as far as the form is concerned) as a classical Russian novel--writing against other texts, which is a hallmark of literature, by the way. An example of how the novel form differs in the Russian, say, from the English is that in the English novel the characters traditionally represent social classes; in the Russian, political points-of-view. Literature is a discussion of ideas; a modelling of them on the characters--it is simply the highest human artform and the most difficult, which is why we do not see it, or rarely see it, written let alone published, today.

Finally, as always, any book is written in context of the author's time and place. Without this "context" it is difficult to fully comprehend a work of literature (let alone philosophical) importance such as Atlas Shrugged.

I don't consider myself a South Park conservative. I never saw what was so funny about that show.

I agree that you will not find a contemporary who writes like Jane Austen. It's interesting, this Jane Austen revival we've been seeing the past 10 years or so.

Most contemporary authors don't attempt to form a voice of their own, a conscious prose style, whether by choice or due to lack of ability. In the case of Grisham and Crichton, for example, their books seem intended to become movies from the get go. Good movies, sure, but why read the book if they are nothing but dialogue and minimalist prose and will eventually show up on DVD anyway? So it is difficult to recommend contemporary authors that measure up to the higher standards of the past. I have not read much contemporary fiction for that very reason.

I think you would like Chappell, Mallon, Helprin, and especially Cather (wonderful prose stylist), though she isn't a contemporary. Bellow's Seize the Day is one of my favorites. I found Mr. Sammler's Planet to be quite conservative in outlook.

I'll keep checking around and adding names as they fly into my radar.

I don't believe novels are merely a funnel for ideas, just as I believe that human beings are more than an amalgam of ideas. Ideas relate to intellect. Intellect forms one part of the human kaleidoscope. We are moved more by feelings than ideas. Then you have memories, experience, biochemistry, environment, and so on.

Much science fiction is about ideas rather than people or character development. I expect that, I like some science fiction. That is why Rand can be called sci-fi, especially Anthem, which takes place...where and when? But I don't mind Atlas Shrugged being called an allegory. The novel is driven by symbolism in order to push Rand's peculiar agenda.

To me the worst kind of novel is the one in which you must agree with the author's politics in order to enjoy the book. I'd have to include Rand there. All those long, insistent speeches. And E.L. Doctorow and many other contemporaries. And anyone who either shapes the story upon left-wing agendas, or who stops the story outright in order to provide an editorial directly from the Democrat Party, as in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving's rant about Iran-contra ruined what was otherwise a very fine novel.

cpg:

There are two contemporary novels that I immediately thought of, given your criteria. The first is Gilead, which I rush to recommend, even though I haven't finished it yet. Have you read it? Amazingly, because of its religious focus, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Because I'm in a bit of a hurry here, I'll skip describing it myself and give you this blurb from the amazon.com review:

"The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man."

It is character-driven, involves admirable characters, and is definitely clean. It is also entertaining, heart-warming, and all around wonderful.

The second book I thought of is Life of Pi, which I enjoyed very much. It won the Booker Prize and was enormously popular with book clubs, so you may have already read it. I had thought, before I read it, that the young protagonist's experiences with different religions would champion moral relativity, but not so. In fact, I found the whole religious theme to be interesting and endearing. Then there is the whole adventure at sea with a Bengal tiger. If you haven't read it yet, you may want to read a little more about it on amazon.com or something, but I think you would enjoy it.

I have to concur with Deniro's comments on Ayn Rand. I happen to look at the book as something of a mess more than a novel--her long insistent speeches are more like rants and for the most part are completely unnecessary--and especially after something has been said once already to repeat over and over again. I have to say I don't like novels in which characters are presented as either all good or all bad. In this respect despite her atheism her work could serve as a model for say someone like Tim Lehaye with its apocalyptic overtones, its few worthy of saving and its contempt for the human race and its basic aspirations in general. I've found her fiction to be very mean-spirited in tone and having read most of the great names in Russian literature think it's ridiculous to even compare her work to a Tolstoy, a Dostoyevsky, a Pushkin or a Chekhov.

Thanks for all the recommendations. Regarding Life of Pi, it's perhaps my most successful venture into reading modern fiction. I've just taken an unpolished note I wrote on it for a now-dormant reading group and pasted it in as a LibraryThing review. If it weren't for the puzzling ending, I'd probably have given it 5 stars.

deniro, I know you are a favorite here...so pardon me if you ignorance is showing. Literature and "novels" are not synonymous. Literature includes novels, history, works of philosophy, essays and some other forms of writing that are all discussions about ideas. 19th century literature was a dialogue or more between various writers in different countries talking mainly about politics and political structures. Much of this was caused by the upheaval in European history occurring at the time and the fall out of the Industrial Revolution.

Ayn Rand was brought up in this tradition of framing ideas by expressing them in literary terms since literature was the highest and most difficult endeavor (as it still is today) for the THINKER.

Now, I do not recall that I either praised her work or critiqued it, I was just pointing out that Atlas Shrugged in an allegory not a work of Sci Fi. I would also comment that her primary objective (as in all literature) is NOT to entertain you.

In addition, I compared her to no one, rather I suggested that she is writing within a tradition of Russian literature that she knows, understands, and respects.

I would suggest that anyone who is interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy should partake of some of her collections of essays.

I was using the usual definition of literature: novels, poems, plays. But I get the point. If you define the word "literature" to include history, philosophy, and so on, then some of your time will be spent talking about ideas (philosophic ideas, economic ideas).

The veterinarian's assistant handed me pamphlets and asked if I had read their "literature." You see how the currency of our language gets worn thin if stretched too far.

Although many novels, such as existentialist (French, Russian) or sci-fi, are novels of ideas first, character development second, to me the more satisfying literature is that which deals with man in full. Alexander Pope said the proper study of mankind is man. Think of everything that makes a man: psychology, environment, intellect, feelings, genetics and even...stardust?

Some Russian writers are preoccupied with heavy ideas and try to weave them into their fiction, so I can see how Rand would consider herself part of that tradition. Seems fair. But Dostoevsky handles ideas without sacrificing the three-dimensionality of his characters, i.e. his sense of man in full. On the other hand, can even Dostoevsky's view of life be called panoramic enough? He can be so negative! Dark stuff.

Rand's favorite writer was Victor Hugo. I think the appeal was his portrayal of individual heroism, of larger than life figures who were driven by ideals or principles. Like superheroes. Some fault Hugo for this. Opposite the gritty realism of Dostoevsky, he would be further down the spectrum toward fantasy, the wish-fulfillment of Rand (Not that I have anything against fantasy. See my catalog).

John Galt is an ideal to strive for. What Atlas Shrugged aimed for was utopia, the sort of place Rand would like to live if her ideas were put into practice. This is why I tend to think of her novel as fantasy. Ok, call it allegory. I guess I can't dismiss an entire genre, not without dismissing, say, Spenser's Faerie Queene.

But the philosophy leaves me scratching my head. I think the search for perfection will always fail. It is why I have trouble including her in the conservative canon, which is full of people like myself who distrust any attempt to build heaven on earth. I'm lucky if I can keep all my AV remotes separate.

I'm not saying that novels can't be about ideas. Of course they can. I spent much of my education discussing literature within the history of ideas. But they must be about more than ideas, because a man in full is more than his ideas.

An idea about love, for example, is not the same thing as being in love, anymore than hearing about chocolate is the same as tasting it.

I can't tell if LordNigelKnickKnack is being sarcastic, but 5 seconds of Googling indicates deniro's assertion appears to be confirmed by the Ayn Rand Institute: "Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired."

cpg highlighted my favorite conservative novel, That Hideous Strength. Lewis points out the lack of respect for the past fostered by the liberal mindset and their willingness to change the future based on their thought experiments. He clearly shows the arrogance necessary to believe that you can come to better conclusions than the billions of people who lived before you. It is eerily prescient of the scientific dilemmas and social policies of our time. Of course, Lewis had a knack for following the foibles of the human soul to their ultimate conclusion.

"As anyone who has studied LITERATURE in college knows . . ."

I was an English Lit major, and if you asked me cold what my definition of "literature" was, I would give an off-the-cuff answer that it was novels, poems, and plays. Yes, given more discussion, I can see including essays, memoirs, biography, history -- many other types of "serious" writing.

But why get all bunched up about vocabulary? The substance of the discussion doesn't turn on how anyone defines "literature."

Again, my main point about Ayn Rand is that she is writing within the context of her knowledge base; her times; her native language; who wrote before her; who influenced her as she was writing The Fountainhead forward; and her own hierarchy of values. Speaking of Ran'ds immediate influences, one must mention Isabelle Paterson, who is the source of the original Atlas Shrugged plot line in The God of the Machine. Namely, that in the late Roman era, the taxes on the artisan and merchant class was so heavy as to be more than 100%--the artisans laid down their tools in revolt.

Anyway, Rand is the progenitor of the libertarian movement not the conservative movement. Again, reading The Virtue of Selfishness (do not be put off by the title) gives one a firm idea of her train of thinking.

Anthony Powell was himself a conservative and a Tory. Actually George Orwell said that he was the only Tory he ever liked. But Powell was first and foremost an observer and not an actor. Like his alter ego Nick Jenkins in Dance, he stands on the sidelines and notes and observes the actions and behaviour of others. He was also a conservative who was comfortable in the bohemian world of art and letters. His conservatism comes through in Dance in a very subtle manner. And there is the mild satire of the Left as you suggest. But all in all his novels are politically neutral, and he leaves it up to the reader to decide. Like Waugh (who was a friend of Powell's, Powell was insturmental in the publication of Waugh's first book), he was married into the aristocracy and lived in the country, but Powell was a much more low key and shy personality. He did not have the talent for self-promotion that Waugh did, which is one reason Waugh is generally much better known today.

Another contemporary conservative novelist to add to the list (from another thread) would be John Derbyshire, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream

If I haven't said it already, let me say now: I think everyone should read whatever they want to read, whatever interests them, regardless of politics, etc. Henry James himself, the great craftsmen and holder of high standards, posed that the reader judge a book first by the question: Does it interest you? Does it hold your attention and entertain you?

This is a different approach from those who think art (to James, novel writing was an art) ought to "challenge" our assumptions and, if necessary, even repulse us. In fact, the more repulsive, the better. Beauty isn't truth. Ugliness is. Truth is misery. Ever talked to a reporter? He wants to tell you the "real stor." And it ain't pretty.

For beauty, maybe we have to turn to the poet rather than the novelist. Have you noticed how depressing and pessimistic so many novels are? Maybe the poet is more likely to remind us that the Creation is good after all. Maybe.

One reason I find this thread's subject interesting is that today the assumption is that a conservative is someone who carries about money and a liberal is someone who cares about everything else. Or, as one graduate English professor told me, "I assume this is one class where it's okay to make fun of Reagan." What Reagan had to do with 19th American literature was unclear to me. Why we had to hear about the professor's politics was even less clear.

Over the years it has occurred to me that one could view all writing as an act of conservatism. That is, to write something down is to try to capture something permanent from the flux of our experience and the winds of time.

To locate order (beauty, truth, etc.), to render it into form artistically and to pass it along like the Olympic torch. To conserve.

I exist in a continuum:

Beginning, middle, end.
Past, present, future.
Grandfather, father, son.

Novelists joing my must-not-read list based on today's news: James Webb, Lynne Cheney, Scooter Libby.

I would imagine that if by "conservative" one refers to the strictly political definition, there would be damn few ( thus confirming the line that no novelists are conservative ). If, on the other hand, one bears in mind the ongoing literary exploration of what are the perennial issues ( God, love, good/evil, fate/free will, etc ) mankind has been grappling with through the ages, then the case could be made that all novelists are conservative. In any case, the "eithor/or" categorization is obviously deficient (though fun to play around with).

This much is true:

1) writers draw on the work of their forebears ("remembrance")

2) writers want their own work to last ("permanence")

It it not so much that "remembrance"/"permanence" are first and foremost conservative concepts, it is rather that conservatives (e.g. Russell Kirk) have recognized them as corresponding to the reality of our human condition.

I don't claim that many writers view these concepts from the explicit vantage point of Kirk (or any other conservative scion), but they are important factors in most ( at least half-way serious ) literary efforts.

Regarding novelists of conservative bent ( in the qualified sense described in previous post ), I would make the case for Cormac McCarthy: the violence and despair of a fallen world, in desperate need of redemption (whether or not it seems to be forthcoming). In addition to his brilliant use of language, there is a darkly serious moral grandeur in McCarthy's writing that reminds me of Dostoevsky and Conrad.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn ( obviously ).

pacara,

An excellent post! By getting to the foundational motivations of both writing and conservatism, you have demonstated that the very act of writing is inherently conservative. Wouldn't that cause some consternation among certain circles?

Certainly I agree on Solzhenitsyn (and we might then have to add Dostoevsky) and with your post mentioning Russell Kirk, who was also a novelist. I was very much a Kirk disciple, so your post rings clear as a bell to me.

I too admire Cormac McCarthy. Last month I read both No Country for Old Men and The Road. Often I don't know what to make of McCarthy's world view. Is it without redemeption? Is McCarthy a nihilist? Does he focus too much on the negative without seeing any hope for mankind?

How about Democracy by Henry Adams?.

Good luck getting past Adams's pessimism.

markmobley,

Thanks. But I really don't think I got to the foundational motivations so much as pointed out some (fairly obvious) *tendencies*. If I were pressed to provide (short) answers as to motivation, the word that comes to mind for writers would be, "expression". In the more complicated case of conservatism, I would argue for a Greek word, "paradosis" ( = handing on that which you have received ).

deniro,

It is indeed hard to discern Cormac McCarthy's worldview with any great degree of confidence. Part of this might be attributed to the fact that McCarthy doesn't write what his characters are thinking, describing them solely through speech and action. In his highly vaunted work, "Blood Meridian", lacking as it does a mediating thread of narrative (provided in "NCOM" by Sheriff Bell), it is hard to detect the presence of an authorial voice of any kind- the novel seems almost to manifest itself organically, via force of nature. Nevertheless, there are many areas in McCarthy's work that display evidence of a keenly perceptive depth (if subtle and layered) of moral vision. I'll limit myself at the moment to quoting some passages from "The Stonemason" (play set in Louisville KY in 1970s, concerning several generations of a black family).

The 100 year old 'Papaw' Telfair, master mason, talking with grandson and protégé, Ben Telfair:

PAPAW:

"They's lots of work in this world that aint never paid for. But the accounts get balanced anyway. In the long run. A man that contracts for work and then dont pay for it, the world will reckon with him fore it's out. With the worker too. You live long enough and you'll see it. They's a ledger kep that the pages dont never get old nor crumbly nor the ink dont never fade. If it dont balance then they aint no right in this world and if they aint then where did I hear it from? Where did you? Only way it wont is you start retribution on your own. You start retribution on your own you'll be on you own. That man upstairs aint goin to help you. Aint no use even to ask ... No man can lay stone and be thinkin bout whether he goin to have to tear it back down again. Aint no use to get in no such habits as that. You know that that man up there aint goin to let nothin stand forever anyway. Not in this world he aint. And it's against that judgement that you got to lay stone. If you goin to lay it at all ... You can claim it but you caint take possession of it. The man you built it for, he can take possession of it, but he caint claim it. The law dont have no answer. Where men dont have right intentions the law caint supply em. You just at a dead end. "

At the end of the play, Ben Telfair narrates in reminiscence of the vision he had of his grandfather, now deceased:

BEN

"He came out fo the darkness and at that moment everything seemed revealed to me and I could almost touch him I could almost touch his old black head and he was naked and I could see the corded muscles in his shoulders that the stone had put there and the sinews and the veins in his forearms and his small belly and his thin old man's shanks and his slender polished shins and he was so very beautiful. He was just a man, naked and alone in the universe, and he was not afraid and I wept with a joy and a sadness I'd never known and I stood there with the tears pouring down my face and he smiled at me and he held out both his hands. Hands from which all those blessings had flowed. Hands I never tired to look at. Shaped in the image of God. To make the world. To make it again and again. To make it in the very maelstrom of its undoing. Then as he began to fade I knelt in the grass and I prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed as men must have prayed ten thousand years ago to their dead kin for guidance and I knew that he would guide me all my days and that he would not fail me, not fail me, not ever fail me."

Excellent post.

Recent release: The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature in which the author makes some bold claims.

The book was not as good as I hoped it would be, but it was a short, entertaining read, without only an occasional lapse in political debate. The argument for Jane Austen as a conservative was fairly persuasive. Good news, considering the Jane Austen revival that has taken place the past 15 years or so.

I just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and was surprised to find that it has a very conservative bent. In fact, it takes a conservative stand on one of the most controversial issues of the day (no, not teen smoking).

Unfortunately, the point of the story unfolds gradually, so any hints of what its about would spoil it. I recommend reading it because it is elegantly written and quite thought-provoking. If you have to have more information, I'm sure there are reviews here on LT or on amazon that would give you a hint.

I don't know about Ishiguro's other books. I've never even read Remains of the Day.

Maybe you should google the subject first.

No, really. I think you should do a little research.

You refuse to learn. That sounds like liberal denial to me.

Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.
-- litkicks.com

About this time in his forties Kerouac became a political conservative, supporting the war in Vietnam and befriending William F. Buckley.
-- lorenwebster.net

Speaking of which, I assume everyone out there knows that Jack Kerouac's favorite magazine was National Review — also true of Vladimir Nabokov. Kerouac was even a (profoundly drunk) guest on Bill Buckley's Firing Line. In fact, Kerouac reportedly died with a tall stack of the magazine by his side and a drink in his hand. Not a terrible way to go. This isn't to say that Kerouac was a conservative, but he was a lover of the hurly-burly of American life, and a believer in the idea that freedom is what puts the hurly in America's burly.

-- Jonah Goldberg, nro online

While Kerouac is best known as the 'Father of the Beats' he really didn't live the lifestyle of the beats for long. As many of his friends got involved in the radical politics of the '60s, Kerouac began to distance himself from his former colleagues. A political conservative, Jack actual found himself at odds with the hippies by supporting the War in Vietnam.

-- bbc.co.uk

Jack Kerouac, who gave his last major interview to National Review and was a big fan of that Republicanoid mag, was a hippie-hating conservative

-- Nick Gillespie, Reason mag.

Kerouac was from Canada; Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New Jersey. These two were considered the two poles of the Beat Generation since Kerouac was relatively conservative politically.

-- wikipedia

Kerouac had distinctly ambivalent feelings about being the "avatar," "father" or "king" of the beats. Towards the end of his life he denounced the youth culture which following his example had gone on and off the road, and under other labels such as "hippies" and "yippies" advocated opting out of the American dream and started regarding the United States of America as an imperialist force of evil. Kerouac remained a patriot and a political conservative to the end (his off-beat response to the counterculture illustrates this: "I'm a bippie in the middle" was the subtitle of his last article). He revised many of his youthful religious beliefs, denouncing Buddhism and Spenglerianism, and particularly distanced himself from drug-induced Oriental spiritualism à la Timothy Leary.

--arts.uysd.edu

As a politically conservative Catholic, he was especially bitter about the beatniks of the 1960's: ''A lot of hoodlums and Communists jumped on my back.''

-- nytimes.com

By the mid-'60s, Kerouac was an outspoken conservative

--salon.com

Carolyn Cassady says Jack Kerouac was deep down a conservative and a patriot who disdained the disaffected youth culture his own book helped spawn.

--npr

You make no sense. And you can't spell.

>#38 CPG "I guess character-driven fiction appeals to me more than plot-driven fiction"

Have you tried the Travis McGee series by John D. Macdonald?

They are usually catologed as Mysteries. But they are some of the most character-driven books I have ever read.

And I was going to mention them as an example of "conservitive" novels. At least I see them that way.

MrKris: in a purely formal sense you are right -- the mere fact that both X and Y do Z is not logical proof that X and Y share other characteristics.

But in the real world, we must, in our reasoning, supplement purely formal logical truths with what our experience has taught us is likely to be true about correlations and human behavior.

Subscribing to a highly partisan political journal is not like, say, driving a car or reading a novel. You can share preferences for these with someone else, without sharing their politics.

But subscribing to a journal is suggestive of political sympathy for the journal. It isn't proof -- I happen to subscribe to half a dozen liberal and Leftist journals, on the know-your-enemy principle -- but it is an indicator that the subscriber enjoys reading the opinions expressed therein.

And, to those who enjoy skill in political debate, may I commend Deniro's positively fiendish withholding of his crushing final blow, as he led his victim on with innocent suggestions to Google the subject, or do a bit of research.

A less able, or impatient, combatant would have delivered his riposte (proving Kerouac's sympathies) immediately.

Deniro delicately plays with his victim for a while, letting the hook work its way in. As I read each exchange, the tension mounted as I wondered if Deniro really had anything, or was just putting up the feeblest of defenses. And then ... touche!! Straight through the heart and out the other side!

Deniro, te salud!

Mr. Kris has been expelled from the site. He had been in a number of running battles over this and that--in particular one over a review of a John Jakes book. He started up the American Politics group which I joined and then left as IMO he wanted too much to be the deciding judge on what came out of it. Check over there and you can see threads he started with numerous entries of which he is the only one posting. The Kerouac argument above is pretty much an example of his way of picking a fight over what IMO is something that doesn't really amount to much but he took way too seriously as if it were the battle of Armageddon. In any case DeNiro was right about Kerouac and as you say handled it well.

Over on the American Politics message board, under the thread called "FBI Ignorance," is the heated exchange, between MrKris (under several aliases after a bit) and timspaulding, that led to MrKris's expulsion. Pretty exciting stuff for LT! Maybe timspaulding should change his handle to MarshalSpaulding after his High Noon showdown!

I think MrKris is an angry, intemperate young man of a type I've seen often on the internet. I hate to think that I might once have taken myself that seriously, esp. over something like politics. There are a lot of people out there looking for fights.

As for Kerouac, I've never even read him. What I have read and heard is that his work will not endure even if his iconic position does (father of the Beats). He seems to have led a sad life whose lesson is that constant motion and travel, rather than enriching a life, can diminish it, or be a symptom of chasing demons, of which Kerouac had plenty. See Hemingway for another example of this.

I note that in one novel Kerouac bemoans the transformation of his idyllic small town into a cruel city, which sounds to me a bit more like Thornton Wilder than Sinclair Lewis.

Kerouac struck a nerve way back then--things like that will fade. At least in his first books there's a youthfully innocent and exuberant outlook on America and its then seeming new potentialities. He tried to merge his love of jazz with the open road in a stream of conscious kind of way. To me he's an interesting writer at least a couple times but not someone I'd consider essential--although I'm sure some literary professors would not agree with me. As for Hemingway taken on the whole he is overrated. I like Faulkner and what little I've read of Dos Passos much better. Best american fiction writer may have been Flannery O'Connor.

Yes, it is romanticized. I can't help but wonder how the same war, fought in say, Nigeria, would be viewed in history. Everyone is in love with Spain and its sounds and colors and passions. But if the same conflict were transposed onto non-European people I don't imagine you'd find generations discovering it a new. I myself am not immune to romanticizing elements of it. There is something quaint about whole villages converting to anarchism and outlawing money. (Ha, the thought of it.) But looking at it honestly, it was an enormous tragedy dressed up in a lot of totalist ideology that in the end only resulted suffering for the Spanish people.

Keroauc was certainly alienated from the hippie youth culture so active at the time of his death. I've read about him rescuing a flag from Allen Ginsberg in the 1960s and folding it up respectfully. As a liberal none of this bothers me. I think conflating liberalism with 1960s hippies has always been dishonest and myopic. Besides, so many of those hippies ended up conservatives over time. There really are consistencies in their world view no matter their political opinion at the time.

Conflating liberalism with the 1960s hippies is indeed silly.

For one thing, liberals are political, and the hippies were essentially a-political. There was a good deal of tension between them and their political co-temporals, the New Left, although there was overlap too, with some elements of the New Left attempting to build a base amongst the white hippy movement.

And we should not forget that the New Left of that time had only contempt for liberals. SDS attacked "corporate liberalism" explicitly, and a popular song was Phil Ochs' ? "Love me, I'm a liberal."

I doubt any young person at the time would have admitted to being a liberal, although this began to change after 1968.

Recall that the liberalism of the 60s was represented by the likes of Hubert Humphrey. It was a pro-American, anti-Communist "Cold War" liberalism.

Today's liberalism does have affinities with the young radicals of the 60s, not so much with the apolitical hippies, but with the New Left, part of which it fused with and was transformed by in the late 60s and early 70s.

The exact details of this transformation would make for an interesting book. I would love to read an in-depth study of how this transformation came about, which would have to be written by someone who was neither an uncritical partisan of his subject, nor blindly hostile to it.

This transformation is not a historically unique event.

All political movements change over time, if they do not die away completely. The conservatism of the 1980s through today is quite different, in many respects, from the conservatism of earlier eras, in which ideas, as opposed to simple defense of self-interest, hardly played any role at all.

Actually, the Cold War liberalism of the 1950s and 1960s was something of an aberration, caused by the US confrontation with the Soviet Union which forced everyone on the American Left to choose sides. This polarization of the Left did not survive Vietnam.

Thus in some respects the radical-friendly liberalism of the 1970s and onward has much in common with the liberalism which existed prior to the Second World War, which was generally pretty comfortable inside the Communist-led Popular Front.

So the endorsement of Stalin's Moscow Trials by The Nation and The New Republic in the 1930s found genuine continuity in the endorsement of the North Vietnamese totalitarians by such liberal groups as the American Friends Service Committee.

The New Deal's willingness to employ pro-Soviet agents was of a piece with Hillary Clinton's attempt to make a Communist sympathyzer Secretary of Education. (To tell the truth, the hippies were fuzz-brained, well-meaning, gentle creatures -- I would rather have one of them as Secretary of Education than a gulag-lover any day.)

I think I would see the hippies as proto-libertarians more than liberals. They were profoundly anti-government and would be against almost all forms of government intervention. They didn't expect the government to subsidize their lifestyle. If they did take it, it was more from a motivation of "sticking it to the man". Perhaps they were anarchists too mellowed by drugs to actually attempt to dismantle the government...

Yet conflating liberalism with hippies has been the bread and butter of the movement conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s (The people who propelled George W. Bush into power). Think about Rush Limbaugh repeated the phrase "maggot-infested hippies" when discussing the ideas and actions of the left in America. Then think about the influence Limbaugh and his imitators have had on American political discourse since the late 1980s, or just look at this www.thefantasyyears.com

I wouldn't ascribe too much influence to Rush's name-calling. It seemed part of the shtick to me. Ultimately, the conservatives I know felt the ideas resonate with their "heart", even if they had a tough time articulating it. Rush and his ilk just had an entertaining way playing that note. Political movements are rarely generated by individuals or small groups. It has to play in Peoria or it never gets off the ground. Obviously, big personalities have something to do with capturing that esprit , but it must exist to be captured.

Enjoyed what I read of your novel-in-the-making. I see you are from the City. Which part?

The Queens part. But I work in Manhattan. Are here too? Thanks for reading; there will be more.
Oh, I agree about Peoria. In fact, I'm old enough to remember (just barely) the time before Reagan's first term. And I do believe that Reagan's support was mostly true and organic. People genuinely connected with Pere Reagan and he gave them what they needed to hear. It's really at about the point of the persecution of Bill Clinton for his private life that things went off the rails for the movement conservatives. And that was advanced by a network of pundits, who cut their teeth in right wing thinktanks that were supported by a small circle of funders. (My novel will get to that later.)
Anyway the more extreme the rt wing rhetoric, the further it departed from factual reality. Of course, all of this has culminated in the last few years. The question now is: what direction for the Republicans? The Democrats and liberals, as I see it, pretty much have their work cut out for them. What do you think?

Unfortunately, I am not in the City. I am in small town Georgia, but I love NYC and go at least once each year. Endlessly fascinating.

As far the the future of Republicanism...I think a good dose of on-the-ground reality would sit well. It was not the war in Iraq that caught them off guard, it was the reaction of the people afterward. They thought the Iraqis would dance in the streets and name all their kids Bush again. The world changed and we were not paying attention.

I still would like to get back to the basics...lower taxes, less government regulation, better oversight of the social programs that we have (making Giuliani my presidential choice), strong military, making America safe for families, etc.

I would love to see some proactive intervention. AIDS in Africa, for example. Make friends before they become enemies. Don't know if it would work, but it seems the right thing to try.

The wrench in the works is the war on terror. We might have invaded Iraq, but we didn't declare this war. Just pulling out doesn't make it disappear.

There actually have been some good innovations by the Bush Administration in the areas of health care and education, it is just that the war on terror has overshadowed them.

Unfortunately, it seems that second term presidential administrations are pre-destined to flounder.

Bush has already made a major effort to fight AIDS in Africa. His spending in this area is many, many times what Clinton ever spent. What's it gotten him?

The press is just incapable of giving Bush credit for anything. Not 4.4% unemployment, not a 13,000 Dow, not surging tax revenues and a declining budget deficit, not Libya's surrender of its WMD, not the Proliferation Security Initiative, not a popular and successful market-based Medicare prescription drug benefit. Nothing.

Rereading message 89, it's interesting you talk about ideas that can't be articulated but that resonate in the heart. That's an idea that I've thought quite a lot about lately in terms of politics. I'm about to start reading The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch.

steiac,

I don't know what it has gotten him, and we may not know for a lot of years hence. But I think it is right and I think it is wise to invest positively in the third world. It would be nice if the "Hate-America" section of the media would trumpet these stories. It might get us some political capital around the globe.

Bush has already made a major effort to fight AIDS in Africa. His spending in this area is many, many times what Clinton ever spent.

Except that doesn't appear to be actually true. Not according to the Brookings institute, anyway: Instead of a tripling of U.S. aid to Africa between 2000 and 2005, as Bush has frequently insisted, Washington has increased aid by only 56 percent in real terms, according to the report by the Brookings Institution. . Since 2005, US AIDS assistance to Africa declined 20% in 2006.

More Bush lies: some people STILL insist upon believing his promises, and then ignore his failure to follow-through.

OK, back to the topic of "conservative novelists" (maybe AIDS and general Bush bashing could move to a new thread?):

I nominate Bernard Malamud, although only on the basis of the one novel of his that I've read, The Assistant. It is the story of an Italian-American stranger who works his way into the lives of an immigrant Jewish shopkeeper and his family. Malamud brings out themes such as the importance of education and an individual’s ability to overcome bigotry. Focusing on the value of loyalty, repentance, and personal responsibility, it is a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness.

I am interested to know if his other books are similar.

As for James Joyce (see post #1), I don't know much about the man, but one of my favorite lines from Finnegans Wake is:

"Share the wealth and spoil the weal."