Category: Feature

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

27 Aug, 2016

The Art of Degradation, Part I

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It is a good thing that rhetoric is a lost art, because anyone with the most elementary knowledge of rhetoric would be sticking blunt objects into his ears to keep from hearing not just the politicians’ speeches but, even more, the pundit’s comments and questions. I am not referring to the bad grammar and mispronunciation of NPR newsreaders who cannot pronounce words like “tour” but invariably say “tore” or even to the effeminate and uncontrolled sing-song chanting of the TV announcers or the hilariously inaccurate diction of people who think “fraught” means something like “full of anxiety or trouble” and...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

24 Aug, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: To Say Nothing of the Dog

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Some six months ago, at the end of March, I wrote here about the sensational case of the Ukrainian Joan of Arc, Nadezhda Savchenko – then in captivity in Moscow and undergoing a farce of a trial – who has since been exchanged for some Russian prisoners of the undeclared war and is now in Kiev.  Now, it may be that Savchenko is not the Ukrainian Joan of Arc, and that in reality she’s a war criminal, a madwoman, a villainess, a CIA agent, or even a Russian police provocateur; none of that matters in the least for making sense...

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Feature / Fleming

24 Aug, 2016

Jerks O: Introduction, Part A

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Everyone in America is constantly complaining about Jerks:  the Jerk who cut them off in traffic, the Jerks at the office who never wash their lunch dishes and leave them for their junior colleagues or overworked secretaries, the Jerk father who lets his toddlers run around screaming in the nice restaurant where you have taken your girlfriend to propose, the Jerk that pushed his airline seat back so violently that it sent your coffee flying–he’s the same Jerk who shouted for 15 minutes into his cellphone and then delayed the take-off because he would not turn it off when he...

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Feature / Fleming

22 Aug, 2016

Properties of Blood, I.6: In Defense of Honor, Part B

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The Sense of Honor I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more. Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Lucasta” used to be one of those poems that everyone had to commit to memory, and these last two lines constituted the most oft-quoted reference to the principle of honor in English literature.  Lovelace was a young man of good family, whose loyalty to his king and church first sent him to war, later put him in prison, and ultimately plunged him into poverty.  He had left Oxford with an M.A. and was about to serve under Lord Goring...

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Diary of a Jerk-Hunter / Feature / Fleming

20 Aug, 2016

Diary of a Jerk-Hunter, I: Gold Medal Jerks

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My title is a little misleading.  It’s not as if anyone has to go in search of Jerks.  They are like mosquitoes in a tidal marsh:  They are inescapable. But, like mosquitoes, some species of Jerk are merely annoying, while others carry diseases far more dangerous to society than malaria or zika. Some years ago, I embarked on a project to which I gave the obvious title, Jerks.  My agent thought it was a brilliant idea and loved the initial pieces.  I dutifully spent a good deal of time writing up the outline, prospectus, etc., but nothing I prepared succeeded...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

19 Aug, 2016

Urbs Aeterna in Carolina

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Summary:  The Bad News is that a bad break has made it impossible to conduct a Greek program in October, but the Good News is that we are doing a little program in Charleston in the Winter.   The Bad News July 10th was a long day, sweltering in my Summer office, otherwise known as the porch.  Too much to do for the Summer Seminar, with far too little time left.  Most of my five lectures were more or less done, though I was embarrassed to realize, several days later, that I had neglected to finish one of them.  No...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

17 Aug, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: 2+2

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  I was scrolling through news headlines the other day, marvelling lazily at the lengths to which journalists will go to draw attention to their and other people’s philistine twaddle, when a story title caught my eye.  “Syrian women liberated from ISIS are burning their burqas,” it went. “What does that tell us?”  Naturally, I didn’t read on.  I knew the answer to the journalist’s rhetorical question long before she was born. When Stalin died in 1953, Russia’s entire population–statistically speaking, for there are a few notable exceptions on record went into a paroxysm of genuine, profound and unrehearsed grief,...

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Best Revenge / Feature / Fleming

13 Aug, 2016

Writing and Reading Verse, Part III

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A few weeks ago, the Brownlows and some other friends were having lunch with us.  The conversation was lively, inclusive, and hit upon many diverse themes, but, when the conversation turned to versification, I could sense an opiate pall falling upon the table—“as though of hemlock I had drunk”—and in the last column on this subject I fear I have ridden my own hobby-horse, the intricate relations between verse and music—over the hills and far away. Let us return to the main topic, which is learning how to write competent verse, partly as a means to learning how to read...

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Feature / Fleming

12 Aug, 2016

The Art of Ugliness, Part I

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This piece appeared  in the second issue (1980) of the Southern Partisan, which Clyde Wilson and I (along with John Shelton Reed, Sam Francis, and Chris Kopff) had created.  I have corrected a number of errors–including the quotation from the film version of Gone with the Wind–made several small  verbal improvements, and added some bits of  material I have always used in conversation.  These major additions I have indicated by square brackets.   Last month I took a short drive through the midriff of the Carolinas—through Georgetown, Conway, Marion, Latta, and Dillon, right through the middle of Rowland and Pittsboro all the...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

10 Aug, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Letter to a Sapient Neighbor

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On a lighter note – it’s the middle of August, after all, and I ought to supply the longsuffering reader with something amusing for a Wednesday afternoon in the chaise-longue – here is a story written by Anton Chekhov in 1880, which my son and I have translated.  We had a laugh doing it, and are particularly proud of having found a plausibly English-sounding name for the protagonist’s estate, “Allcakes, nr. Eaten.” At first glance, this is pure slapstick.  It has, however, a darker side, as the part rationalist, part mystical banalities spewed forth by Basil Semiparticular – part Archie...