Since there are no questions or comments on Act I of The Revenger’s Tragedy, we can move on to October’s book: Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams. Williams, as I think everyone knows, was a friend of Tolkien and Lewis, and with them he helped both to vitalize Christian fiction and to lend respectability to supernatural tales.
White bread America is gone, and if it is replaced with corn pone, tortillas, and sticky rice, there may be a little room left for scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream.
Jerry D. Salyer, a subscriber who writes in occasionally, has written a brief review published in Catholic World Report. Here is the concluding paragraphs:
Italy has just held a general election. This is widely touted as having brought to power “the most rightwing government since Mussolini,” although why the socialist intellectual Mussolini should serve as a benchmark for the formulaically conservative Roman cafona who will be heading it is something of a mystery.
The search for a rationally perfect society always leads to tyranny. Morality and politics are rooted not in pure reason but in our attachments by love or strife to others. The Greek mystical philosopher Empedocles is a better guide than the abstract reasonings of Descartes and Kant.
America, as we know, is an exception to every rule. Here, all the various ethnicities have blended into a harmonious multi-ethnic nationality that defines itself neither by blood nor religion.
On the supposition that lightning strikes twice, the movie industry loves remaking box office bonanzas. There are six Hollywood versions (and one Japanese) of Peter B. Kyne’s short novel, The Three Godfathers (1913). In 1929, when the talkies were taking, if not baby, then toddler, steps, everything clicked.
Americans seem to have a growing obsession with the idea of revenge. Popular culture, which is often a better guide to national attitudes than social surveys, has elevated the avenger to the status of hero, and ever since the 1970’s, films like Death Wish and Dirty Harry have glorified the brave man who defied the law and “did the right thing.”
Steven Bannon’s zany conspiracy theory is just a PR stunt, but the posthuman race has already arrived.
My private statistical analysis shows that the question most frequently asked of a new parent is “Does he sleep through the night?” The true purpose of the question – in essence as rhetorical as any old “How are you?” out there – is to show the parent that his interlocutor is a person of acumen and experience who can speak of child rearing as confidently and competently as he speaks of missiles in Donbas or about vegetable gardening.
