Funny as a Crutch
Who coined the word “humorist”? It must have been an American, for I can’t think of a better way to trivialize the labor of writers who seek to say serious ...
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The Road Goes On Forever
Who has the best job in the world? When I was a boy, I had no doubt that it was Charles Kuralt, a balding, paunchy correspondent for CBS News who ...
Be Careful What You Ask For
Is there an American novelist who has fallen farther from grace than John P. Marquand? For years he was one of the best-known names on the bestseller lists, and his ...
Truth without Bullets
Novelists don’t always write about what they know, but when something interesting happens to them, it usually winds up in a book. World War II was the most interesting thing ...
What Grandma Read
The parlors of small-town America are full of novels that made their way onto the bestseller lists once upon a time. Some were dismissed as commercial trash by the critics ...
The Other O’Connor
The O’Connor everyone remembers is Flannery, who wrote herself into the history of American literature by looking at the poor white Protestants of her native Georgia through the X-ray glasses ...
Teddy Roosevelt’s voice…
…was not squeaky. To hear it, go here. Further proof that Gore Vidal is never right….
Happy Isn’t The Word For It
Jack Fowler’s posting made me smile. I’m just three months younger than NR, and it certainly never occurred to me when I picked up my first issue more than half ...
Irving Kristol’s Creed
From David Frum’s Dead Right:
Indeed, at a conservative conclave in January 1991, Irving Kristol argued that neither the conservative movement nor the Republican Party is interested enough in religion:
Too many ...
More About Peter Dawson
In fact, Peter Dawson was one of the greatest bass-baritones of the 20th century. He had neon-sign diction and a flawlessly polished technique (his coloratura was impeccable), and though his ...