Books, Arts & Manners

Auden, by Richard Davenport-Hines (Pantheon, 416pp., $30)

READING this new biography is an experience in some ways like that of reading W. H. Auden himself. It is by turns bright and breezily witty, darkly but shrewdly profound, and infuriatingly obscure and allusive. Most interestingly, it allows us to see Auden’s life, taken as a whole, as a progression—marked by many hesitancies and divagations—toward conservatism. Not that he would necessarily have subscribed to the budgetary priorities of Newt Gingrich or the flat tax of Steve Forbes. Still less would he have wished to be enrolled in the Christian Coalition. But his life is a reminder that, standing aloof from the titanic struggles and alliances between economic and social conservatism, there is a conservatism of the intellect and spirit which must also make itself heard as culture becomes more and more politicized.

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James Bowman

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Auden, by Richard Davenport-Hines (Pantheon, 416pp., $30)

READING this new biography is an experience in some ways like that of reading W. H. Auden himself. It is by turns bright and breezily witty, darkly but shrewdly profound, and infuriatingly obscure and allusive. Most interestingly, it allows us to see Auden’s life, taken as a whole, as a progression—marked by many hesitancies and divagations—toward conservatism. Not that he would necessarily have subscribed to the budgetary priorities of Newt Gingrich or the flat tax of Steve Forbes. Still less would he have wished to be enrolled in the Christian Coalition. But his life is a reminder that, standing aloof from the titanic struggles and alliances between economic and social conservatism, there is a conservatism of the intellect and spirit which must also make itself heard as culture becomes more and more politicized.