The First ‘Black Conservative’?

immoral by literary theorists; it’s about politics. Books like The Wind Done Gone aren’t any good, but they ought to be, so they get published anyway. Trend-snuffling reviewers hail them as “transgressive” and “subversive”; guilt- ridden Volvo owners buy them and delight in the sensation of being on the cutting edge of culture. Does anybody actually read them? That doesn’t matter, either. Andy Warhol was righter than he knew: In the future, everybody will get to publish one book, which will remain in print for 15 minutes.

Gone with the Wind, on the other hand, will keep on being read and relished by the common readers with whom Dr. Johnson rejoiced to concur, for the very good reason that it’s a pretty good novel, not to mention a rather surprising one. Over and above the pure pull of plot, it has some unexpectedly shrewd things to say about the vanity of the Glorious Cause (most of which didn’t make it into the movie). Ashley Wilkes’s anguished letter to his wife Melanie is a case in point: “I see too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern selves … by words and catch phrases, prejudices and hatreds coming from the mouths of those highly placed, those men whom we respected and revered—‘King Cotton, Slavery, States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’”

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Thomas Sowell

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immoral by literary theorists; it’s about politics. Books like The Wind Done Gone aren’t any good, but they ought to be, so they get published anyway. Trend-snuffling reviewers hail them as “transgressive” and “subversive”; guilt- ridden Volvo owners buy them and delight in the sensation of being on the cutting edge of culture. Does anybody actually read them? That doesn’t matter, either. Andy Warhol was righter than he knew: In the future, everybody will get to publish one book, which will remain in print for 15 minutes.

Gone with the Wind, on the other hand, will keep on being read and relished by the common readers with whom Dr. Johnson rejoiced to concur, for the very good reason that it’s a pretty good novel, not to mention a rather surprising one. Over and above the pure pull of plot, it has some unexpectedly shrewd things to say about the vanity of the Glorious Cause (most of which didn’t make it into the movie). Ashley Wilkes’s anguished letter to his wife Melanie is a case in point: “I see too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern selves … by words and catch phrases, prejudices and hatreds coming from the mouths of those highly placed, those men whom we respected and revered—‘King Cotton, Slavery, States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’”