God-Haunted

The Seven Deadly Sins Today is a P. T. Barnum animal: offspring, I think, of male and female mules. In comparison the Polyester Skin Boy and the Bearded Lady (who calls herself Ms.) are just garage floor smutch. Imagine: this very serious book about sin by a socialist, an agnostic (a “reluctant disbeliever”), and a sharp-stick-in-your-eye fine prose stylist. Henry Fairlie’s theopolitical exercise is the first significant contribution to socialist doctrine—car pools, aside—since maybe 1938.

And probably the last. HF senses— though he is reluctant to believe—that socialism has flopped like Margaux Hemingway. It could embitter him. “ . . . Socialism has seldom before been so generally mean-spirited and at the same time exclusively interested in the redistribution of material goods.” Right, right, and right. Systems have capsized, yet men triumphantly managed to be just as grasping, selfish, and prideful as they were under robber baron capitalism. This, for any honest socialist, is a swift boot in the reproductives: after all—socialist, Communist, liberal—each one has blamed some sort of System for human misery. HF, I admire his courage, concedes that the individual is at least accessory after, before, and while. Moreover, you can feel relentless New Left pressure beneath HF’s firm, but defensive, counter-pummeling. “There is no reason . . . why someone who believes in a more equal distribution of goods should also believe in more permissive standards of behavior.” No reason: you don’t get many massage parlor handouts walking through Red Square. “It is characteristic of our age that people want to have God but do not want to have the Devil.” Right, right, and right again. Yet HF, in the process of bringing Satan back from Argentina or wherever, does zip to rehabilitate God. He will use a present active for Beelzebub (“the Devil moves”), and a conditional for God (“God may move). Very selective spirituality here; he kind of subscends the material world. This is a man in great pain: he rips ligaments trying to get away from salvation. Call your priest and stick Henry Fairlie on the prayer list next mass.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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The Seven Deadly Sins Today is a P. T. Barnum animal: offspring, I think, of male and female mules. In comparison the Polyester Skin Boy and the Bearded Lady (who calls herself Ms.) are just garage floor smutch. Imagine: this very serious book about sin by a socialist, an agnostic (a “reluctant disbeliever”), and a sharp-stick-in-your-eye fine prose stylist. Henry Fairlie’s theopolitical exercise is the first significant contribution to socialist doctrine—car pools, aside—since maybe 1938.

And probably the last. HF senses— though he is reluctant to believe—that socialism has flopped like Margaux Hemingway. It could embitter him. “ . . . Socialism has seldom before been so generally mean-spirited and at the same time exclusively interested in the redistribution of material goods.” Right, right, and right. Systems have capsized, yet men triumphantly managed to be just as grasping, selfish, and prideful as they were under robber baron capitalism. This, for any honest socialist, is a swift boot in the reproductives: after all—socialist, Communist, liberal—each one has blamed some sort of System for human misery. HF, I admire his courage, concedes that the individual is at least accessory after, before, and while. Moreover, you can feel relentless New Left pressure beneath HF’s firm, but defensive, counter-pummeling. “There is no reason . . . why someone who believes in a more equal distribution of goods should also believe in more permissive standards of behavior.” No reason: you don’t get many massage parlor handouts walking through Red Square. “It is characteristic of our age that people want to have God but do not want to have the Devil.” Right, right, and right again. Yet HF, in the process of bringing Satan back from Argentina or wherever, does zip to rehabilitate God. He will use a present active for Beelzebub (“the Devil moves”), and a conditional for God (“God may move). Very selective spirituality here; he kind of subscends the material world. This is a man in great pain: he rips ligaments trying to get away from salvation. Call your priest and stick Henry Fairlie on the prayer list next mass.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.