From the Academy

Lenin and the Naked Ladies

In the Chicago Loop is a bookshop called Romaine’s. When last I passed that way, its windows were adorned with Marilyn Monroe calendars cheek by jowl with the Collected Works of Lenin. If you go inside, you find a good many books of all sorts: but Romaine’s specialities are party-line Marxism and pornography. For the reader who takes his pornography seriously, Romaine’s has case upon case of “Scarce Erotica” behind glass doors; for the neophyte or vulgarian in these studies, however, there is a cozy corner lined with little magazines devoted entirely to Frenchwomen in the altogether. I never have been able to make up my mind whether Romaine’s intends to corrupt the politics of pornographers or the morals of Communists.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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Lenin and the Naked Ladies

In the Chicago Loop is a bookshop called Romaine’s. When last I passed that way, its windows were adorned with Marilyn Monroe calendars cheek by jowl with the Collected Works of Lenin. If you go inside, you find a good many books of all sorts: but Romaine’s specialities are party-line Marxism and pornography. For the reader who takes his pornography seriously, Romaine’s has case upon case of “Scarce Erotica” behind glass doors; for the neophyte or vulgarian in these studies, however, there is a cozy corner lined with little magazines devoted entirely to Frenchwomen in the altogether. I never have been able to make up my mind whether Romaine’s intends to corrupt the politics of pornographers or the morals of Communists.