Customer Reviews

Superfluous Men: Conservative Critics of American Culture, 1900-1945

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I admit that I bought this book by mistake; I hit the key based on the publisher [ISI] and the price {$1.99!) thinking it was a history of the Superfluous Men, not a selection of their works. But actually, I was lucky; I can't imagine how awful a whole book by this editor would be.

The collection itself -- essays, book excerpts, even book reviews and letters -- is great; a welcome reminder that there was a time, not too distant, when PC, po-mo and do-good liberalism didn't dominate the intellectual world, and anti-liberal, anti-modernist, voices (and no, I don't mean Sarah Palin!) could actually be heard.

What's irritating is the editor's own contributions. After a flimsy introduction that tries to absolve himself of any attempt to articulate a criterion of selection, he prefaces each selection with a few paragraphs that range from indifferent to condescending.

For example, one selection is an "example of emotional extremism masquerading as cultural analysis" (actually, one of America's greatest architects questioning the pseudo-scientific pretensions of Social Darwinism); H. L. Mencken's work "hardly rates as good political science" (oh, to hear Mencken's response to that bromide!), and so on. With such contempt for his subject, why did he bother to disinter these dusty, yellowed pages?

Of course, that's his problem (or would be, if he were still alive). But is his attitude even justified? Here's Donald Davidson [the agrarian, not the analytic philosopher] on the world of Ford:

"The result of all this, almost inevitably, will not only be a terrifying expansion of the abstract money economy, now already puzzling in its weird ramifications. It will be to corrupt the public life, throughout its entire body, by persuading people to believe that life is made up of material satisfactions only, and that there are no satisfactions that cannot be purchased. On the one hand we shall have financial chaos; on the other, a degraded citizenry, who have been taught under the inhumane principles of Fordism always to spend more than they have, and to want more than they get."

To the editor, Davidson's "writings now often seem derivative and repetitious, and he made no permanent professional contribution" while being capable of producing a "small gem" from time to time.

A chillingly prescient description of American society, circa 2010; a "small gem" indeed! As for our editor, his contributions here show him to be incapable of producing gems of any size.