Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses (Hardcover)

by Theodore Dalrymple (Author) "WHEN PRISONERS are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society..." (more)
Key Phrases: World War, Brave New World, Cromwell Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...Dalrymple has succeeded (once more) in publishing a book that is both thoughtful and absorbing." -- Paul Hollander, The New York Sun

"Insightful.... [Dalrymple is a] profound British social critic." -- Thomas Sowell, Rayne Acadian Tribune

"It’s rare for someone to produce a work on social issues that is so readable." -- Kevin Walker, Tampa Tribune

"It’s rare to find such a morally coherent, historically informed and human account." -- Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse, Town Hall, August 29, 2005

"Theodore Dalrymple makes a devastating diagnosis of liberalism’s recent ills." -- Randy Boyagoda, Globe and Mail

"Urgent, important, almost an essential book." -- Richard Davenport-Hines, Times Literary Supplement

Dalrymple writes a clear and considered prose that makes him formidable indeed. -- Book Review Digest

Read the words of a man who has been on the street...who brings a vast intelligence to his conclusions. -- Stanley Crouch in Independent

These bracing essays horrify, irritate, enlighten, amuse. -- Roger Kimball in New York Sun

“Dalrymple calls them as he sees them, and there is not an ounce of political correctness in him.” -- Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times

Product Description
This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. It suggests comparison with the work of George Orwell. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Informed by years of medical practice in a wide variety of settings, his acquaintance with the outer limits of human experience allows him to discover the universal in the local and the particular, and makes him impatient with the humbug and obscurantism that have too long marred our social and political life. As in Life at the Bottom, his essays are incisive yet undogmatic, beautifully composed and devoid of disfiguring jargon. Our Culture, What's Left of It is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 356 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (May 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566636434
• ISBN-13: 978-1566636438
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #114,442 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

241 of 266 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Diagnostician of Culture Has Spoken, June 1, 2005

By	Joel Saxton (Venice, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Some time ago I read "Life at the Bottom" (hightly recommended, too) and have been eagerly awaiting this one. Anyone interested in thoughtful analysis of cultural decline should take a look; this book covers numerous topics. It is also very well written; TD clearly enjoys the art of prose. Some of his comments are so pithy they made me laugh out loud (even when they weren't supposed to be funny).

This is a book written by a man who spent many, many years working in the "trenches", so to speak. He is not a detached philosopher, but rather an individual who is deeply concerned with the consciousness and morality of man.

Addendum: Athough I cannot do it here on Amazon, I now give this book 5 stars instead of 4. These social essays are as trenchant as any I've read. Reading them again sometimes reveals new depth.

63 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A merited dystopian view of our declining culture, August 20, 2006

By	Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels in real life) has been viewing the bottom of British culture for many years as a psychiatrist and social commentator. As a psychiatrist, Dalrymple practiced in a prison and at a hospital in Birmingham, England. Nearly all his patients are from what can be fairly considered the "lower class" in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.

These are the people who have been destroyed by the well-intentioned, but intellectually empty theories of the socialists and social reformers who believed they were delivering people from want, but in fact created a true dystopia. By making sure everyone could have a roof over their heads, food on their tables and changes in their jeans without lifting a finger, but by taking from the fewer and fewer productive people in English society, an underclass was created. With no reason to exert themselves and a popular culture that literally urges an endless regime of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll (or its equivalent), Dalyrmple has witnessed the destruction of English character.

Rampant alcoholism and drug use; increasing illegitimacy; children raised without any form of parental supervision or guidance; the destruction of traditional mores and respect for law and more; a refusal to see the dangers of failing to insist upon the assimilation of foreign, even hostile, immigrants and more are contributing to the deterioration of English society. By implication, Dalyrmple makes it plain that this same kind of social destruction will soon infect and ultimately destroy all the Western nations.

Dalyrmple offers no nostrums, no cures or panaceas. He is a reporter, not a reformer.

Some of the twenty-six essays here are puzzling as they wander a bit too deeply into Shakespeare and the application of his words to modern times. But other of Dalrymple's essays are simply searing indictments of the foolishness of intellectuals, socialists and those who are blind to their own ignorance.

Dalrymple's critiques of D. H. Lawrence, Virgina Woolf, Kinsey and other empty-headed intellectuals should be required reading. Virgina Woolf, for instance, saw no evil in the Nazis and urged people to do nothing to fight them, an attitude mirrored in today's England in those who see no evil in terrorist bombers who destroy innocent people.

Most people have never heard of Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers in pre-war Germany. Dalyrmple uses his 1942 suicide to brilliantly illuminate the death of what was once considered culture.

His commentary on an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art called "Sensation." Sensation was considered by many to be simply a display of bad taste. But "intellectuals" considered it a demonstration of free expression and artistic license. Here Dalyrmple contrasts the lionization of a female killer of children with the poignant pleas of the mother to remove a disgusting "artwork" of the murderess from exhibition. The smug words of the director of the Royal Academy once again drive home Dalyrmple's message: the intellectuals are stupid. He illustrates this with a single utterly fatuous quote from the director: "All art is moral. Anything that is immoral is not art."

Dalrymple examines the phenomena of Princess Diana, noting that at the time she was being killed in a Paris car accident, the presses of the liberal Observer newspaper were rolling with a story stating that if Diana's IQ were five points lower, she would have to be watered daily. Within days, of course, the same Observer and other liberal organs were falling over themselves in praising Diana as the "people's princess" and other adulations. Dalrymple's musings of the exchange of depth for shallowness not only in British media, but in British society are fascinating and all the more disturbing because they are clearly true.

Two of the most stiking essays deal with what happens when Islam breaks down, a perceptive observation of what happens when Islam encounters both the West and modernity, and a forecast of the recent riots in Paris.

Overall, Dalrymple is not happy reading. As noted, he offers no nostrums, no cures; frankly no hope. He is an acutely sensitive observer to what is wrong with the times and how it came to be. Perhaps, suitably depressed after reading Dalrymple, the ordinary citizen will do what he or she can to rip the blinders off people who are comfortably listening to the know-nothing intellectuals who would rather see the world destroyed than admit to their blindness.

Jerry

325 of 374 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a stunning achievement, June 3, 2005

By	Bezdechi - See all my reviews

It is difficult to write a review of this book without appearing ridiculously gushing. It contains some of the most profound literary, cultural and political comment that exists, and is rooted in extensive experience as a prison doctor in the UK and elsewhere which most left liberal pundits would avoid like the plague. Extreme independence of mind, sharp observation and deep humanity all combine to produce a truly indispensable book.

Addendum: Mr Bourne in his review grabs the wrong end of many sticks. Perhaps he should play fewer computer games (see his other reviews) and get out more often. He claims that "penury and depredation" existed before the welfare state: so what?

Contrary to what Bourne says, Dalrymple does not blame modern art for the failure of civilization. However, he does link the nihilism of Brit Art with the dominant cultural ethos of modern Britain, which is hardly controversial, an ethos which is apparent throughout popular culture, all the universities and even the dumbed down BBC. Dalrymple understands, on the basis of his experience of the world, and his profound knowledge of the cultural and scientific heritage of the West, now routinely denigrated in...the West, that culture is all important. Once that's gone, we are lost.

Dalrymple is criticised for relying on "personal experience" with little data. This criticism is often made of Dalrymple by people who have no or little experience of anything, and therefore do not value experience. It is also made by people who seem to think that only pseudo-scientific sociologists wearing white coats and armed with meaningless charts and graphs, can offer an "objective" view of society. This is a deeply philosophically illiterate view. Presumably they think that Sebastian Haffner's memoir of the early years of Nazism, in which he described the mass yobbishness and dumbed down idiocy engulfing large sections of German society, is "scientifically" worthless because not backed up by "data" but is only based on "personal experience". Indeed, how did Shakespeare manage without "data"? Well, maybe he was just very intelligent...

Further addendum: Wudhi states that "a strain of sexual disgust or at least extreme discomfort" is to be found in Dalrymple's writings. In "Sex and the Shakespeare Reader" it is clear that Dalrymple doesn't object to human sexuality per se. It is, rather the "All sex, all the time" attitude that he rightly finds disturbing. One need only see very young girls being sexualised, in their dress and attitudes, to agree -- provided one actually cares for their welfare. The phenomenon of premature sexualisation is the result of the kind of psychobabble that Wadhu clearly finds very profound, the view that one must "express oneself" no matter what. As a widely accepted theory of the good life, this leads to a race to the bottom, to the violence and pre-mature sexual activity that is an all-prevasive feature of life in large section of British society. If Wadhu doesn't find this disturbing he is either innocent of the ways of the world, or just stupid. Or possibly both.