Why does this remind me of this?

The Spectator has reviewed the English release (by Monday Books) of Not With A Bang But A Whimper. Dalrymple’s admirers will quibble with a couple of the comments by reviewer Marcus Berkmann (his writing has only the one theme?) but, all things considered, it’s a well-written demonstration of Dalrymple’s appeal “to anyone with a brain and a heart, of whatever political persuasion.”

Monday Books publisher Dan Collins reviews the review here.

UPDATE: Link to the review has been fixed.

As you may have noticed, Dalrymple is no longer writing regularly for The Spectator. His Global Warning column has been replaced by Standing Room, a column written by Sarah Standing, whose subject matter is far less profound than that of her predecessor and, so far as I have determined, is not just well-disguised satire. (See for yourself here. Try the March 11 opus.) Apparently, Editor-in-Chief Matthew D’Ancona’s project to modernize the magazine involves replacing rare and timeless wisdom with utter trivia. Just what the world needs most at times like these. Were I channeling Dalrymple, I might say that the replacement is typical of the cultural degeneration of Britain.

Dalrymple (Anthony M. Daniels) began his writing career at The Spectator 26 years ago by sending unsolicited articles to the magazine from the Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific, where he was managing a psychiatric clinic.

The next issue of National Review will carry Dalrymple’s review of John Lukacs’ new book Last Rites, which Dalrymple calls “a short book that is not quite memoir, not quite philosophical treatise, but something in between.” Our beloved readers will no doubt feel as if the first paragraph of the excerpt below speaks of them.

Lukacs tells us that an era half a millennium long, that of the bourgeois, has now drawn definitively to a close. Of course, there are still cultivated people who read books and listen to real music, who behave with a certain ceremoniousness and dress without wishing to appear as if they had just emerged from a slum tenement despite being enormously rich; but they are a decreasing minority…

…Americans, in his opinion, are less reflective, shallower, and more vulgar and egotistical than they were when he first arrived in the country. There was then a recognizable upper class, with refinement of manners and an interest in something other than money; now, there remains an elite (for no society is without one), but it is a much cruder one, consisting merely of the poor man writ rich…

I sympathize viscerally with a lot of what Lukacs says. I live in a country, Britain, in which things have gone a lot farther than in America…There are people with more money and less money, but they have very similar tastes. It is only the scale of indulgence in them that varies, not what is indulged in.

National Review subscribers can read the review via NR/Digital. Non-subscribers may purchase a membership for $21.95 per year or, of course, buy a copy of the March 23rd issue when it hits the shelves.

The news that British playwright Harold Pinter has died on Christmas Eve brought to mind one of my favorite Dalrymple essays: “Reticence or Insincerity, Rattigan or Pinter” from the November 2000 issue of The New Criterion. As the title implies, Dalrymple associated Pinter with insincerity, and in speeches like this one he used Pinter as an example of the modern triumph of sentimentality over inconvenient truth (although he conceded that Pinter was “a very talented man with a great poetic gift”).

Perhaps we shouldn’t speak ill of the recently departed, but Pinter was celebrated not only as the clever entertainer he undoubtedly was but also as an important, liberal public intellectual (now a de facto requirement of all Nobel laureates in literature), and we will surely have to bear more hosannahs in his name in the coming days. As such, is it really bad form to take this opportunity to remind people of his rather shameless dishonesty?

Reticence or Insincerity, Rattigan or Pinter
The New Criterion; November 2000

$3 purchase required for the essay. You can also purchase an online subscription to the entire New Criterion website (which includes over 70 Anthony Daniels/Theodore Dalrymple essays) for only $38. Better yet, purchase a print subscription to the magazine for only a little more and get the online access for free.

Welcome to the Skeptical Doctor blog.

This blog and its parent website are dedicated to tracking and discussing the work and ideas of social commentator Theodore Dalrymple (real name: Anthony Daniels). The blog will serve as an aggregator so that readers have one place to find and discuss all of the latest essays, books and speeches by the man many call the greatest essayist and social commentator since Orwell. Stay tuned for upcoming posts.

To learn more about the life and work of Theodore Dalrymple, please visit the rest of the Skeptical Doctor website. And please take note that this website and blog is not officially affiliated with the writer and that all opinions expressed here (other than direct quotes of Dalrymple himself, of course) belong to the owners and readers of the website and not to Theodore Dalrymple.