Reviews and News:
Joseph Epstein on Marcel Proust: “Proust was the greatest mama’s boy in all of literature. An asthmatic all his life, his mother, upon whose affection he counted preternaturally, was also something akin to his caregiver. A social butterfly, of highly exotic coloring, the young Marcel Proust dithered and dallied and did not get down to serious work until his mid-thirties. He felt he had betrayed his father, remarking that ‘I am well aware that I was always the dark spot in his life.’ On his mother’s death, which occurred when he was 34, Proust wrote: ‘She takes away my life with her, as Papa had taken away hers.’ This major subtraction from his life, as Taylor notes, turned his thoughts to suicide. He replaced his mother with work on his great novel.”
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The strange rites of the ancient Olympics.
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After Alexander, rulers imitated his style, not his military successes: “Claiming to be a king increasingly required presenting oneself in this fashion. Hellenistic rulers, writes Thonemann, ‘were expected to look and behave like young Demetrius’—which is to say, like someone ‘handsome and radiant, rich and warlike, fighting on horseback at the head of his troops.’ Notice that Thonemann’s description contains nothing about actually winning. The need to gain the victories of Alexander had given way to the need to appear like Alexander, and The Hellenistic Age is a book that sees the definition of the time in the styles it chose to celebrate and embrace.”
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How robber cops in New York’s Gilded Age launched modern progressivism.
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In Case You Missed It:
The problem with positive thinking: There is “a powerful link between positive thinking and poor performance.”
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British spies and the Bolshevik Revolution: “Forensic evidence concluding that the fatal wound came from a British-made revolver may not have been enough evidence to convict Oswald Rayner for Rasputin’s murder in 1916, but the British spy would admit before his death that he was at the palace when the murder occurred. The Oxford graduate had studied with the main assassin, Felix Yusupov, before being stationed in Russia alongside a multitude of other British agents helping Britain’s then-ally in their war against Germany. However, as Russia tipped towards Marxist-inspired revolution determined to ‘liberate’ the proletariat from capitalists, these Brits found that their once-partners had become their enemies. In Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Plot for Global Revolution, Giles Milton retells this captivating history in easy prose that makes for perfect reading in a history-lover’s summer beach-chair, preferably with a glass of Pimm’s as a Union Jack flaps nearby.”
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Did Wallace Stevens convert? Paul Mariani responds to Helen Vendler.
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The historical role of Christianity in integrating non-Europeans in Europe’s many conflicts with the East has been discarded. Will what has replaced it work?
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Classic Essay: Carle Zimmerman, “Evolution, Individualism, and the End of the Family
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Interview: Bill Kristol talks with James W. Ceaser about the intellectual roots of contemporary progressivism.
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