Search results for ""Author Roger Kimball""

On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, The New Criterion has brought together a plump chrestomathy of essays demonstrating its range and acuity as America’s foremost review of culture and the arts. With contributions by Bruce Bawer, Anthony Daniels, Denis Donoghue, Joseph Epstein, John Steele Gordon, Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Hill, Donald Kagan, Roger Kimball, Heather Mac Donald, Myron Magnet, Andrew C. McCarthy, David Pryce-Jones, Andrew Roberts, Alexander McCall Smith, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Keith Windschuttle, and many others, this collection of fifty essays brings you the best of the best: incisive cultural criticism, scintillating historical analysis, and robust commentary about the way we live now. Edited by Roger Kimball, this spiritual Baedeker is a timely repository of timeless writing about the figures, controversies, and challenges that define our life in the 2020s.

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The ideas and policies that are percolating down from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill--increased government intervention, calls to "spread the wealth around," onerous regulations, and bailouts for all--are not new. We've been down this road before. We know where it leads. It is that forlorn byway that Friedrich von Hayek called the Road to Serfdom. The good news is we don't have to go down that road again. Resurrecting 18th-century style pamphleteering, Encounter Broadsides provide the intellectual ammunition for the battle over America's future. From the folly of Obamacare, to the politicization of the Justice Department, or disastrous efforts to nationalize our education system, each Encounter Broadside assaults a new tentacle of the rising statism. Now, for the first time, The New Leviathan collects these salvos in one essential handbook. The New Leviathan is edited by Roger Kimball with contributions from John R. Bolton, Daniel DiSalvo, Richard A. Epstein, Peter Ferrara, John Fund, Victor Davis Hanson, Andrew C. McCarthy, Betsy McCaughey, Stephen Moore, Michael B. Mukasey, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Rich Trzupek, and Kevin D. Williamson. Together, they make the definitive case for liberty and democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment.

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Confronting the dilemmas of modernist and postmodernist thought, Roger Kimball in this new collection of his work explores the literary and philosophical underpinnings of modernity as well as the state of our culture today. Experiments Against Reality displays the sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and clarity of argument that have made Mr. Kimball one of the most trenchant critics of our contemporary culture. He begins by considering the influential poet and theorist T. E. Hulme, and shows how the work of Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and others can be seen as efforts to articulate a convincing alternative to the intellectual and spiritual desolations of the age. Turning to the philosophical tradition, Mr. Kimball suggests how figures from Mill and Nietzsche to Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault, and Roger Scruton have addressed — or in many cases evaded — the defining moral imperatives of modernity. Finally he steps back to consider more generally the career of contemporary culture — the trivializing nature of the contemporary art world; the academic attack on historical truth and scientific rationality; the fate of the "two cultures" controversy. "Enlightenment," Mr. Kimball writes, "sought to emancipate man by liberating reason and battling against superstition. But reason liberated entirely from tradition has turned out to be rancorous and hubristic — in short, something irrational." Experiments Against Reality offers continuing evidence of Mr. Kimball's stature as one of our most important cultural critics.

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This book exposes the charlatanry that fuels much academic art history today and leaks into the art world generally.

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Colleges and universities used to teach art history to encourage connoisseurship and acquaint students with the riches of our artistic heritage. But now, as Roger Kimball reveals in this witty and provocative book, the student is less likely to learn about the aesthetics of masterworks than to be told, for instance, that Peter Paul Rubens' great painting Drunken Silenus is an allegory about anal rape. Or that Courbet's famous hunting pictures are psychodramas about "castration anxiety." Or that Gauguin's Manao tupapau is an example of the way repression is "written on the bodies of women." Or that Jan van Eyck's masterful Arnolfini Portrait is about "middle-class deceptions ...and the treatment of women." Or that Mark Rothko's abstract White Band (Number 27) "parallels the pictorial structure of a pieta." Or that Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream is "a visual encoding of racism." In "The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art," Kimball, a noted art critic himself, shows how academic art history is increasingly held hostage to radical cultural politics--feminism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, the whole armory of academic antihumanism. To make his point, he describes how eight famous works of art (reprinted here as illustrations) have been made over to fit a radical ideological fantasy. Kimball then performs a series of intellectual rescue operations, explaining how these great works should be understood through a series of illuminating readings in which art, not politics, guides the discussion. "The Rape of the Masters" exposes the charlatanry that fuels much academic art history and leaks into the art world generally, affecting galleries, museums and catalogues. It also provides an engaging antidote to the tendentious, politically motivated assaults on our treasured sources of culture and civilization.

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Mr. Kimball, one of the best of our cultural critics, offers a lively and penetrating study of genius—and pseudo-genius—at work, and investigates the use and abuse of intelligence. Drawing on figures as various as Plutarch and Hegel, Kierkegaard and P.G. Wodehouse, Elias Canetti and Anthony Trollope, he provides a sharply observed tour of Western intellectual and artistic aspiration. A master of the genre, as collections of his pieces attest, none more impressively than this set. —Booklist Starred Review

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Most of the really invigorating action in the art world today is a quiet affair, Mr. Kimball observes. It usually involves not the latest thing but permaneZnt things—they can be new or old, but their relevance is measured not by the buzz they create but by the silences they inspire. With reviews and essays composed over the last twenty years and revised for this book, Art's Prospect illuminates some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. There is much to be learned and enjoyed in these stimulating, provocative, and elegant essays. —Paul Johnson

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We are living in an age of unprecedented upheaval. The future of Western culture is uncertain. America's economic and political vitality are more fragile than ever. The preservation of tradition is far from guaranteed. Many have observed that we are living through a world historical moment of which Hegel spoke: a time when many of the traditional assumptions about the shape and future of culture are suddenly in play. As The New Criterion embarks on its fourth decade of publication, the magazine commemorates its commitment to the civilizing values of informed criticism with the publication of Future Tense: The Lessons of Culture in an Age of Upheaval. Compiling the writings of some of the greatest essayists of our time, Future Tense examines this pivotal period through a variety of lenses. Beginning with a meditation on memorials after the 9/11 attacks (Michael J. Lewis), the essays address patriotism in relation to Pericles (Victor Davis Hanson), twenty-first century American pride and leadership (Andrew Roberts), the future of religion in America (David Bentley Hart), and the unwinding of the welfare state (Kevin D. Williamson). Continuing this arc, pieces examine self-knowledge and modern technology (Anthony Daniels), the cultural capital of museums (James Panero), and the difficulties of making law in the modern world (Andrew C. McCarthy). In its penultimate essay, the book explores the possibility of a forthcoming political revolution (James Piereson), then closes with a reflection of culture's role in the economy of life and the fragility of civilization (Roger Kimball). Taken together, these prominent writers demonstrate an acute understanding of the value of Western thought as well as the challenges it faces. Future Tense is an engaging discourse on the prospects of society and an important collection for anyone concerned with the longevity of traditional culture.

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At least since Oedipus met King Laius on the road from Delphi to Thebes, the image of a crossroads has signaled a dramatic and morally fraught turning point. It was with this cargo of significance in mind that The New Criterion published a special series of essays on “Western Civilization at the Crossroads” during its fortieth-anniversary season. Featuring contributions by Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Andrew Roberts, and other luminaries, this book collects the ten special essays to assess where Western civilization is now, and where it’s going.

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The populist phenomenon is often identified with the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. But the political, moral, and social realities for which Trump was a symbol both predated his candidacy and achieved independent fulfillment in countries as disparate as the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Brazil. At the center of the populist challenge, this volume proposes, are two questions. The first revolves around the question of sovereignty: who governs a country? This question is at the center of all contemporary populist initiatives and has been posed with increasing urgency as the bureaucratic burden of what has come to be called the administrative state has intruded more and more forcefully upon the political and social life of Western democracies. The second key question, one related to the issue of sovereignty, concerns what Lincoln called “public sentiment”: the widespread, almost taken-for-granted yet nonetheless palpable affirmation by a people of their national identity. The erosion of national sovereignty to which populism is a response has been accompanied by an erosion of that shared national consensus. Increasingly, the traditional pillars of this consensus—the binding forces of family, religion, civic duty, and patriotic filiation—have faltered before the blandishments of transnational progressivism.The debate sparked by these problems has turned on a number of high-profile issues which this volume seeks to address, including immigration, free trade, foreign policy, religious freedom, and the question of citizenship.

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Observing our contemporary culture, the distinguished critic Roger Kimball sees that the avant-garde assault on tradition has long since degenerated into a sclerotic orthodoxy. He finds that the "cutting edge," as defined by the established tastemakers, turns out time and again to be a stale remainder of past impotence. And he locates a pretense that the traditional is the enemy rather than a springboard to originality. In Art's Prospect, Mr. Kimball observes that most of the really invigorating action in the art world today is a quiet affair. It takes place not at the Tate Modern in London or at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, not in the Chelsea or TriBeCa galleries but off to one side, out of the limelight. It usually involves not the latest thing but permanent things—they can be new or old, but their relevance is measured not by the buzz they create but by silences they inspire. With reviews and essays composed over the last twenty years and revised for this book, Art's Prospect illuminates some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. It provides, in Mr. Kimball's words, "a collage whose elements, when seen from one perspective, add up to a diagnosis of a malady, and, when seen from another perspective, offer hints of where effective remedies can be found."

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Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer select the very best cultural criticism from the first 25 years of America's premier literary magazine. The many contributors include Brooke Allen, Stefan Beck, James Bowman, Theodore Dalrymple, Guy Davenport, John Derbyshire, Ben Downing, Paul Dean, Daniel Mark Epstein, Joseph Epstein, John Gross, Laura Jacobs, William Logan, Harvey Mansfield, Kenneth Minogue, Jay Nordlinger, Eric Ormsby, Cynthia Ozick, David Pryce-Jones, Mordecai Richler, Roger Scruton, John Simon, Mark Steyn, and David Yezzi.

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In a series of penetrating reflections on the United States and its institutions in the post-9/11 world, this book offers some answers to questions that people at home and abroad have begun to ask about our country. How did it attain its international preeminence? What exactly is this richest, most powerful of countries made of? Where will its unmatched influence lead? Military historian Frederick Kagan discusses the future of our armed forces and the challenges they will face in defending America's unique position. David B. Hart shows how religion, with all its variety and occasional excess, is "alive and striving in America, with the power to shelter many virtues under its promises of supernatural grace." From the future of the law to the future of higher education, from music to the visual arts, Lengthened Shadows provides a unique situation report on American culture today. Writers and thinkers such as Robert Bork, Hilton Kramer, Roger Kimball and Mark Steyn offer a probing assessment of the institutions that organize our lives--their health, their influence and their prospects--at the beginning of what some commentators are calling "the next American century."

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"The New Criterion operates as a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism."—Wall Street Journal. Since its founding in 1982 by the art critic Hilton Kramer and the pianist and music critic Samuel Lipman, The New Criterion has waged a brisk and articulate campaign against facile and often politically motivated assaults on art and greatness. It has brought unparalleled verve, clarity, and wit to the vocation of criticism. But The New Criterion is not only America's foremost voice of critical dissent in culture and the arts; it is also an energetic ally in the battle against cultural and intellectual amnesia. At a moment when many institutions have become willing collaborators in despoiling our intellectual and artistic legacy, The New Criterion has been a standard-bearer for literary and cultural excellence. Drawn from twenty-five years of the magazine, this abundant collection contains a generous sampling of the very best writing from The New Criterion, featuring the judgments of our generation's most astute and entertaining observers. The many contributors include Brooke Allen, Stefan Beck, James Bowman, Anthony Daniels, Guy Davenport, John Derbyshire, Ben Downing, Paul Dean, Daniel Mark Epstein, Joseph Epstein, John Gross, Laura Jacobs, William Logan, Harvey Mansfield, Kenneth Minogue, Jay Nordlinger, Eric Ormsby, Cynthia Ozick, David Pryce-Jones, Mordecai Richler, Roger Scruton, John Simon, Mark Steyn, and David Yezzi.

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For most of the last century, William F. Buckley Jr. was the leading figure in the conservative movement in America. The magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, brought together writers representing every strand of conservative thought, and refined those ideas over the decades that followed. Buckley's own writings were a significant part of this development. He was not a theoretician but a popularizer, someone who could bring conservative ideas to a vast audience through dazzling writing and lively wit. Culled from millions of published words spanning nearly sixty years, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations offers Buckley's commentary on the American and international scenes, in areas ranging from Kremlinology to rock music. The subjects are widely varied, but there are common threads linking them all: a love for the Western tradition and its American manifestation; the belief that human beings thrive best in a free society; the conviction that such a society is worth defending at all costs; and an appreciation for the quirky individuality that free people inevitably develop.

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Originally published in 1948, at the height of post-World War II optimism and confidence in collective security, Ideas Have Consequences uses "words hard as cannonballs" to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication, the book is now seen as one of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement. In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity but of intelligent choice. And, today, as decades ago, the remedy lies in the renewed acceptance of absolute reality and the recognition that ideas-like actions-have consequences. This expanded edition of the classic work contains a foreword by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball that offers insight into the rich intellectual and historical contexts of Weaver and his work and an afterword by Ted J. Smith III that relates the remarkable story of the book's writing and publication.

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For most of the last century, William F. Buckley Jr. was the leading figure in the conservative movement in America. The magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, brought together writers representing every strand of conservative thought, and refined those ideas over the decades that followed. Buckley's own writings were a significant part of this development. He was not a theoretician but a popularizer, someone who could bring conservative ideas to a vast audience through dazzling writing and lively wit. Culled from millions of published words spanning nearly sixty years, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations offers Buckley's commentary on the American and international scenes, in areas ranging from Kremlinology to rock music. The subjects are widely varied, but there are common threads linking them all: a love for the Western tradition and its American manifestation; the belief that human beings thrive best in a free society; the conviction that such a society is worth defending at all costs; and an appreciation for the quirky individuality that free people inevitably develop.

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