Jorge Luis Borges and politics
I’ve always liked the work of Jorge Luis Borges. His writing isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it is to mine.
I was reminded of Borges the other evening when I did a search for “science fiction stories about immortals” and one of the choices was a story by Borges called, quite appropriately, “The Immortal.” Somehow I’d never come across it before, but here’s a little excerpt:
Death (or reference to death) makes men precious and pathetic; their ghostliness is touching; any act they perform may be their last; there is no face that is not on the verge of blurring and fading away like the faces in a dream. Everything in the world of mortals has the value of the irrecoverable and contingent.
Among the Immortals, on the other hand, every act (every thought) is the echo of others that preceded it in the past, with no visible beginning, and the faithful presage of others that will repeat it in the future, advertiginem. There is nothing that is not as though lost between indefatigable mirrors. Nothing can occur but once, nothing is preciously in peril of being lost. The elegiac, the somber, the ceremonial are not modes the Immortals hold in reverence.
There’s always a lot to digest with Borges. Slow reading. But luckily, he writes short stories, so it’s never tedious.
Then I became curious about Borges’ politics, of which I’d previously been unaware. And I found this:
During a 1971 conference at Columbia University, a creative writing student asked Borges what he regarded as “a writer’s duty to his time”. Borges replied, “I think a writer’s duty is to be a writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty. Besides, I think of my own opinions as being superficial. For example, I am a Conservative, I hate the Communists, I hate the Nazis, I hate the anti-Semites, and so on; but I don’t allow these opinions to find their way into my writings — except, of course, when I was greatly elated about the Six-Day War. Generally speaking, I think of keeping them in watertight compartments. Everybody knows my opinions, but as for my dreams and my stories, they should be allowed their full freedom, I think. I don’t want to intrude into them, I’m writing fiction, not fables.”…
In an interview with Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges described himself as a “mild” adherent of classical liberalism. He further recalled that his opposition to Marxism and communism was absorbed in his childhood. “Well, I have been brought up to think that the individual should be strong and the State should be weak. I couldn’t be enthusiastic about theories where the State is more important than the individual.”…After the overthrow via coup d’état of President Juan Domingo Perón in 1955, Borges supported efforts to purge Argentina’s Government of Peronists and dismantle the former President’s welfare state. He was enraged that the Communist Party of Argentina opposed these measures and sharply criticized them in lectures and in print. Borges’s opposition to the Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estela Canto.
In a 1956 interview given to El Hogar, “[Communists] are in favor of totalitarian regimes and systematically combat freedom of thought, oblivious of the fact that the principal victims of dictatorships are, precisely, intelligence and culture.”
He elaborated, “Many people are in favor of dictatorships because they allow them to avoid thinking for themselves. Everything is presented to them ready-made. There are even agencies of the State that supply them with opinions, passwords, slogans, and even idols to exalt or cast down according to the prevailing wind or in keeping with the directives of the thinking heads of the single party.”
In later years, Borges frequently expressed contempt for Marxist and Communist authors, poets, and intellectuals. In an interview with Burgin, Borges referred to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as “a very fine poet” but a “very mean man” for unconditionally supporting the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States. Borges commented about Neruda, “Now he knows that’s rubbish.”
I’m accustomed to having to ignore the politics of artists I love in order to continue loving their art. But it’s always a a delight on the rare occasions (Frost being another big example) when the artists I like happen to substantially share my politics.
I just dropped off an analysis of image narratives for a museum in France, sorry I didn’t find anything useful for your Yugo ballet teacher, while I was in Serbia.
There are some very interesting dichotomies between author and audience, to the point that, if and when an ‘author’ becomes seriously successful with, say, a certain character of motif, I think they essentially lose control of their creations.
Conan Doyle is a good example of this: he killed off Sherlock Holmes, and was actually forced to resurrect his fictional construct!
Who was the ‘creator’, here?
I’ve spent a long time examining ‘stories’, and whether they are narratives, idle pastime-stories, lessons, or WHAT, and my conclusions aren’t what most people think.
Leftists could never deny the genius of Borges, but they could be dismissive of his achievement on political grounds, as he was not properly engaged in the “struggle”. Neruda was a wonderfully gifted poet, but had Borges composed poems in honor of Hitler (as Neruda did of Stalin and many another leftist writer of the twentieth century did of Communism), would this lapse have been so easily forgiven and forgotten?
IIRC, in the 1905s Peron took Borges out of his librarian position and made him an inspector of chickens in the market.
Borges probably didn’t get the Nobel Prize because he initially supported the Junta’s takeover in 1976. IIRC, he called them “gentlemen.” Which they did not turn out to be, and which Borges also acknowledged.
Borges was far from the only person who initially supported the Junta and later came to regret his support. The publisher (La Opinion) and journalist Jacobo Timerman also initially supported the Junta. In fact, he beat the drum for a coup when Isabel Peron was still President.(As a President, Isabel Peron was a good dancer- her profession IIRC when she met Juan Domingo Peron). When relatives of people the Junta had “disappeared” went to Timerman for assistance in finding them, Timerman published news of their disappearances in La Opinion. For his efforts, the Junta imprisoned and tortured him,and later deported him to Israel.
The US could also be considered in the position of later regretting their initial support of theJunta. President Ford recognized the Junta soon after its takeover in 1976. President Carter, to his credit, made an issue of the Junta’s violations of human rights.
(If you think the guerrillas and lefties were saints, Naipaul had an article in the New York Review in 1972- Corpse at the Iron Gate, when a lefty lawyer is quoted about torture: “Torture? It depends on who is doing the torturing.” Or the Third World Priest (later identified as Father Mujica) who saw Mao’s China as an ideal to strive for.)
(Given the Latin propensity for men on horseback- such as the anti-Semitic Junta in Argentina from 1943-45, or Chavista Venezuela and the 150 years previous of military rule,I feel little guilt for military regimes in Latin America.)
j e
(as Neruda did of Stalin and many another leftist writer of the twentieth century did of Communism)
For some funny reason, it is difficult to find Neruda’s Ode to Stalin in published editions (hard copy) of his works. You can find it online easily enough.
When they were diplomats in Paris for their respective countries, the poets Neruda and Czeslaw Milosz became friends. Milosz translated some of Neruda’s poems into Polish. When Milosz resigned his diplomatic post and “defected” to the West, the French communist paper (L’Humanitie) assigned Neruda the task of writing an article against Milosz. Neruda obliged with an article calling Milosz “the man who ran away,” and also called Milosz an agent of American imperialism.
Some 15 years later Milosz and Neruda ran into each other at some conference. Milosz walked away. Neruda’s reply: “But Czeslaw, it was only politics.”
Borges’s opposition to the Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estela Canto.
Borges, you dirty dog. So you weren’t just a blind librarian whose only love was books?
“I’m accustomed to having to ignore the politics of artists I love in order to continue loving their art. ”
I’m the same way. A friend of mine once said: “If I stopped patronizing the work of every artist that said anything stupid or even mildly leftist, I would have hardly any art left to enjoy.”
That’s true, but there are some artists that go beyond the pale, so I have to boycott them. Jane Fonda is one. Whoopie Goldberg and Bette Midler are another two. Unfortunately, my list keeps getting longer.
what was wrong with the progreso junta, well they followed largely french counterinsurgency tactics, from their experience in indochina and algeria,
borges was a free speech absolutist, a rare thing in latin america nowadays, free speech was a tool for the left to corrupt institutions like the family the military et al,
once they had the power, then everything that opposed them was crimethink, now desinformatya, or white supremacy, I was noting that faux chuck barris bio, that george clooney made into a film, you can tell the acid derision that he focuses on the character who insists on abiding by the standards that had held till 70s America, but then in order to be authentic, things had to be sordid or just plain maudlin, that was norman lear’s contribution,
Thanks for posting this. I love Borges’ writing, though much of it goes over my head; so I’m glad to learn he was right-thinking and sane politically.
Speaking of conservative writers of fantasy and science fiction, have you read any R. A. Lafferty? He wrote such novels as Past Master (about the adventures of Thomas More on the planet Astrobe in the 26th century) and The Reefs of Earth, and lots of short stories:
https://archive.org/details/97StoriesByR.A.LaffertyR.A.Lafferty/mode/2up?view=theater
Your fatherland of hammers and laurels,
the blood upon your snowy splendor,
the gaze of Stalin at the snow
stained with your blood, Stalingrad.
–Pablo Neruda, “A New Love Song to Stalingrad” from “Residence on Earth” Translated by Donald D. Walsh
__________________________________\
I can still remember when I first browsed “Residence” at a book store near Loyola. I was transfixed. The first two sections of the book are jewel-like surrealism infused with humanity (unlike French surrealism).
The poems in the third and last section are all political in favor of the Left in the Spanish Civil War and the USSR in WW II. Though I was sympathetic to the Left, it was obvious that his poetry had dropped-off to sloganeering.
huxley:
I think sloganeering is pretty much always the enemy of art.
It’s wonderful to see here so many lovers (I presume) of Borges.
I can also recall the occasion one summer of reading my first Borges story, “The Secret Miracle,” about a Jew about to be executed by the Gestapo after the Nazis had occupied Prague.
I had just started to write and that story sealed the deal I would continue.
huxley:
For me, it was “The Library of Babel” and “The Lottery in Babylon.”
And a lot of others.
Re: R.A. Lafferty
bof:
What a feast this topic is! I didn’t know Lafferty was conservative.
I remember his stories started appearing in “Best of” anthologies in the late sixties. He was new and and different.
Somewhat like Borges in his erudite references — one story was titled “The World as Will and Wallpaper” which I realized much later was a reference to Schopenhauer — but Lafferty also had a wild tall tale streak he got from Native Americans.
For me, it was “The Library of Babel” and “The Lottery in Babylon.”
neo:
Great Borges! Better I would agree than “The Secret Miracle” when I got around to them. Though “Miracle” was
For anyone wondering what the big deal is about this Borges fellow, here’s a brilliant one-page short story, which has been reprinted in many venues including philosophy.
_________________________
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary.
–“Borges and I”
https://www.amherstlecture.org/perry2007/Borges%20and%20I.pdf
Oops. That’s only from the first paragraph, not the whole story.
Check it out. It’s not hard reading. Only one page. I promise.
huxley:
I guess you could call Lafferty a political and theological “archconservative.”
While this does not in itself prove him a conservative or a liberal, it may be interesting to note that he was on record as supporting the American war effort in Vietnam. The June 1968 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction carried on pp. 4-5 two paid advertisements signed by sci-fi writers for and against the war:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19hQ8uxI0hV_OcC-zIHLUyfu-UKCTRiXQ/view?pli=1
It is interesting to note that most statements beginning “it is interesting to note” are not interesting to note. (Plagiarized from some newspaper columnist whose name I forget.)
“Many people are in favor of dictatorships because they allow them to avoid thinking for themselves.” Borges
Among those who wish to avoid thinking for themselves, it is not so much dictatorships that people favor but rather beneficent authoritarianism. A lot of people are mentally lazy. What is the true attraction of socialism but a yearning for a nanny state run by well meaning authoritarians? Otherwise known as the Peter Pan syndrome…
Perhaps it is to that which Churchill referred, when he asserted that, “the best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter”…
bof:
Love your sourcing! It never occurred to me to use Google drive to share a doc or image.
Fascinating that the Pro v. Con Vietnam War listings in 1968 were balanced about 50-50. I’m certain that wouldn’t be the case today.
Marion Zimmer Bradley on the Pro side? Shock.
Geez. “Galaxy Magazine” June 1968. The first publication of “The Beast That Shouted Love at the World” by Harlan Ellison. A golden age.
Happened to recall a SF about immortals. They could still die by accident. So, the author supposed, our society is built on the supposition that you’re going to die anyway and there are some things worth shortening the time in hand for. Sky diving, some risk, not much, fun for some guys. Racing into a burning building to rescue someone, very high risk but….you do what you have to do and you might get run over by a truck tomorrow anyway.
But the author’s immortals wouldn’t do anything like that, since, if they didn’t, they were immortal.
“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
Geoffery B: “hat is the true attraction of socialism but a yearning for a nanny state run by well-meaning authoritarians?”
Sometimes called a yearning for a “womb with a view.” 🙂
I know nothing of Borges, (I’m not well read.) but I have great fondness for Argentina. A nation with magnificent geography. Rich with all the things humans need to thrive. In the early 1900s it was one of the wealthier countries in the world. (“Only as recently as the turn of the 20th century, Argentina, along with several European and North American economies, was part of an elite club of prosperous countries.”) But socialism has ruined them. They keep muddling through (Never ending debt and inflation problems) because they do have so much natural wealth. Still life is hard there for most citizens. It’s a cautionary tale for any who will learn the lesson.
Still, it’s a great place to visit. If you have never been there, put it on your bucket list.
Richard Aubrey said: Happened to recall a SF about immortals. They could still die by accident.
Reminds me of the “Prophecy of the North,” aka the “Doom of Mandos,” in the Silmarillion, concerning the immortal Noldor and their punishment for the Kinslaying at Alqualondë:
“Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death’s shadow. For though Eru appointed to you to die not in Eä, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you. And those that endure in Middle-earth and come not to Mandos shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret before the younger race that cometh after.”
Bears mentioning that Tolkien was a conservative Catholic. I am not aware of his specific political views or any statements thereon, but in the broad scheme of things he was traditionalist-minded with respect to Western civilization, therefore conservative in his mindset.
One of A. C. Clarke’s SF had a world in which material need had been conquered. People did not live forever, but their consciousness was preserved and put into a new, young body. Went forever, or could.
IIRC boredom was an issue.
I am not one to separate a writer or an artist from his political views, while supporting his writings or art,and thereby improving his finances. If a Leftist, he/she will use some of those revenues against all I hold dear. The same is true of conservative creators.
The cratering of art quality with higher prices puzzles me. Jackson Pollock comes to mind, dumping paint on canvases, earning millions from randomness; plus the dude who made a huge fortune in London more recently–among his “creations” was slicing a dead shark into 1″ wide vertical slices, reassembling them in proper sequence, and putting the cadaver into a formalin-filled tank. Sold for more than $500,000, IIRC.
You cannot successfully straddle the fence. Borges tried, with a communist lover, and that story did not have a happy ending.
As to Argentina, my father was a visiting professor there while I was in high school. He came back, raving to me about the beauty of Argentine women. I am sure he cheated on my mother while there, and surely after his return, as he divorced her some years later in order to pursue younger femmes. Sex hormones, particularly testosterone, are dangerous chemicals!
i met montes bradley sr, in south florida, he is a historian by training, but I come to find out he was also in the music business in argentina, he saw something wicked this way coming back in 2008, his son was relegated off twitter and forced onto mastodon,
Walter M. Miller wrote “Canticle for Leibowitz,” a post-apocalyptic novel which won the Hugo Award in 1961. As it happens, his daughter was in my parochial high school class.
Miller was in the Air Force and flew missions as a tail gunner in WW II. After the war he converted to Catholicism. “Canticle” is the only major example of Catholic science-fiction I can think of.
I don’t see his name on either the Pro or Con Vietnam War list which bof linked. It seems likely to me he was conservative, as most Catholics were in those days, even if they voted for JFK, unless they were out-of-the-box leftists like Dorothy Day. Miller’s main theme, aside from Catholicism, was the cyclical nature of history, as opposed to that of leftist progress.
I read with sorrow in wiki that Miller had PTSD, was prone to depression, became a recluse and committed suicide in 1996.
His final book, a sequel to “Canticle,” has been published: “Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.”
the turning point in argentine history was probably 1930, this was when the depression turfed out the radicals (which were the classical liberals) the generals imposed an authoritarian statist faction, like Rosas 75 years earlier, peron having sampled fascism in europe imposed a system as close to that as possible, he was eventually turfed out, but after a brief interlude, the military came back in 62, with some of the same attitudes as 30 years earlier, part of the peronists, like the left wing of the democrats turned to marxism, thats the montoneros, the others were more eager to suppress, the proceso took the lessons of ‘draining the sea’ to heart from their french instructors, and we know what happened next, the junta overextended themselves in falklands and they were turfed out, the radicals came back in, for a time, replaced by a peronist with classical instincts
menem, who know is black marked like orange man for reasons, the interest rates spikes collapsed the argentine economy, leading to the rise of kirschner,
an associate of the above mentioned montoneros,
compare borges to the one hit prog wonder the nobel committee, picked a month ago, a one hit wonder, about feminism, abortion, socialism, who argued for the murderer of an american army attache, this is how far literature has fallen
From Wiki:
“The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. It was announced by the Swedish Academy on 6 October 2022.”
Balderdash. See miguel’s comment just above about this one-hit prog.
I am convinced that Western civilization is in an irreversible decline. Gramsci rides again!
borges had a sense of the absurd, as did cortazar, one I couldn’t really get into, vasquez gabriel, who wrote that picaresque twist on nostromo, lost the point after uribe derangement, and volpi who wrote that scientific romance, in search of klingsor, has gone back to police procedurals in his native mexico, sigh,
Re: Cortazar
I only know Cortazar from his prose poems. I’ve never forgotten his metaphor “tiny flowering hell”…
_________________________
Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch
Think of this: When they present you with a watch they are
gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a
dungeon of air. They aren’t simply wishing the watch on
you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it’s a
good brand, Swiss, seventeen rubies; they aren’t just giving
this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and
walk along with you. They are giving you–they don’t know
it, it’s terrible that they don’t know it–they are gifting
you with a new, fragile, and precarious piece of yourself,
something that’s yours but not a part of your body, that you
have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny,
furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist. They gift
you with the obsession of looking into jewelry-shop windows
to check the exact time, check the radio announcer, check
the telephone service. They give you the gift of fear,
someone will steal it from you, it’ll fall on the street and
get broken. They give you the gift of your trademark better
than the others, they gift you with the impulse to compare
your watch with other watches. They aren’t giving you a
watch, you are the gift, they’re giving you yourself for the
watch’s birthday.
–Julio Cortazar, “Cronopios and Famas”
i took another crack at hop scotch some years ago,
vargas llosa the other infante terrible, who followed a path like silone, also had more absurd elements, adapting them to screen, like that keanu reeves vehicle?
was just a mess his son has followed up with more historicist type work like about trujillos rise and fall, but the manual for the perfect american idiot was too prescient both here as abroad,
It seems likely to me he was conservative, as most Catholics were in those days . . .
No. The political leanings of American Catholics, especially in the big cities, were quite diverse, running from one end to another across the political spectrum, from radical left to radical right. A working class Irish Catholic husband and father could be theologically conservative — i.e., devout and doctrinaire — but totally committed to social justice views that would now be regarded as progressive/leftist. This created a ferment in the thinking of Catholics which both promoted and was influenced by the changes wrought by Vatican II — which, it should be noted, did not arise overnight out of nothing, fully formed. Likewise the Jesuits did not overnight become the radical leftist order into which they have long since evolved nor did the leftist SJW ideology of the Markyknoll sisters spring suddenly into being, ex nihio as it were The truth is, Catholics (I am one) have a breathtaking ability to compartmentalize their religious and political views, to erect mental firewalls between them. Some would could this rank hypocrisy, others a recognition of the necessity for compromise in living in the world as it is. YMMV.
OK. Most Catholic parents I knew in Daytona in the sixties.
The cratering of art quality with higher prices puzzles me. Jackson Pollock comes to mind, dumping paint on canvases, earning millions from randomness; plus the dude who made a huge fortune in London more recently–among his “creations” was slicing a dead shark into 1″ wide vertical slices…
Cicero:
There’s plenty of crap modern art and literature. I’m no fan of dead shark dude either. However, Jackson Pollock? Them’s fighting words.
Pollock stands IMO as one of the heroic genius painters of abstract expressionism. His work was worth big money towards the end of his life. Earlier, he bartered his work for groceries.
Anyone who believes one can drip paint randomly onto a canvas and create a Pollock, easy-peasy, is terribly mistaken. I see reproductions of his drip paintings and fall into them. They are even more impressive in person.
_________________________________
Pollock’s method was based on his earlier experiments with dripping and splattering paint on ceramic, glass, and canvas on an easel. Now, he laid a large canvas on the floor of his studio barn, nearly covering the space. Using house paint, he dripped, poured, and flung pigment from loaded brushes and sticks while walking around it. He said that this was his way of being “in” his work, acting as a medium in the creative process. For Pollock, who admired the sand painting of the American Indians, summoning webs of color to his canvases and making them balanced, complete, and lyrical, was almost an act of ritual. Like an ancient cave painter, he “signed” Lavender Mist in the upper left and right corners with his handprints.
https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/pollock-number-1-1950-lavender-mist.html
https://www.moca.org/collection/work/number-1
Meanwhile, in Spain, it’s come to this….
“…Spanish Government Celebrates Communist Party With Commemorative Postage Stamp”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/anger-spanish-government-celebrates-communist-party-commemorative-postage-stamp
How many tens (hundreds?) of millions of corpses can fit on the head of a pin…(or, for that matter, on a postage stamp)…
vargas llosa is going back to his youthful bete noire the united fruit company, hachi machi not this carp again,
Re: bof @11/12 7:09 PM and huxley @11/12 7:51 PM
I strongly second your recommendations of R. A. Lafferty. He was a brilliant writer. Personally I prefer his short stories though his novels are well worth reading.
Thank you, bof, for the link to that Internet archive of Lafferty’s stories. I have some paperback collections of his (“Nine Hundred Grandmothers”) but it is great to have another source.
And, huxley, I agree with you about Lafferty’s “…wild tale tale streak…”. Have you read his novel “Space Chantey”? It is a retelling of The Odyssey as it might have been written by Homer if he had been an American master of the tall tale writing for a ’60s science fiction pulp magazine.
huxley @ 11/13 12:36 PM re Walter A. Miller.
Miller was a very sad case. After “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was published he suffered from severe writer’s block (which may be why he did not sign either of the pro or anti Vietnam war listings). He published nothing more before he committed suicide in the ’90s. He produced a respectable number of short stories in the ’50s and early ’60s that are well worth reading. I did read “St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman” when it was published posthumously in the ’90s (it was completed by another writer). I do not recommend it. It struck me as a classic example of why it is very seldom a good idea for a publisher to try to profit off of the work that a writer left in his desk drawer.
As for Catholic science fiction writers, you might look at the work of Anthony Boucher. His story “The Quest for St. Aquin” (sp?) clearly reflects his Catholic faith.
Re: Space Chantey
John+F.+MacMichael:
No, I haven’t read that one. Sounds like fun.
Reminds me of Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream” about an alternative time stream in which Hitler emigrated to the US after WW I and became a pulp SF writer instead of the leader of Nazi Germany. Great satire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream
IrishOtter49 @ 11/13 10:43 AM about J. R. R. Tolkien’s political views, I think it is clear that Tolkien had a deep loathing for the modern Leviathan state under any party label. In a letter to his son Christopher in 1943 he wrote:
“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”
huxley @ 5:09 PM, yes “Space Chantey” is a lot of fun. I don’t know off the top of my head if it is currently in print but second hand copies can be found.
Now I have a cat walking across my desk (and on my keyboard) to remind me it is time for his mid-afternoon treat so I must attend to that!
Re: Walter Miller
John+F.+MacMichael:
Ralph Ellison (“Invisible Man”) and Harper Lee (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) also suffered terrible writer’s block after masterpiece first novels.
Truman Capote, Harper Lee’s childhood friend BTW, got further down the path with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” but suffered a similar fate. Though I think he made a deal with the devil on the second book. (Not entirely joking.)
And an ever-so-polite goddamn for Hemingway’s heirs for publishing “The Garden of Eden,” which should have been left in a file cabinet.
sometimes their discretion in choosing projects is inadequate, some of volpi’s later works like age of ash that goes from the 60s into the 00s, in europe russia and america, is derivative same with gabriel vasquez
they do try for a novel that involves ideas like tom wolves 90s cri de couer, man in full wasn’t very satisfying,
I just checked Amazon and was pleased to find that “Space Chantey” is currently in print. Now, anyone who wants to buy be sure to use Neo’s Amazon link!
John+F.+MacMichael on November 13, 2022 at 5:18 pm: Maybe. If you are right, and leaving aside for the moment possibly conflicting American and European (esp. British) notions of what it means to be a conservative, I would say that Tolkien is philosophically quite conservative (with a small “c”). In that passage from the letter to his son he succinctly articulates the belief that people should be left alone, to the extent possible, by government and associated forms of authority. Which idea is foundational to conservative philosophy.
These days any Christian who can recite the Creed without crossing his/her fingers (conventional pronouns required) and is a classic liberal or libertarian is at least a small-c conservative.
Tolkien’s literary friend, C.S. Lewis, meets that standard as well.
_________________________________
In “Present Concerns,” Lewis admitted, “I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people who believe advertisements, and think in catch-words and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.”
https://www.cslewis.com/lewis-and-politics/
huxley:
I’d call Lafferty’s novel Past Master a major example of Catholic science fiction; the protagonist, Thomas More, is a canonized saint of the Catholic Church. Lafferty was a devout Catholic, and his Catholic world-view pervades his writing.
Richard Aubrey said: Happened to recall a SF book about immortals. They could still die by accident.
You must be thinking of a book I just finished reading. Poul Anderson’s “The Boat of a Million Years”.
The immortals in the story (most of them), once realizing their immortality, would become very cautious, preserving their seemingly endless life to no purpose. They were afraid to love because they would eventually lose those they loved.
IrishOtter49 (Roughcoat) on November 13, 2022 at 8:00 pm.
I think your description of Tolkien as a small ‘c’ conservative is quite on the mark.
Regarding Nobel Prizes and politics, here is an article from The Guardian. Nobel winner Pablo Neruda was almost denied prize because of odes to Stalin.
Neruda got the Nobel Prize in spite of hack poetry that praised Stalin, murderer of millions. Borges wrote no hack poetry in praise of the Junta.