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The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict
Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was an active participant in the intellectual, social, and political contests of our era. This memoir, written dispassionately in the third person, is a lively account of the literary and political controversies of more than half a century.
- GenresBiography
497 pages, Hardcover
First published June 28, 1995
6 people are currently reading
127 people want to read
About the author
Russell Kirk
186 books305 followersFor more than forty years, Russell Kirk was in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his time. He is the author of some thirty-two books, hundreds of periodical essays, and many short stories. Both Time and Newsweek have described him as one of America’s leading thinkers, and The New York Times acknowledged the scale of his influence when in 1998 it wrote that Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar movement.”
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 8, 2021
This is an unusual memoir, as Russell Kirk narrates his intellectual life in the third person. It is a fascinating account of the intellectual currents that would later merge into post-WWII conservatism (which is to be distinguished from the banal variety today). True conservatism means the defense of Permanent Things. Modern day conservatism is simply libertarianism that is too scared to go all the way.
Kirk does a great job describing his studies at St Andrews, Scotland. No doubt it provided fodder for his ghost stories. He also shows the big difference between real scholars and American university guns for hire.
“The St Andrews scholars of that generation were truly learned men who reda, who thought, who were civilization incarnate…Kirk reflected that some of his American professorial colleagues had no books in their homes except free copies of textbooks” (88).
Following Kirk, we should understand our goal for society should be something like a “mannered aristocracy.” In one devastating but undeveloped remark, Kirk notes that “Many Americans labor under the illusion that they exist in a classless society–and are startled if informed that the classless society was the goal of Karl Marx” (110). Kirk should have drawn the logical conclusion: if you don’t believe in some form of aristocracy and cultured nobility, you are at root an egalitarian.
Kirk gives us a neat overview of the beginning of modern American conservatism overlapping with the Eisenhower generation. As he was always wont to point out, conservatism is the negation of ideology. It does not negate, however, conservative impulses (143).
“If Communism is the inversion of Christianity, [then] Ayn Rand, reacting against practical communism, negated the negation” (144).
Among his more interesting acquaintances was the Archduke Otto von Hapsburg of the old imperial dynasty. Archduke Otto’s family can best summarize the goal of conservatism and why it should never be identified with small-govt American conservatism. “When Theodore Roosevelt inquired of Franz Joseph how he saw his imperial place in modern times, the Emperor answered, “To protect my people from the government” (208). That’s monarchy in a nutshell. We are too much infected with the Whig notion of progress to really understand this. As a general rule, monarchs saw themselves as last-stand efforts to save the people from monied interests (or in our times, technological experts). No monarch ever dreamed of the power over a people that Anthony Fauci has.
As with many of the older books by Eerdmans, this is bound with chains of iron. The spine of the book will never crack. Unfortunately, you might get carpal tunnel syndrome from reading it.
Kirk does a great job describing his studies at St Andrews, Scotland. No doubt it provided fodder for his ghost stories. He also shows the big difference between real scholars and American university guns for hire.
“The St Andrews scholars of that generation were truly learned men who reda, who thought, who were civilization incarnate…Kirk reflected that some of his American professorial colleagues had no books in their homes except free copies of textbooks” (88).
Following Kirk, we should understand our goal for society should be something like a “mannered aristocracy.” In one devastating but undeveloped remark, Kirk notes that “Many Americans labor under the illusion that they exist in a classless society–and are startled if informed that the classless society was the goal of Karl Marx” (110). Kirk should have drawn the logical conclusion: if you don’t believe in some form of aristocracy and cultured nobility, you are at root an egalitarian.
Kirk gives us a neat overview of the beginning of modern American conservatism overlapping with the Eisenhower generation. As he was always wont to point out, conservatism is the negation of ideology. It does not negate, however, conservative impulses (143).
“If Communism is the inversion of Christianity, [then] Ayn Rand, reacting against practical communism, negated the negation” (144).
Among his more interesting acquaintances was the Archduke Otto von Hapsburg of the old imperial dynasty. Archduke Otto’s family can best summarize the goal of conservatism and why it should never be identified with small-govt American conservatism. “When Theodore Roosevelt inquired of Franz Joseph how he saw his imperial place in modern times, the Emperor answered, “To protect my people from the government” (208). That’s monarchy in a nutshell. We are too much infected with the Whig notion of progress to really understand this. As a general rule, monarchs saw themselves as last-stand efforts to save the people from monied interests (or in our times, technological experts). No monarch ever dreamed of the power over a people that Anthony Fauci has.
As with many of the older books by Eerdmans, this is bound with chains of iron. The spine of the book will never crack. Unfortunately, you might get carpal tunnel syndrome from reading it.
October 11, 2013
Always Kirk...always a conservative...always enlightening.
August 25, 2016
Kirk wrote his auto-biography in the third person in imitation of Henry Adams toward the end of his life. Sounds somewhat pretentious at first, then the pace picks up with an interesting story of a life well-lived.
Kirk came from humble roots. Born in Michigan to a bank manager who fought off robbers at gunpoint, Kirk developed into a leading literary figure of the 20th century. His family was eccentric, practicing spiritualism in the parlor. Kirk believed that his relatives continued to haunt his ancestral home which he remained in his whole life.
Kirk read precociously in youth then attended college at Michigan State. He joined the army where he was stationed in the desert, then Florida, where he witnessed the military experiment with chemical weapons on troops. He managed classified documents due to his college education.
When he left the army he went to Duke where he received his Masters. His thesis was on John Randolph of Roanoke, the great statesman from Virginia. He returned to Michigan where he taught at Michigan State, which he either called Behemoth University or Cow College.
He left for St. Andrew’s University in Scotland to study for his Doctor of Letters. He was the first American to receive the degree. His dissertation was the manuscript for The Conservative Mind.
His dissertation director was an old British type of aristocratic Professor who refused to read the work until it was published. According to Kirk, he read everything and wrote nothing.
Kirk was “classed” by introductions to famous estates in Scotland. He walked the whole country, drinking drams with the locals or exploring the local folk legends.
When he returned to the States he published The Conservative Mind, which became a best-seller after positive reviews from important papers like the New York Times.
Kirk's literary success led to a political career outside of the academic establishment. He worked with Buckley at National Review as well as on political campaigns from Goldwater to Reagan.
He debated Norman Thomas. He traveled to the Berlin Wall, where he was almost shot for attempting to place a foot on Soviet soil.
He later was baptized when married to his Roman Catholic wife, then was commissioned to work on the Shroud of Turin for research.
An eventful life, Kirk reports on many interesting characters from the time. He recommended a book by T.S. Eliot to Richard Nixon, who his wife embarrassed by reciting a line from Pilgrim’s Progress, “At the Devil’s booth all items are bought and sold”.
He knew Flannery O’Conner, who called him Humpty Dumpty. He corresponded with T.S. Eliot whom he considered an ally and friend. He believed in witches. He dealt with the CIA once.
Some interesting facts Kirk reveals that only an insider would know. For instance, Lyndon Johnson apparently had a man murdered (“hit” in Mafia talk) who crossed him in Texas before ascending to the Presidency.
Kirk wrote profusely, from textbooks to Ghost Stories, for which he was awarded first prize by the Dracula Society.
Kirk was an interesting character. His books of history stand the test of time in terms of well-written classics of political thought.
Kirk came from humble roots. Born in Michigan to a bank manager who fought off robbers at gunpoint, Kirk developed into a leading literary figure of the 20th century. His family was eccentric, practicing spiritualism in the parlor. Kirk believed that his relatives continued to haunt his ancestral home which he remained in his whole life.
Kirk read precociously in youth then attended college at Michigan State. He joined the army where he was stationed in the desert, then Florida, where he witnessed the military experiment with chemical weapons on troops. He managed classified documents due to his college education.
When he left the army he went to Duke where he received his Masters. His thesis was on John Randolph of Roanoke, the great statesman from Virginia. He returned to Michigan where he taught at Michigan State, which he either called Behemoth University or Cow College.
He left for St. Andrew’s University in Scotland to study for his Doctor of Letters. He was the first American to receive the degree. His dissertation was the manuscript for The Conservative Mind.
His dissertation director was an old British type of aristocratic Professor who refused to read the work until it was published. According to Kirk, he read everything and wrote nothing.
Kirk was “classed” by introductions to famous estates in Scotland. He walked the whole country, drinking drams with the locals or exploring the local folk legends.
When he returned to the States he published The Conservative Mind, which became a best-seller after positive reviews from important papers like the New York Times.
Kirk's literary success led to a political career outside of the academic establishment. He worked with Buckley at National Review as well as on political campaigns from Goldwater to Reagan.
He debated Norman Thomas. He traveled to the Berlin Wall, where he was almost shot for attempting to place a foot on Soviet soil.
He later was baptized when married to his Roman Catholic wife, then was commissioned to work on the Shroud of Turin for research.
An eventful life, Kirk reports on many interesting characters from the time. He recommended a book by T.S. Eliot to Richard Nixon, who his wife embarrassed by reciting a line from Pilgrim’s Progress, “At the Devil’s booth all items are bought and sold”.
He knew Flannery O’Conner, who called him Humpty Dumpty. He corresponded with T.S. Eliot whom he considered an ally and friend. He believed in witches. He dealt with the CIA once.
Some interesting facts Kirk reveals that only an insider would know. For instance, Lyndon Johnson apparently had a man murdered (“hit” in Mafia talk) who crossed him in Texas before ascending to the Presidency.
Kirk wrote profusely, from textbooks to Ghost Stories, for which he was awarded first prize by the Dracula Society.
Kirk was an interesting character. His books of history stand the test of time in terms of well-written classics of political thought.
August 28, 2021
I discovered Russell Kirk last year through a lecture by J. Wesley McDonald (considered by Kirk one of his "disciples" p463) on his book about his mentor, and went on to read his "Concise Guide to Conservatism" and his masterful "The Conservative Mind". "The Sword of Imagination" is therefore my third book by him, and I sincerely hope it won't be the last (I already have several more on my shelves, and "The Conservative Mind" will certainly deserve at least a second reading.)
It is an autobiography, which the author oddly chose to write in the third person, referring to himself as "Kirk" (which to this reader, for most of the 476 pages, was a bit jarring, because Kirk, for me, is, well, Captain Kirk, so my mental movie version of the book occasionally starred William Shatner.)
The book is very hard to summarise, as it is mostly a patchwork of recollections, portraits, vignettes, musings and analyses, organised of course in a broad chronological order, but with no real method beyond that, probably because that's the way lives are, and there's only so much a book can do to give them a semblance of structure. It is not an intellectual autobiography, though there is some of that obviously, and what there is of it is rather undramatic: Kirk does not seem to have experienced any major leaps in his thinking or any earth-shattering intellectual crises. It's almost as if, by the time he published his first book (actually his master's thesis), he had already accepted all the major tenets of his worldview, which may be explained by the prodigious amount of serious reading he had already done by that time. He published the first edition of "The Conservative Mind" (actually his PhD thesis) at the age of 35, and remained a conservative, and the same kind of conservative, for the rest of his life (he died the same year he completed these Memoirs.) Similarly, he converted to Catholicism at the reasonably young age of 46, and spent the rest of his life a devout churchgoer, with no apparent doubts or anxieties (though he was very disappointed with and very critical of post Vatican II reforms, much like Evelyn Waugh, John Senior or J.R.R. Tolkien.) Some people are like that. I don't know how they do it. My own intellectual life has been full of twists and turns, to the point that I have almost ceased to consider myself an idiot for believing the things I used to believe or for not arriving at my latest conclusions faster.
Kirk devotes much of the book to his courtship of his wife-to-be, Annette Courtemanche, their marital bliss, and her own later accomplishments. He was 46 when he married her, she about half that age, and a great beauty, as he never tires of repeating (she was also a Catholic and a conservative activist, so the attraction was not purely physical.) His example shows that a large age gap is perfectly compatible with the happiest of marriages, for did enjoy that too, recognising more than once that he lived a charmed life. (I myself was once attracted to a much older woman, but as she was a lesbian who died four years before my birth, nothing much came out of it.)
Kirk has many anecdotes to tell about presidential candidates (such as Barry Goldwater) or actual presidents (including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) he was personally acquainted with, so his autobiography doubles as a political history of the U.S. in the latter half of the twentieth century (I particularly enjoyed his scathing portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson.)
One thing that made me feel very close to him is his description of his family house at Mecosta, Michigan, as "The Last Homely House", a chapter title I immediately recognised as a Tolkien reference, which he fully endorsed. He saw himself as the welcoming Elrond of Rivendell, wielding not a sword of steel (though he has one such hanging on his wall) but the sword of the imagination.
All in all, this was a very rich and enjoyable read. Kirk was as well-travelled as he was well-read, and he was friends with a remarkable gallery of fascinating characters, on both sides of the Atlantic, from bum to leader of the free world. In addition, his skill at writing ghost stories is often put to good use when describing the old mansions he loved, or the more hairy moments of his own life (the abduction of his wife at gunpoint by a glue-sniffing, trigger-happy lost girl was particularly gripping.)
It is an autobiography, which the author oddly chose to write in the third person, referring to himself as "Kirk" (which to this reader, for most of the 476 pages, was a bit jarring, because Kirk, for me, is, well, Captain Kirk, so my mental movie version of the book occasionally starred William Shatner.)
The book is very hard to summarise, as it is mostly a patchwork of recollections, portraits, vignettes, musings and analyses, organised of course in a broad chronological order, but with no real method beyond that, probably because that's the way lives are, and there's only so much a book can do to give them a semblance of structure. It is not an intellectual autobiography, though there is some of that obviously, and what there is of it is rather undramatic: Kirk does not seem to have experienced any major leaps in his thinking or any earth-shattering intellectual crises. It's almost as if, by the time he published his first book (actually his master's thesis), he had already accepted all the major tenets of his worldview, which may be explained by the prodigious amount of serious reading he had already done by that time. He published the first edition of "The Conservative Mind" (actually his PhD thesis) at the age of 35, and remained a conservative, and the same kind of conservative, for the rest of his life (he died the same year he completed these Memoirs.) Similarly, he converted to Catholicism at the reasonably young age of 46, and spent the rest of his life a devout churchgoer, with no apparent doubts or anxieties (though he was very disappointed with and very critical of post Vatican II reforms, much like Evelyn Waugh, John Senior or J.R.R. Tolkien.) Some people are like that. I don't know how they do it. My own intellectual life has been full of twists and turns, to the point that I have almost ceased to consider myself an idiot for believing the things I used to believe or for not arriving at my latest conclusions faster.
Kirk devotes much of the book to his courtship of his wife-to-be, Annette Courtemanche, their marital bliss, and her own later accomplishments. He was 46 when he married her, she about half that age, and a great beauty, as he never tires of repeating (she was also a Catholic and a conservative activist, so the attraction was not purely physical.) His example shows that a large age gap is perfectly compatible with the happiest of marriages, for did enjoy that too, recognising more than once that he lived a charmed life. (I myself was once attracted to a much older woman, but as she was a lesbian who died four years before my birth, nothing much came out of it.)
Kirk has many anecdotes to tell about presidential candidates (such as Barry Goldwater) or actual presidents (including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) he was personally acquainted with, so his autobiography doubles as a political history of the U.S. in the latter half of the twentieth century (I particularly enjoyed his scathing portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson.)
One thing that made me feel very close to him is his description of his family house at Mecosta, Michigan, as "The Last Homely House", a chapter title I immediately recognised as a Tolkien reference, which he fully endorsed. He saw himself as the welcoming Elrond of Rivendell, wielding not a sword of steel (though he has one such hanging on his wall) but the sword of the imagination.
All in all, this was a very rich and enjoyable read. Kirk was as well-travelled as he was well-read, and he was friends with a remarkable gallery of fascinating characters, on both sides of the Atlantic, from bum to leader of the free world. In addition, his skill at writing ghost stories is often put to good use when describing the old mansions he loved, or the more hairy moments of his own life (the abduction of his wife at gunpoint by a glue-sniffing, trigger-happy lost girl was particularly gripping.)
July 3, 2021
I want to preface this by saying that I am a liberal who admires the life and work of Russell Kirk. I live down the road from Mecosta and picked up this book in hopes of learning a little more about the man who lived in the grandest house in town. I had previously read some of his short stories, so I wanted to learn how he turned his adventures into fictional stories.
I didn’t just get a autobiography of this great man of letters, but I also learned about international history and policy along the way. This was much more than a memoir. Just as Russell used to walk miles and miles each day, I feel like I have walked through miles of history and have come out on the other side having gained so much knowledge.
I will definitely be reading more books by Kirk in the future.
I didn’t just get a autobiography of this great man of letters, but I also learned about international history and policy along the way. This was much more than a memoir. Just as Russell used to walk miles and miles each day, I feel like I have walked through miles of history and have come out on the other side having gained so much knowledge.
I will definitely be reading more books by Kirk in the future.
March 18, 2025
An interesting and important work to understand the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century. The passages discussing his courtship of his wife, and their time in marriage at their home at Piety Hill with their girls and many visitors were fun and fascinating. With his third person narrative, erudite, language, and references to heady literature, he was sometimes hard to follow, but overall an entertaining and enjoyable read.
October 15, 2009
The memoirs of an old-school conservative man of letters, writing of himself in the third person. He took up no permanent academic post, but through a combination of prolific diligence and towering intellect supported himself and his family, as well as a steady stream of charity cases. He wrote columns, published in highbrow quarterlies, lectured, wrote books on current affairs, and for a change of pace also wrote prize-winning stories of the supernatural. He came from fairly humble beginnings, but rose to national prominence among conservative intellectuals, and seems quite pleased with his success. Perhaps he has good reason. He frequently mentions his lack of wealth, but he managed to live in great comfort, maintain a large house with many visitors, and travel very frequently to Europe and other places, besides performing substantial works of charity, so he couldn't have been too badly off. He was primarily concerned with defending the Permanent Things (society, custom, religion) from the attacks of reckless innovators. He is especially dismayed by the deterioration of higher education since the GI Bill opened the floodgates to so many who did not have talent for or interest in abstract thought. He is far from doctrinaire: has has no patience with Ayn Rand and other Libertarians. But he does seem to have a knack for making friends with blue-bloods: assorted British peers, Italian nobility, some Eastern European counts, the rightful Emperor of Austria. The list of politicians he admired for their intellectual honesty shows now non-doctrinaire he was: it includes Herbert Hoover, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Dick Gregory. At the time of writing (1994) he had implausibly turned his support to Pat Buchanan. One wonders if he had started to lose his grip, or if Buchanan is different from the way he has been portrayed in the mainstream media. That would hardly be surprising, I suppose.
March 5, 2011
This book is an excellent introduction to the thought of Russell Kirk. It is entertaining (especially for an autobiography) and doesn't get too dry. It is more than recitation of facts from Kirk's life. Like any good author, he paints wonderful scenery around the events of his life. I most enjoyed the section in which he describes his interaction with various leaders from the middle to late twentieth century. He tells of meeting men like Donald Davidson, Richard Nixon, Christopher Dawson, and other giants of that period. Not to be cliched, but reading this bio was like talking to Dr. Kirk in person over a great meal. It is definitely worth the time.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews