A Life of Flannery O’Connor, by Brad Gooch Mary Flannery O’Connor described herself as a 13th century Catholic and she was right. Surprisingly in an age given to nihilism, progressivism, and consolidation this traditional, Southern, cerebral, talented and orthodox Catholic is among America’s most important writers. There are any number of literary, cultural, and psychological [...]
Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor and the Language of Apocalypse, by Edward Kessler. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, edited by C. Ralph Stephens. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. A recent review in the New York Times employed the phrase, the Flannery O’Connor industry,” in [...]
The rise of techno-capitalism has signaled the triumph of the “bourgeois family” and the demise of the “traditional” family. Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas said that economist Adam Smith was well aware that the “weakening of familial ties would increase the necessity of sympathy between strangers and result in cooperative forms of behavior that had not [...]
Though written in the early twentieth century, Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Robert E. Lee contains a vital message for the young men and women of today. Lee, especially as presented by Freeman, provides an excellent model for young people to emulate. “Teach him he must deny himself,” said Lee. That was the general’s advice [...]
Richard Weaver In his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Adams tells us that he was born into one world in the nineteenth century and lived on into another. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1838, he lived to see the emergent twentieth century—a world in which a secular Dynamo replaced Venus and the [...]
Berry’s economic program, what he calls the “little economy,” is a smaller wheel in the larger motion of the “Great Economy.” To understand the former, it is vital to grasp the latter. In the following, then, Berry’s vision of the broader drama of human action is set forth, followed by a presentation of his narrower [...]
M.E. Bradford It is a paradox of our times that close observers of the American literary scene residing beyond our borders receive, from the self-appointed guardians of “high” culture and the life of the mind within this country, so little really useful direction or assistance in identifying what American writing is worthwhile or [...]
A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. (La Salle, IL: Sherwood Sugden & Company Publishers, 1979). Cited in the text as Guide. Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1985). Cited in the text as Remembering. A Worthy Company: The Dramatic Story of [...]
Wendell Berry In this lecture Mr. Berry challenges our assumptions about the economy, our culture and our place in the world. He also asks profound questions regarding our connections with each other and the environment. Will we seek to escape our limits and reconnect with nature, our families, our neighbors and our own [...]
While studying at the University of Dallas in the early ’90’s, I was taught and influenced by a few notable professors, such as Janet Smith, Frederick Wilhelmsen, Wayne Ambler, Leo Paul de Alvarez, along with a few others. Following Prof. Wilhelmsen after many class lectures back to his office or at least to the university mall, I [...]
The Southern Critics: An Anthology Edited by Glenn C. Arbery, ISI Books A Southern critic by any other name would be an Agrarian or Fugitive. Four of the writers featured in this book defended their way of life against modernity 80 years ago at Vanderbilt University in “I’ll Take My Stand.” The others given voice here [...]
The serious writer of today lives in a very much secularized world, a world of measurable objects, a world of space and time considerations, a world that must be studied not only rationally, but scientifically. Now, this situation did not suddenly come about in the middle of the seventeenth century. It has been developing since [...]
According to John C. Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson served as the “Republican Patriarch,” the political thinker who had incorporated the republican understanding of liberty into a theory of federal relationships most conducive to the life of the community and political order. John Caldwell Calhoun inherited the social and political tradition of his South Atlantic world, confirmed [...]
John C. Calhoun Click here for Part I Put aside this literal biblical history. A man abstracted from a community and from history, Calhoun believed, in the vein of Aristotle, is not a man at all, but a mere animal. All men, Calhoun argued, are born into varying states of authority—the authority of [...]