I'm under the impression Chesterton was claimed by the Republicans years back, although that may no longer be a thing
He was a Catholic convert and I think of him as personally conservative (with the usual idiosyncracies—his anti-Semitism was worse than average for the time, but he thought eugenics was pure quack science and publicly said as much; it's unfair of me to wonder if he would have been able to reconcile these facts had he lived into/through World War II rather than just the initial stages, but I am curious if he would have been able to keep up his ludicrous characterization of Nazism as an ultimately Jewish philosophy or if reality would have started to get through), but I didn't know he was a Republican darling. Unless you feel that's revealed something in his work that you're no longer comfortable claiming, I don't see it as an impediment to putting him on your list.
and I'm pretty sure I recently saw the Bulgakov on someone's list of "Books Men Keep Telling Me to Read," which worried me that it's turning into a pretentious-douchebro shibboleth.
Confound them if it is! The Master and Margarita is an intensely important book to me and I'm not giving it up just because pretentious dudebros like it. I'd have to jettison many of my comfort movies if I felt that way.
I feel very strongly about this subject. Don't cede the things you love to people who misuse them. Don't let other people define the terms. I have complex feelings about my country, but I'm not going to agree with Trump and his White House that I am not a real American and therefore nothing I feel or say or require matters.
[edit] Sorry for the parenthesis-dump about Chesterton; his opinions about Nazism are one of the biographical facts that sticks with me because what the flipping heck.
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Date: 2018-03-01 05:54 pm (UTC)From:He was a Catholic convert and I think of him as personally conservative (with the usual idiosyncracies—his anti-Semitism was worse than average for the time, but he thought eugenics was pure quack science and publicly said as much; it's unfair of me to wonder if he would have been able to reconcile these facts had he lived into/through World War II rather than just the initial stages, but I am curious if he would have been able to keep up his ludicrous characterization of Nazism as an ultimately Jewish philosophy or if reality would have started to get through), but I didn't know he was a Republican darling. Unless you feel that's revealed something in his work that you're no longer comfortable claiming, I don't see it as an impediment to putting him on your list.
and I'm pretty sure I recently saw the Bulgakov on someone's list of "Books Men Keep Telling Me to Read," which worried me that it's turning into a pretentious-douchebro shibboleth.
Confound them if it is! The Master and Margarita is an intensely important book to me and I'm not giving it up just because pretentious dudebros like it. I'd have to jettison many of my comfort movies if I felt that way.
I feel very strongly about this subject. Don't cede the things you love to people who misuse them. Don't let other people define the terms. I have complex feelings about my country, but I'm not going to agree with Trump and his White House that I am not a real American and therefore nothing I feel or say or require matters.
[edit] Sorry for the parenthesis-dump about Chesterton; his opinions about Nazism are one of the biographical facts that sticks with me because what the flipping heck.