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Norman Podhoretz "is a thinker and writer and polemicist, a
geopolitician and student of religious ideas, an autobiographer of
genius, a man who reacts sharply to the news as it pours from the
press and the airwaves, who thinks deeply, angrily, and sincerely
about it, and commits his thoughts into vivid and penetrative
argument."
By examining the ways in which the conservative vision of the world informs certain modes of literary study and has been treated in various works of literature throughout the ages, this book seeks to recover conservatism as a viable, rigorous, intellectually sound method of critical inquiry. While it stops short of promoting political conservatism as an antidote to the dominant progressive strain of today's university, it recognizes literature's transformative power as an artistic reflection of the universal human condition. In this way, it operates against the grain of today's prevailing approaches to literature, particularly the postmodernist wave that has employed literature as a recorder of injustice rather than as evidence of artistic achievement. Therefore, the agenda is restorative, if not revolutionary, returning literature to its place as the center of a true liberal arts curriculum, one that celebrates human freedom, the unimpeded pursuit of truth, and the preservation of civilized life. Perhaps this book's greatest service is that it seeks to define conservatism in highly distinct contexts. Its authors collectively reveal that the conservative ideal lacks formulaic expression, and is thus more richly complex than it is often credited for. Conservatism is not easily defined, and by presenting such divergent expressions of it, the essays here belie the reductive generalizations so common throughout the academy. Ultimately, the conservative ideal may have much more in common with the stated goals of higher learning than has previously been acknowledged. Thus, while this book in no way seeks to directly apply conservatism to curricular matters, it does revive a competing vision of how knowledge is transmitted through art and history, while also affirming the ways in which literature functions as a forum for ideas.
This is the first biography of the Jewish-American intellectual Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor of the influential magazine Commentary. As both an editor and a writer, he spearheaded the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and - after he 'broke ranks' - the neoconservative response. For years he defined what was at stake in the struggle against communism; recently he has nerved America for a new struggle against jihadist Islam; always he has given substance to debates over the function of religion, ethics, and the arts in our society. The turning point of his life occurred, at the age of forty near a farmhouse in upstate New York, in a mystic clarification. It compelled him to 'unlearn' much that he had earlier been taught to value, and it also made him enemies. Revealing the private as well as the public man, Thomas L. Jeffers chronicles a heroically coherent life.
This is the first biography of the Jewish-American intellectual Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor of the influential magazine Commentary. As both an editor and a writer, he spearheaded the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and - after he 'broke ranks' - the neoconservative response. For years he defined what was at stake in the struggle against communism; recently he has nerved America for a new struggle against jihadist Islam; always he has given substance to debates over the function of religion, ethics, and the arts in our society. The turning point of his life occurred, at the age of forty near a farmhouse in upstate New York, in a mystic clarification. It compelled him to 'unlearn' much that he had earlier been taught to value, and it also made him enemies. Revealing the private as well as the public man, Thomas L. Jeffers chronicles a heroically coherent life.
The essays in this collection all treat in some way the conservative's vision of society as it is variously manifested in literary art, its scholarship, and its transmission through classical modes of liberal learning. Responding in part to the postmodernist turn in literary study, Literature and the Conservative Ideal examines the ways in which conservatism has been depicted in literature, as well as how its tendencies might restore literature's potential as an artistic reflection of the universal human condition.
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