Writers & Poets 232
Eric Miller on The Lost Cause of the Midwest
Devon, PA. If you have not encountered Eric Miller's savage indignation elsewhere, here is a fine place to start: his review of David S. Brown's Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern…
The American Aesop
Hillsdale, MI. It is said that Aesop, despite making all his characters animals and thus avoiding being Nathan to his contemporary Davids, was finally thrown over a cliff by the…
A Prayer for Livia Grace
Devon, PA. This week marks my daughter's third birthday. As a way of tossing a little Front Porch confetti her way, I reprint here "A Prayer for Livia Grace at…
Nowheresville
This post is dangerously close to turf already claimed by Bill Kaufman and Jason Peters. But the appeal of Richard Russo is so strong that if FPR readers do not…
Novel, Myth, Reality: An Anatomy of Make-Believe
For Maureen Drdak, If she will accept it as part of our good conversation. Devon, PA. I shall be returning to the following subject frequently in the next few weeks: the need…
Some Permanent Things
Devon, PA. Here is a poem of mine that has just appeared in the poetry journal The Dark Horse and on Ernest Hilbert's ever amusing daily dose of literature and…
Elmer Kelton, RIP
BURNED--OVER DISTRICT, NY---Elmer Kelton, the superb Texas novelist, died Saturday. In 2006 I visited Mr. Kelton in his San Angelo home; herewith, via the late American Enterprise, the result: Elmer…
Crolier Than Thou
Almost lost among the bicentennial celebrations of Lincoln’s and Darwin’s births is the centenary of Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life, a child of theirs and one of the…
Voices Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, Lasch, and Bradford
The following is excerpted from Paul Gottfried's Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers, recently published by ISI Books. I met Christopher Lasch for the first…
Philip Bess’s Pizza
Last week, Philip Bess - the noted Notre Dame University scholar of architecture - delivered a lecture in Washington under the auspice of the group "Conservatism on Tap." Bess's lecture…
Still’s “River of Earth”
Given domination of the Commonwealth’s institutions by progressivist ideology, it’s unsurprising how few Kentucky students and teachers are familiar with poet-novelist James Still and River of Earth (1940). After all,…
Lookin’ Out My Back Door; Or Sounds From Boo Radley’s Porch
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---Caleb has proposed this beautiful rendition of “Our Town” by Iris DeMent as the Front Porch theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI (Anyone not moved by it is either dead or,…
An FPR Symposium: Shop Class as Soul Craft, by Matthew Crawford
During the course of this entire week, FPR will devote its main pages to a symposium on the recent book Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew Crawford. The book…
The Tacit Dimension of Shop Class
Kearneysville, WV. Whenever I pick up a book dealing with ways of knowing, I invariably flip to the index to see if the author refers to the work of Michael…
Gumbo as Soul Craft
When I read “Shop Class As Soulcraft,” I initially felt like a twerp. I’m the guy who was raised in the country by a father who tried to teach him…
Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms
Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning – an imaginative rendering of our…
Ray Bradbury of Illinois
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---"Here comes the summer!" as the Undertones rejoiced. The Muckdogs' home opener is next Friday, and two days later the sun makes the season official. In preparation, today I checked…
With Malice Toward None (Well, Maybe Toward the Thought Police)
Check out this exceptionally fine speech http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-maxwell/on-the-occasion-of-presid_b_212674.html by film director Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg, Gods and Generals), who refused to allow William ("inherited utility monopoly wealth means never having to say…
Stormin’ Norman, Decentralist
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--One of the precious and few political campaigns in recent years to embody Front Porch (or, rather, front stoop) principles was Norman Mailer's 1969 candidacy for mayor of…
The Speech of Work and the Work of Speech
Devon, PA. Outside of certain, very particular, Christian circles, one seldom hears much about man's fallen nature anymore; and yet, as G.K. Chesterton once observed, original sin may be the…
Ohio’s Backyard Scientist
"Would that thou couldst last for aye, Merry, ever-merry May!" William D. Gallagher (the forgotten Ohio poet) BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--The clouds of April have scattered, so look skyward (while keeping…
Canon Fodder I: Uncle Remus
New Castle, Kentucky. We can't talk about the economy all the time, or anyway I can't. Today instead I want to sing a song of the literature of place--and my refrain is,…
By the Book
My piece, titled as above, on the future of publishing, and particularly "conservative" publishing, is up now for subscribers at the American Conservative. You should subscribe. It's worth it --…
A Call to Arms
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The review below was first published in the Intercollegiate Review in the fall of 2006. Look Homeward, America was my first introduction to the work of the…
