James Bradburne, new Director of Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera © James O’Mara
Recent links of note:
‘The Contemporary Novel’: an essay by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot, The Times Literary Supplement
Recently unearthed by the TLS, this essay, which had previously appeared only in an obscure French translation, offers Eliot’s characteristically pointed thoughts on the state of the then-contemporary novel. In the modern style Eliot discerns the malicious influence of “psychology” on the novel, leading to an increased perversion of traditional forms. He reserves his most vicious invective for D. H. Lawrence, calling him a “demoniac…with a gospel” whose characters, in their more intimate moments, “seem to reascend the metamorphoses of evolution, passing backward beyond ape and fish to some hideous coition of protoplasm.”
Frankenfoods vs. Frankenlaws
Steven Malanga, City Journal
I’m frequently amused by the standard progressive position on genetically modified food (GMOs, generally). The progressive abhors GMOs, deriding them as unnatural, unhealthy, and abominations against nature. And this same progressive is the bore at the party going on about how the government does nothing to address adequately the global hunger problem, unaware entirely that GMOs are a potential solution to the issue. In this reasoned piece, Steven Malanga addresses the real villain in the GMO story: the laws that, without proper scientific support, vilify the crops.
Italy appoints 20 new museum directors
Ermanno Rivetti, The Art Newspaper
For the first time in Italy’s history, its national institutions, including its museums, will be led by non-Italians. Out of the twenty posts announced this week, seven were awarded to foreigners, marking a departure from previous flag-waving appointments that rewarded birthright over competence. Bravo!
Community-Based Chaos
James Panero, City Journal
This week in City Journal, our own James Panero offers sound evidence that the de Blasio administration’s feeble and wrong-minded policies towards vagrants are not only ineffectual but in fact designed to enrich homeless-industry cronies. Panero, a longtime resident of the Upper West Side, presents relevant data and his own observations of his proud neighborhood’s decline to definitively identify the current mayor’s program as the cause of increased vagrancy.
From our pages:
Curing American sclerosis
Charles Murray
A lecture delivered by Charles Murray after he received the third Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society.