Theodore Dalrymple’s new book of essays follows on the extraordinary success of his earlier collections, Life at the Bottom and Our Culture, What’s Left of It. No social critic today is more adept and incisive in exploring the state of our culture and the ideas that are changing our ways of life. In Not with a Bang But a Whimper, he takes the measure of our cultural decline, with special attention to Britain-its bureaucratic muddle, oppressive welfare mentality, a… More >>
Not with a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline
Theodore Dalrymple hates Islam and makes no effort to hide it. If even a small fraction of the things he said about Islam were directed at any other group, he would be denounced as a hate-mongerer. He says that young Muslims are attracted to Islam because it somehow awards them with dominance over women. As a young Muslim myself, I can say that this is so utterly nonsensical that it need no response for any intelligent person, except those who have been fed with a great deal of propaganda and haven’t had recourse to friendship with any practicing Muslims.
He makes some worthy criticisms of popular culture, but he is deluded if he thinks that spewing hate against an already targeted sub-population will somehow lead to improvement. The vast majority of values of Islam and Christianity are shared values, so these threats of utter fundamental opposition between the Western world and Muslim world are ignorant and unhelpful.
Understanding violence in the context of the Muslim world is impossible without taking into account the violence done unto the Muslim world. Simply searching for some ‘essential’ character in Islam to explain the violence we see today is foolish.
Rating: 1 / 5
J. Stallings obviously thinks all Muslims are suicide bombers, so that when Dalyrmyple smears them all he’s just “besmirching” suicide bombers — typical of those who want to rationalize their own hate.
Rating: 1 / 5
Dalrymple simply blames everything bad in Britain on a ‘liberal elite’ that has supposedly been running Britain for the last few decades.
So who are these powerful liberals? What connection do they have with the Conservative Party, which has formed most of our governments for most of the last 200 years? What connection do they have with Labour, which has ruled for the rest of the last 80 years? Was David Blunkett, for example, an example of a trendy liberal?
What kind of rule would Dalrymple support? Cameron? A Berlusconi-type reactionary? Nick Griffin? (Certainly no trendy liberal.)
Like the Sun editors he so closely resembles, Dalrymple avoids the hard questions, always preferring the cheap and easy sneer.
The saloon-bar sneers at political correctness, and the fake populism, are dangerously anti-democratic.
Rating: 1 / 5
I note with sad amusement the review from “Publisher’s Weekly,” which claims that “the author’s forays into literary criticism are appealing if amateurish.” Well, how about reversing that, and saying that “Publisher’s Weekly” makes appealing but amateurish forays into book-reviewing? The person who called Dalrymple “amateurish” is incapable of dealing with the first essay in this book, “The Gift of Language.” This essay is an enjoyable skewering of the pop-intellectual Steven Pinker, but it is much more: it is an argument in favor of the obvious. Skill with language is extremely important in life, but it does not come for “free,” despite the linguists who wave their hands and pronounce all languages equal — and, more zanily, all language USERS as equal.
There must be some reason why Winston Churchill stated that his highest priority in life was attaining mastery over the spoken language. Churchill was born at the top of English society, but he had to WORK at his language. As Dalrymple points out, champion runners need discipline and training; why should we imagine that champion writers (and speakers) do not?
Continuing with his “amateurish” efforts, Dalrymple then offers up an essay I have been wanting to read for a long time: “What Makes Dr. Johnson Great?” A Russian emigre asked Dalrymple this question, in genuine perplexity, and I have long shared that Russian’s curiosity. Dalrymple provides the answer, and now I understand why I missed the point for so long. You’ll have to read the essay for yourself, but a major part of the answer is intellectual and emotional maturity — the understanding that we all seek security and excitement, and the further insight that these are conflicting goals, and the final “tragic” insight that human life is bound to be imperfect. Especially brilliant is the comparison between Voltaire’s “Candide” and Johnson’s “Rasselas.”
So this book initially looked like a box of wonderful chocolates: Language, Dr. Johnson, Shakespeare, Koestler, and a blistering chapter on “the new atheists.” But, of course, sooner or later the author had to return to the extremely sad situation of present-day Britain, where a delinquent child “raised” by the welfare state actually finds prison to be a liberating experience. You will have to read this very sad book to find out why.
It seems to me that Dalrymple’s writing has greatly improved since his early retirement, and therefore I hope there is much to look forward to.
Don’t miss this book, especially if you’re one of those people who think that America needs to become a lot more like Europe.
Highest possible recommendation!
Rating: 5 / 5
Buy the book, if only to read essays by someone educated in a former time, but who doesn’t display his composition skills without reason.
His background (as a prison doctor in a decaying United Kingdom) means that he’s not commenting without up-close and nasty knowledge of what he’s describing.
One curious thing – he says that he’s not a believer, but his ethics feel almost Catholic to me. That’s not customary in this era – you normally only encounter the Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris point of view: “ALL RELIGION IS UTTERLY ABHORRENT AND ALL BELIEVERS WOULD GO TO HELL IF SUCH A PLACE ACTUALLY EXISTED!”
But Dalrymple’s not like that: he’s well-worth reading, although when he’s describing the worst behaviour that he has witnessed, some of the essays can be pretty daunting.
Rating: 5 / 5