The good folks at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) were good enough to send me a copy of Russell Kirk's autobiography The Sword of the Imagination for my review. I usually send you to Amazon.com, but ISI offers the rather large book for a mere $5.
There is much to say about this book. First, it is oddly written in the third person. Thus, Russell Kirk writes many sentences about what "young Kirk" did or how the old man of letters handled a particular situation. He says he did it that way to get a little distance from his subject. Though a little weird, the method works for the reader. I got over my distraction very quickly. He is simply telling the story of a character who happens to be himself.
What you gain from this book is a look at a terribly interesting and original life. Kirk came from a pretty unremarkable family (though maybe not so unremarkable to produce him), but went on to serve in WWII and then to be the only North American to earn the ultra-prestigious D.Litt. from St. Andrews. Apparently, the degree, kind of a step above a normal Ph.D., is now only given as an honorific. The treatise he wrote to obtain it was The Conservative Mind which is a wee bit heavier than what you might read on the topic from Mark Levin or Sean Hannity.
The amazing thing is that Kirk was teaching at Michigan State when The Conservative Mind became a big hit (at least as big as academic books get!) with laudatory reviews and much notice from The New York Times. Suddenly, he was a budding icon, but instead of remaining in the university and drawing a safe salary, he rebelled against the massification of the university after the war and became an independent man of letters. That meant he had to write just to live. And write he did, producing thousands of pieces of writing during his career, which included a five times weekly syndicated column for a decade and a column in National Review for 25 years. Amazingly, his best selling book ever was a ghost story, Old House of Fear.
There is more than the opportunity to share his journey as a man of letters. The reader also gets to find out how he became married after 40 plus years as a bachelor. I remember seeing Annette Kirk at a meeting of the Philadelphia Society and wondering whether this striking woman could be his widow or his daughter. In fact, she is his widow who married him when she was in her twenties. Their love story and his evident joy in her companionship and motherhood of his children is quite beautiful.
If you haven't already divined my intent, I strongly recommend the book!
Another for the list! WIsh I had both money and time for all the books I want to read!
Posted by: Beth from TN | August 07, 2009 at 04:59 PM