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Dear Friends,
Let’s change the subject, shall we?
As I peruse the last dozen or so Square Inch Newsletters I note a concentration of essays on the New Right and other intramural dogfights among people who ought to be getting along, but alas. Truthfully, I was relieved when our CCL Symposium ended over the weekend. Our topic was the New Right, and it coincided with the publication of our book on the New Right. My own contributions to this topic began just over a year ago with the publication of my review of Stephen Wolfe’s book. And a year of my life is really quite enough. This is not to strike a snooty, “above it all” pose. Aside from one magazine article I’m slated to write in the Spring, I simply have nothing useful left to add; what I have written has largely gone unanswered, and I have no interest in brand-building by continuing to pile on the latest outrage and beating dead horses.
That, and I don’t believe we are in any danger of the New Right—whether the National Conservative or Christian Nationalist variety—achieving any of its aims.
Years ago I wrote a very fun essay entitled, “Why The #MeToo Generation Needs Jane Austen.” You can find it in this issue of Jubilee. (Pardon the clunky “magazine view” website.) The main point was to highlight how the sexual revolution, by tearing down all courtship rules, expectations, and social mores, has introduced destructive chaos—empowering the lecherous and making more vulnerable the weak. Shocking, I know.
Recently my wife made a complementary observation along those lines.
It starts with a book series we very much enjoy. And I’ll just say upfront that just because I enjoy something does not mean you will enjoy it. A Christian in the public eye making recommendations regarding arts and entertainment is always taking a risk (ask Brett McCracken, whose movie recommendations at The Gospel Coalition have received recent blowback). Christians have different views and standards on whether it is acceptable to enjoy art that depicts the depravities of this world, and it seems to me the answer to the question is Paul’s with respect to debatable matters of conscience: “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God” (Romans 14:22).
Anyway, it is a series of detective novels written by “Robert Galbraith.” I put the name in quotes because the series is not, in fact, written by a person named Robert Galbraith. It is a pseudonym for Joanne (J.K.) Rowling, who wisely realized that her name, forever associated as it is with Harry Potter, is unsuitable and a distraction for her new genre. If you’re wondering whether Ms. Rowling was a one-hit wonder with the Potter series (well, seven-hit wonder), the answer is by no means whatsoever. She’s currently seven novels deep into her detective series—every one a bestseller—and she is every bit a master of this genre as she was of young adult fantasy. This woman is probably going to sell a billion copies of her books in her lifetime. And she deserves it.
The new genre isn’t children’s literature. It is very much the adult world. That’s actually not fair; Harry Potter isn’t “children’s” literature, either, in my (very correct) opinion. But this version is more realistically profane, raw, dark, and ugly. The protagonist is down-and-out private detective Cormoran Strike, a disabled military veteran and illegitimate son of a world-famous rock star and a flighty “super-groupie.” Robin Ellacott, a twenty-something Yorkshire girl who starts as a temporary secretary at the agency is—with a name like Robin, who else?—the sidekick. Holmes needs his Watson; Strike needs his Robin.
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