Nock-Off
Bill Kauffman describes a boorish young conservative (in his novel, Every Man a King, p. 21):
He was only twenty-four when John Huey met him, yet Bertram’s dress suggested a foppish Victorian. He was seldom without a bowler atop his head, cocked a shade to the right because, he avowed, “Albert Jay Nock wore it just so. As Nock’s heir by acclamation, I ought to genuflect to the old boy now and then, don’t you think?”
His vanity was so transparent, so obviously affected, that no one thought him a jerk. And the lilt in Bertram’s voice so entranced his mates that none dared tell him that Nock would regard his descendant as a fat pig whose dandified airs transliterated into lifeless, artless prose. …
Though his girth gave him an asexual, physically amorphous presence, Bertram was a hit at young conservatives’ parties. These affairs were decidedly unfestive, most gatherings fissioning into ten or twelve cells of earnest and dull activists regurgitating the slip that their publicist heroes had written during the past week.
Every Man a King isn’t a roman a clef exactly, but I wonder whether there’s a single model for this greedy Nock-off or if he just stands for the general type, of whom there are plenty in the quondam conservative movement.
Explore posts in the same categories: Books, Conservatism
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 am
You make me wish I’d saved a classic letter forwarded me during my brief spell as a two-time National Review freelancer over two decades ago.
Shortly after my essay “The Fourteenth Colony” appeared in the Christmas 1986 issue, I had a phone call with Chilton Williamson, Jr., the magazine’s editor of its “Books, Arts and Manners” section.
“Oh, by the way,” he warned me, “You’ll be getting a letter forwarded from the office - don’t worry, anybody who writes ends up with a wall of them at some point. Whatever you do, DON’T RESPOND TO IT. It’s from M_______ R___, a former writer of ours, who went a bit crazy around age 30; he sent back one of Bill’s [founder/editor William F. Buckley, Jr. - DSL.] standard begging letters with the suggestion he stick it up his rich Catholic ass, &c. Last I heard, he was living with his dad near Detroit, and drinking, &c.”
The letter arrived shortly. Happily, I have detailed memory, and quote with c. 95% accuracy:
“Mr. Lahti:
“You write in your article, ‘Figures like Nock and Mencken no longer appear in our periodicals, nor do the styles of literacy and breadth of culture they represented…’
“This does me a grave injustice. I have, after all, written a number of significant articles and essays as their heir.
“This is in addition to my books, which, thanks to the widespread silent treatment your article perpetuates, are now officially out-of-print.
“I have, however, a stock of my books available at the bargain price of $5 each postpaid, and invite you to order from the enclosed flyer.
[the photocopied page enclosed featured him with cigar jauntily clenched in teeth, ad copy at once dandyish and defiant, and blurbs from, among others, "Bill" himself at his penny-dandiest]
“And I would invite you to write no more articles along the lines of ‘The Fourteenth Colony’, which fai to give me credit for what I have already accomplished.
“Yours,
M_______ S. R___”
I seem to have tossed the letter and flyer at some point, though their author proved effective after all, in one regard: due entirely to my own indifferent sloth, I never wrote for National Review again. Those curious over how I triggered this self-signified Son of Nock and Mencken to such Elmered beFuddlement, Sylvestrine suffering, and claims of anti-YosemitiSam, may skim at leisure -
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+fourteenth+colony-a04588745
“And I would suggest they read no more such articles in future, which fail to trigger as many memorable poison-pen letters as I might have hoped.”
August 26th, 2008 at 12:46 am
When I first saw the M and R I though it was going to be Murray Rothbard.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am
TGGP, take the title of your 8-22 post at EtaO, and replace “Jack” with a first name rhyming with the second word in “one stitch’ll close that wound”.
Bingo.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Mitchell? Who’s he?
August 26th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Regular contributor, National Review, The American Spectator, &c., 1970s-early 1980s, from which grew the two books mentioned above:
http://tinyurl.com/5n2qvn