* Condemns as irredeemably vulgar those who call "habitual drunkards people with alcohol problems, madness mental illness, drug use drug abuse. * Claims "The Boy Scout Handbook" is "among the very few remaining popular repositories of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero" * Applauds the atom-bombing of Hiroshima, says those who don't are pathetically misinformed and admits that when he heard the news as a soldier in Europe, "we cried with relief and joy" yet insists that whatever side you're on, modern war "is all mass-criminality" But in terms of sheer industrial-strength affrontery, Fussell is just warming up. It's not easy to make Louis XIV look like Huey Long. In another 100 years, there will be no visible difference between the Soviet Union and the United States." But what about the enhanced comforts of the fabled Common Man? "Well," Fussell snorts, "his advantages are bought at my cost." Even the better classes have to wait in long lines, the quality of food degenerates, airline seating grows more cramped. "It used to be a great center of wit," says Fussell in mid-stroll, glowering at the placid streetscape, "but now it's subject to prole-drift." Prole drift? "Everything in the modern world drifts prole-ward all the time. And run for cover, Uncle Sam: Paul Fussell, the nation's newest world-class curmudgeon, is taking aim at The American Experiment.įor the 58-year-old don, author and omni-pundit, that includes even the leafy collegiate charm of Princeton.
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