‘Democracy,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, ‘is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.’ Kevin D. Williamson is a man cut very much from Mencken’s cloth. He has the same caustic humor. He has the same contempt for the mob. He has the same respect for the transcendent individual. In his new book The Smallest Minority, Williamson is at his most Menckenesque.
This is not to say that Williamson is a mere imitator of the sage of Baltimore. For one thing, it is hard to imagine Mencken opening a book by advising the reader that ‘you can’t fuck with a monkey in Delhi.’ Sound advice. Williamson is not just offering a tip to tourists, though, but comparing India’s shit-flinging monkeys to the denizens of social media.
This is a funny thing about Williamson’s book: he spends pages talking about the importance of culture and the lamentable philistinism of the masses but trades heavily in swear words and toilet humor. The book opens with a quote by Leo Strauss, who said:
Read Full Article »‘The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called itapeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful.’
