Writing and the Conservative Impulse

Radicals often think of writing primarily as an act of provocation — a bullet in the chest of the bourgeoisie. No doubt, writing can provoke, and one doesn’t need to be a radical to know this, as any reader of Tom Wolfe will tell you. But to provoke in writing, particularly literary writing, is at once to provoke and to conserve a provocation. To write is a tacit acknowledgment that something is worth keeping. Otherwise, one could simply shout.