George du Maurier’s gothic horror novel Trilby is all but forgotten today, and to the extent that it is remembered, it is for introducing the term “svengali” into the popular lexicon. “Svengali” has been used as a term for the power behind the throne of an entertainer. He is more than just a business manager who negotiates contracts, although he may do that as well. A svengali is a puppeteer for whom the performer is his own creative outlet. He cultivates the performer’s image and makes artistic decisions for them. (more…)
Tag: George Orwell
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Old England is dying.
— The Waterboys, “Old England”Looked at from the outside, even the cockney and the Yorkshireman have a strong family resemblance. — George Orwell, “England Your England”
Cultures change, and forms of their rituals and practices shift and mutate in their wake. Perhaps it’s the other way around, and the latter is upstream of the former, to mix aquatic metaphors. Either way the coin falls, the times they are a-changing, and in perpetuity. They always have been. (more…)
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What, then, is this that we call existentialism? –– Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
Sartre formulates the basic formula of existentialism in these words: existence precedes essence. — Martin Heidegger, “What Is Humanism?”
Schools of philosophical thought are usually quite clear in their lines of demarcation. (more…)
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Every month in 2024, Greg Johnson will invite some of our authors and friends to read and discuss some of the best material from our catalog and more in what we are calling The Counter-Currents Book Club. The first meeting was held in place of our most recent Counter-Currents Radio broadcast, where Greg was joined by Margot Metroland, James J. O’Meara, and Kathryn S. to discuss our latest publication by Jonathan Bowden, The Cultured Thug. It is now available for download and online listening. (more…)
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December 5, 2023 Mark Gullick
The Fear of Writing
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I was carrying out a literary exercise of quite a different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself . . . — George Orwell, “Why I Write”
Litera scripta manet.
(That which is written, remains.)
— John Dewey (more…) -
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Jonathan Bowden (ed. by Greg Johnson)
The Cultured Thug
San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2023Stylistically there are two kinds of Jonathan Bowden essay. There are the neat, trim, polished ones that clock in at 800 to 1,100 words, like a review in The Spectator. Then there are the luxuriant, digressive ones that are always rambling off onto weird, and often interesting, tangents. The difference between the two is that the latter kind usually come to us as transcripts of speeches from gatherings where Bowden had an hour or more to fill, and thus had good reason to pad out his thesis with amusing asides and intriguing anecdotes. (more…)
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Jordan Peterson was asked by journalist Camilla Tominey about his views on multiculturalism during a recent exclusive interview with GB News, Britain’s nominally Right-leaning news station. In a refreshingly scathing tirade, the Canadian public intellectual branded the idea of mixing incongruous population groups together as “a miracle of stupidity,” correctly making the link between diversity of cultures and the potential within multicultural societies for civil conflict. (more…)
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[M]an has ascribed to all that exists a connection with morality and laid an ethical significance on the world’s back. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Everybody wants to rule the world. — Tears for Fears (more…)
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When did Eric A. Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, lose his virginity? Most biographers haven’t wrestled much with this particular issue. But then came along John Sutherland, a retired academic who published an entertaining book called Orwell’s Nose: A Pathological Biography back in 2016. (I briefly described this cute volume in a 2019 end-of-year Favorite Books wrap-up.)
John Sutherland, bless his soul, spends about half his book reconstructing the carnal history of E. A. Blair. (more…)
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The following is being published in commemoration of George Orwell’s 120th birthday on June 25.
George Orwell is one of those authors well worth stealing, as Orwell famously wrote of Charles Dickens. I am not the first person to start an essay like this. While rummaging through my memory files I recalled a cover piece in the January 1983 Harper’s, and 40 years later I am astounded to discover it begins almost exactly the same way. (more…)
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By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the book of the Machine. – E. M. Forster
Welcome, my son.
Welcome to the machine.
— Pink FloydWriters of fiction are obviously not bound to set their work in their own times. (more…)
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Michael Malice
The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil
Independently Published, 2022What a joy to open this book and find that whatever the author’s White Pill is supposed to be, it somehow involves Ayn Rand (AR). It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand (1971, by Jerome Tuccille) was the name of an actual book that came out when I was in my teens and going through my own brief Objectivist period. The book is a funny saga about the author’s time as a militant libertarian. (more…)