11 Responses to Titus in/on NRO!

  1. NandaNanda says:
    14 Apr 2016 at 03:11

    Woo Hoo! Congrats, TT! Tanks, M! Checking it Out! :-)

  2. Avatartitus says:
    24 Apr 2016 at 06:57

    Thanks, Nanda! Sorry I’m so late to the party, so to speak: I’ve been out of country & busy with bureaucratic worries, too.

  3. Avatartitus says:
    24 Apr 2016 at 07:00

    Thanks for sharing, M! I’m feeling pretty good about this & hope it will work out as an occasional gig, maybe help me figure out how to address a broader American audience.

    I’ll show you guys the piece when it comes out in May–I’m supposed to be published in the Imaginative Conservative, the website/magazine of St.John’s college. It’s some of the early stuff I was writing on Ricochet last year, commentary on Philip Larkin poems, but pretty serious–I think they get around 3,000 words & I’ve gotten good at structure & details.

    But when it’s not this sort of more academic or scholarly commentary, it’s pretty hard for me to take a large audience of readers from here to there, so to speak.

    I hope folks will see it’s pretty rare for someone to do what I try to do & that they’ll stick with me. It can get lonesome writing for no audience…

    • MLHMLH says:
      24 Apr 2016 at 09:51

      Wait. St John’s College has a conservative bend? I mean, I know that the curriculum is, essentially, the Western canon. .. Well, golly. Good.

      I met a grad of the Santa Fe campus at the local Y. He was wearing a St John’s College shirt. He was impressed that I knew there were two campuses. But he was/is teaching at the uber-Liberal Prescott College (though I do admire that they don’t take money from the Feds).

  4. AdministratorAdministrator says:
    30 Apr 2016 at 11:29

    Wait what! Congratulations!

    I used to run around with a girl whose mom taught at SJ in SF.

  5. Avatartitus says:
    1 May 2016 at 02:06

    Thanks a bunch!

    So yeah, St. John’s is pretty conservative & pretty Christian. I know some American academics & read stuff they trust. I’m told, it’s much better than most Christian schools, & not just the Catholic ones.

    I hope I’ll find a home for some of my more academic stories there. Ricochet is not always a good fit for complex analysis of old books.

    Neither is NRO–but I hope to place my thoughts on comedy there. My pomocon coconspirators are also much on talking over TV & movies in light of our St.John’s-like liberal education, so we fit really well, not least because we’re all to some extent Straussians. (I guess at St.John’s–both campuses–there a lot of students of the guy who mentored the school, a German emigre, like Strauss, & a friend of his, Jacob Klein.)

    Ricochet did not warm up to that comedy writing either. It’s understandable, because there is more vulgarity to comedy than conservatives can usually take, much less respect, but I think it’s a public service to do good comedy & I hope to find a way to persuade people of that.

    But the truth is, I’m getting close to desperate. I still think I’ve something to say worth saying, but of course, if the rest of the world disagrees, what’s the point?

    Outside of NRO & Imaginative Conservative, I’ve no idea who might be interested in my kind of commentary on cultural matters that’s important for conservatives & I have no plan to turn into another pundit for popular websites.

    So I hope I’ll find some success at finding an audience. I’ve put a great deal of effort into writing & I’m about at the point where this is no longer worth it for me. For a long time, I was not worried about reaching any audience, because the writing helped me with my classical studies. Now, that part of my study is completed, & I find that for people who always say politics is downstream of culture, conservatives do not show a lot of interest in culture…

    • MLHMLH says:
      1 May 2016 at 04:21

      You do know about the Annapolis Cup. don’t you? The Johnnies won this year. They usually do.

    • Avatartitus says:
      1 May 2016 at 06:16

      I had no idea that was even legal in America!

    • MLHMLH says:
      1 May 2016 at 23:06

      Don’t give up on your writing; I am just beginning to figure it out. I don’t know where to suggest you go look for an audience. This little band is little and things get buried quickly over at R>. It would be nice to know ow many just open a post fully but didn’t comment, no? Have you checked into Acculturated?

      Your use of “vulgar” is, I think, most often mis-understood. It seems to me that you use it most in its more archaic meaning of “common.” Most folks think of it as meaning lewd and indecent. They then feel that you are insulting them/us. This may happen with other words and phrases, too.

      I know that writing well is not easy. This is, perhaps, why I do so little. It must be harder, even, in a foreign language! But don’t give up the ship!

  6. Avatartitus says:
    2 May 2016 at 02:30

    Ma’am, I’ve taken no small amount of hope from people on Ricochet & elsewhere who seem to think I’ve got a reason to write, not merely a compulsion. Whenever a conversation starts, I get a chance to talk to someone real, & that really helps. Indeed, on Ricochet there is no way to tell even if people are interested in reading. I find people who like my surprising way of writing in the most surprising ways. That’s the part that worries me; internet writing is basically made for popularity at whatever large or small scale. Celebrity cults & entertainment are encouraged this way. Otherwise, it’s got little to offer by way of connecting readers & writers…

    I’ve been thinking about the Federalist & Acculturated, looked at the websites again just today thinking where I might write about this or that. The black dog ain’t baying now, so I’ll give it a shot or two. Maybe something comes of this.

    You’re certainly right about the part about vulgarity. I get into a lot of trouble that way. I’m not even sure it’s a necessary risk to take. I think I have a point–I’ll explain below–but whether it’s really worth the hassle, I don’t know. I certainly dislike the thought or ruining people’s breakfast or what have you just to make a point…

    One very important reason why vulgar = bad things is because the common people sometimes have more sense than the moralistic people. Vulgarity is not infrequently a natural rebellion against silly conventions. But of course, people tend to prefer respectability to common sense, so to speak. They would rather be conventional, at least because there are no risks there, & that gradually turns into moralism–the few things left in our world that really are unconventional take a beating in the public mind…

    I guess there is reason to take insult at what I’m saying, though not the reason people suspect.

    It’s part of my grand project of rescuing comedy from moralism. It’s strange to live in a world where public opinion & voting matter all the time, but no one wants to risk vulgarity. Popularity = vulgarity! We all know cases where it’s good & cases where it’s bad. We know we sometimes disagree with popular opinion & other times we don’t. But for free peoples, we insist on being super-dignified in anything we do. That’s not likely to succeed… Nobody ever admits vulgar things we know are silly or even a little bad might be fun or pleasing. Instead, there is a kind of mock-religion where people talk about guilty pleasures. The only good part about that is that it’s a kind of perversity–taking pleasure in guilt. One expects only very conventional people feel that way, who have not done things that cause a great guilt!

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