London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

What You Should Read

Three recommendations and some honourable mentions

Over at ISI’s Intercollegiate Review, there’s a post by Joseph Cunningham suggesting eight publications you should be reading. In September I came up with a handful of suggestions of what blogs or websites readers ought to take note of, particularly if they exist in the Catholic/traditionalist/conservative realm so difficult to sum up in a single word or term.

Of course, most of what you should be reading is by dead people (suggestions of who I proffered herein, including some actually alive), but while Chesterton described tradition as the democracy of the dead we would be remiss to carry forth in ignorance of the living.

Publications wise, then, what is the well-read gent, or lady, reading? I’ve judged this question by what I’ve managed to persuade/force/intimidate my friends into subscribing to or buying, as well as by my own habits.

London Review of Books

This fortnightly review is one of the last places where long-form essays are still the norm. One of the adventures of starting to read a piece in the LRB is that one has no idea whether it will continue for two of the Review’s large pages, or six, or maybe more. In addition to intellectual essays it also contains occasional reporting from Patrick Cockburn, arguably the best journalist reporting on the Middle East today. (You can read my review of Cockburn’s latest book over at Quadrapheme.)

Is it left-wing? Unquestionably. But if you’re only reading what you already agree with, you’re missing the point. Your principles should be strong enough to face challenges, or to be informed by them, and the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff is the most necessary task for any thinking person.

The New Criterion

This American monthly came in for a lot of flak from a lot of conservative intellectuals for propagating and defending the neo-con support for the Iraq War, but the Daily Telegraph’s description of The New Criterion as ‘America’s leading review of the arts and intellectual life’ remains true to this day. (Disclosure: I was an editor at TNC from 2006-2008.) Feature articles are informative and expanding, the book reviews provide a good guide for reading, and art-wise I’ve always admired the clean prose of James Panero’s Gallery chronicle.

In recent months New Criterion readers have had the privilege of learning about the Jesuit linguist Albert Jamme’s hatred for sleep — “I hate my bed because it keeps me from my texts!” — and a Duke of Mantua’s expensive interest in female dwarves while last year they published the Quaker pacifist classical scholar Sarah Ruden on the darker side of Mandela’s government. Worth reading every month.

Modern Age

Founded in 1957 by Russell Kirk — the greatest St Andrean of the twentieth century — Modern Age is an academic journal which Wikipedia describes as ‘traditionalist, localist, against most military interventions,’ as well as critical of neo-conservatism and generally sympathetic to religious orthodoxy.

Its archive over the past sixty years provides articles and essays of great value by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Virgil Nemoianu, Lee Congdon, Pierre Manent, and others. Take, for example, Lee Congdon on ‘Conservatism, Christianity, and the Revitalization of Europe’.

A rewarding, more scholarly read, with footnotes that will lead you elsewhere.

— • —

These three will prove worthwhile reading for any intellectual of sound principles, but are there any other honourable mentions?

My weekly workplace reads are The Spectator and The Economist which are useful for keeping tabs on things in general.

I have to admit I do read Monocle every month. While it’s aimed at wealthy jetsetters rather than our own constituency of cosmopolitan conservatives living in genteel poverty the magazine nonetheless combines an exacting stylistic excellence with an admirably broad focus.

First Things I would read every month but it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere in London except by subscription.

Two or three times a year I pick up The Art Newspaper, another superbly put-together periodical. Fr Christopher Colven of St James, Spanish Place, writes for it often, as it happens.

Published at 1:56 pm on Friday 17 April 2015. Categories: Arts & Culture In Print Tags: , .
Comments

“Cosmopolitan conservatives living in genteel poverty!” Perfect!

— Charles A. Coulombe 17 Apr 2015 2:55 pm

For those who read French, Catholica is the best traditionalist journal in any language, and for those who read German, Junge Freiheit is just about the only seriously conservative journal they’ve got.

— L Gaylord Clark 17 Apr 2015 9:09 pm

PS: You are wrong about reading the enemy you know. Today it is all chaff and there is no sifting to be done.
Stick to the classics of the Western Canon, and to their appreciative interpreters.
Life is to short for anything else.

— L Gaylord Clark 17 Apr 2015 10:21 pm

Nice, but you left out Takimag! What the hell, Cusack? TAKIMAG! Gaylord, mate, we all appreciate your heads up on the Western Canon (a sun-deck favourite of my own, as it happens – especially now that they’ve brought it out in paperback).

— Alexander Shaw 23 Apr 2015 3:31 pm

Amusing as always Mr Shaw, but let’s not give even the hint of a nod to the idea that Professor Bloom dreamt up the idea of the “canon” himself. Precisely one of those “appreciative interpreters” I was recommending, yes, but even there not perhaps the best.
And yes, Takimag is excellent, its best contributors being Taki himself, Theodore Dalrymple, and the magnificently anti PC John Derbyshire, particularly his Saturday evening radio excursions into enemy territory, during which no prisoners are ever taken.

— L Gaylord Clark 24 Apr 2015 9:24 pm

I’ve been listening to some of Monocle’s podcasts recently, particularly Midori House, which is pretty good.

— Samuel J. Howard 27 Apr 2015 9:33 pm
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