Imaginative Conservatism

The Letters of Russell Kirk

James E. Person, James E. PersonJr., James E. Person Jr.

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780813175461
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813175478
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Literature

The 1980s

But the question remains as to whether conservatively-inclined people possess imagination and resolution sufficient to contend tolerably well with our present discontents and difficulties.

from a letter to Robert A. Waters, March 20, 1989

Letter to William F. Buckley Jr.

In early January 1980, Kirk suffered a heart attack that left him weakened and in low spirits. This may have contributed to the substance of the “missing holograph communication” he mentions in which he announced his desired separation from National Review as a regular columnist. After Buckley kindly asked Kirk to reconsider—and perhaps begin writing regular book reviews for the journal—Kirk wrote the following letter, in which he displays an approachable tone and stance while still maintaining his desire to end his regular column, “From the Academy.”

January 28, 1980
as of Mecosta, Michigan, 49332

Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr.

National Review

150 East 35th Street

New York, NY

Dear Bill,

Much thanks for your recent, though undated, letter. By this time you may have received my missing holograph communication to you, written from a hospital in Grand Rapids about January 12—the one in which I announced my weariness of “From the Academy.”

Aye, I can keep “From the Academy” going until, and including, your twenty-fifth anniversary number. On what date will that occur? And I can continue to contribute to National Review on various topics, I suppose—six two-page printed pages a year, perhaps, rather than my previous twelve one-page printed pages for the past several years. Your “Books Arts & Manners” section undoubtedly would be improved, if ’tis meself that says it, by the contributions of a seasoned literary critic like R. Kirk. (By the way, I am beginning to get up a collection of my critical essays for book publication—Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, etc.; doubtless National Review will refuse to review the volume when it appears.) I find the January 25 number’s “Books Arts & Manners” particularly disappointing. Mr. Sobran’s rambling article doesn’t belong in that part of the magazine, if it belongs anywhere.¹

Apropos of all this, I enclose a letter I received yesterday from Devin Garrity.² The Burke book to which he refers did deserve mention in National Review, though it is no vast definitive biography; the fact that it was reviewed in the New Yorker makes my point that good books seem almost automatically rejected for review by National Review, your journal taking the judgment of the N. Y. Review of Books and Madison Avenue literary cocktail parties for the laws of the Medes and Persians.³ And I suppose that my introduction to this Devin-Garrity Burke book contributed to NR’s rejection of the review….

What mean you by presenting me with a telephone credit-card? Why, that’s like thrusting upon me a color television set: I do loathe and abominate the invention of Alexander Graham Bell, and almost never resort to it…. After all the trouble you went to, it would be graceless to return the accursed card to you; therefore I shall bury it in the depths of my passport case, to be resorted to only in some inconceivable emergency.⁴

More another time. I seem sufficiently recovered from my hospitalization earlier this month, and will be on the road again about February 4. My illness did cause the cancelling of all but one day of my Calvin College seminar. I may cancel most of my Indiana University professorship, too.

The appearance of Edward Teller on your program has produced generally favorable comment in these parts.⁵ But I refuse to watch even Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles on television; indeed, Ray says the production is no good.⁶ By the way, Ray Bradbury would like to meet you some time. He won’t fly in planes, and trains to New York are slow nowadays, so you might find time for a pleasant talk with him some day when you are in Los Angeles. He has great charm, and is full of ideas.

More another time.

Cordially,
Russell Kirk

Letter to Peter Kreeft

Kreeft (1937–) is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King’s College. A formidable apologist for the Christian faith and Roman Catholic orthodoxy, he is the author of numerous well-received books, among which Love Is Stronger Than Death (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979) was his first. Kirk greatly admired Kreeft’s books, and the two men were on cordial terms.

April 7, 1980

Dr. Peter Kreeft
Department of Philosophy
Boston College

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, 02167

Dear Mr. Kreeft,

As you may have noticed, your Love Is Stronger than Death is one of the five books nominated for the American Book Award’s prize for “religious and inspirational” books, to be awarded at the beginning of next month. I suspect that the prize actually will be given to that radical-chic book about the Egyptian Gnostics; but at least your good book is recognized as being in the first rank for 1979.⁷

The reason why it appears as a surviving selection is that I nominated it rather late in the game, after I had had an opportunity to read it. I then arranged for the American Book Awards people to have copies of it sent to the other selectors (whose identity I know not), and, wondrous to relate, they concurred in my judgment in this one important instance. Your book was called to my attention by Dr. Louis Vos, of Calvin College—where I very nearly succeeded you as interim lecturer, but was prevented by being hospitalized only half an hour before the first reception was scheduled for me at Calvin!

I think that the American Book Awards people are trying to be more honest than were the notorious … National Book Awards gentry, whom I denounced in print about two years ago.⁸ Still, I suspect that the final choice of the Gnostic book has been virtually rigged.

We thank you for so good a book on so grand a theme. Best wishes. I hope that we may contrive to meet some day.

Cordially,
Russell Kirk

Letter to Ray Bradbury

The Kirk family lived in Malibu, California, during the fall of 1980, while Russell lectured at Pepperdine University and negotiated with numerous individuals to bring about a film version of The Roots of American Order. He wrote the following undated letter in September, shortly after his arrival in Southern California.

as of 20220 Inland Lane
Malibu, California, 90267
telephone [phone]

Mr. Ray Bradbury

10265 Cheviot Drive

Los Angeles, California, 90064

Dear Ray,

With five Kirk females, your servant is entrenched on a hilltop here, just above the Grand Landslip of 1979.⁹ We will be in Malibu until December 15. I hope that we may contrive to get together during this season; address and telephone number are above; my formal duties are very light—though, as I needn’t tell you, there always is plenty of writing to be done. I am lending a hand in the production of a pilot film, first of a series of thirteen one-hour films that National Public Broadcasting or, locally, KCET—means to base on my Roots of American Order, at last. Also, I give a seminar on the same theme at Pepperdine University—as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Sociology (!)

Yesterday I received a copy of McCauley’s anthology Dark Forces, with a story therein by you, another by me. Your tale excepted (more about that below), I don’t relish my company.¹⁰ My feeling is similar about my company in two other anthologies, containing stories of mine, published in the past month or so. I don’t think I will write any more tales for anthologies, or let my stories be reprinted therein except under especial circumstances and foreknowledge. For most of these “horror” tales are mere childish nastiness, anti-erotic when pretending to be sexually exciting. I suppose that the prevalence of the Naked Girlie magazines accounts for the pseudo-erotic … character of such writing by people (some of them, anyway) who know better; they want to be paid, and the girlie magazines pay. It would be better to fry chicken for Colonel Sanders’ successors.

But “A Touch of Petulance” is up at least to your accustomed standard, of which I am the warmest admirer; I shall hand it to Annette to read. Did you ever have yourself that kind of experience: I mean the young self encountering the old self, literally or almost literally, and the old self (at another time) encountering the young self? I never did; but a friend of mine in Alabama (no credulous or superstitious man) had precisely that experience. As a boy, in deep sorrow, he became aware of a presence that comforted him stoically; and forty years later, walking the same street after decades of absence, he was aware of a sorrowful small boy walking invisibly beside him—his youthful self, from across the gulf of time. My friend himself had been his own comforter. The man recognized the boy he had been once, although the boy had not recognized in his invisible comforter the man whom he would become.¹¹

If I write one more longish uncanny tale, I will have enough for a second volume: that is, a companion volume to Princess of All Lands. After that I shall rest on my laurels, so far as fiction is concerned.

On what grand designs are you engaged just now? Best wishes; more another time; do let us know, by note or telephone, if you think of a convenient time and place for us to rendezvous.

Cordially,
Russell

Letter to Ronald Reagan

In November 1980, Reagan decisively defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter for the United States presidency, an outcome Kirk had long predicted.

November 15, 1980

The Honorable Ronald Reagan

Dear Mr. Reagan,

Well done! Your servant was one of the few to predict a Ronald Reagan victory by a very large margin throughout the campaign, never growing fainthearted; and so it has come to pass. You now have the opportunity to do so much to renew and reinvigorate this country. I enclose a recent speech of mine to the Heritage Foundation, “The Conservative Movement: Then and Now,” in which, incidentally, I predict your triumph.

For the present, I am a neighbor of yours, residing until December 12 here at Malibu—after that, back to Michigan. While we are here, I am lending a hand with the first stage of production of thirteen one-hour films to be based on my book The Roots of American Order, in which you have taken a kindly interest for several years. National Public Broadcasting expects to raise most of the money for the production, and to undertake national distribution. Se we begin to make headway in popular television, as in practical politics.

Recollecting your remark during the campaign that you mean to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court of the United States, I have a recommendation to make. Chief Justice Mary Coleman has just been re-elected to the Supreme Court ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• The 1940s
• The 1950s
• The 1960s
• The 1970s
• The 1980s
• The 1990s
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography of Kirk’s Works
• Index