Freespace

What I read in 2022 and what I thought of it

Best book I read this year:

1. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham*

An absolutely terrifying and amazing book. I found myself repeatedly having to reverse the audio and listen again because I could not quite believe the words that were coming out. Far, far better than the HBO miniseries--both because it is more horrific and because it is, in some ways, more hopeful? if that's the right word. An outstanding book. But it may cost you some sleepless nights.

Honorable Mentions:

What’s on The Menu in Hollywood?

Reviewers of the strange new horror movie The Menu seem to me to have missed the point—and to have done so in precisely the way the film’s creators wanted them to. And that very fact may make the film all the more delicious.

The Menu seems at first to be an “elevated horror” movie of the A24 variety. A group of strangers arrives at the dock for a trip to an island which is the site of a fantastically elegant restaurant called Hawthorne, presided over by Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). The castaways of this three-hour tour include the unnamed Movie Star (John Leguizamo), the critic Lillian (Janet McTeer), three guys who are apparently ripping off the studio where the Movie Star works (Rob Yang, Mark St. Cyr, and Arturo Castro), and others. Our main character is Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) who’s the date of restaurant enthusiast Tyler (Nicholas Hoult). We later learn that she’s actually a prostitute, but we discover right away that she’s a bit of a rebel, who thinks all this fancy Hawthorne stuff is rather ridiculous.

But very early in the movie we begin to see that this “elevated horror” movie is actually an allegory of some sort. One of the first courses is a “breadless bread plate,” which consists only of the sauces, without the bread. Chef Slowik explains that this is a kind of political commentary on the fact that the poor people of the world can’t afford bread. Critic Lillian is enchanted by the sophistication of Slowik’s radical chic, and Tyler is in awe of the Chef’s genius—which is a little jarring to the audience because it’s really not that clever. It’s the kind of tired cliché that we’re used to from Hollywood—and that realization dawns at just the moment when Margot speaks up in protest. The guests are being insulted, she points out, and she refuses to go along with it.

Errata in Freedom's Furies

I maintain errata pages for all my books, to list errors I discover after publication. If you notice a factual error in Freedom's Furies, please let me know and I'll include it here.

1. Page 345: My wording here implies that the quotation is from Averroes. It isn't; it's a quotation from Etienne Gilson, who was paraphrasing Averroes.

2. Page 250: in describing Almanzo’s trip to get the grain in The Long Winter, I say “Royal accompanies him.” Actually it’s his friend Cap Garland who does so.

3. Page 470 note 117 incorrectly states the date of the letter from Paterson to Rand (which contained the Averroes reference) as circa December 1943. This should say circa October. (It is correctly identified as October on page 345).

4. Page 269: Katharine Wright's name is misspelled Katherine.

California turned a constitutional shield into a government sword

I have an article in the Orange County Register about California's bizarre "Anti-SLAPP" law, or rather, the bizarre way in which the courts have interpreted that law. Excerpt:

California citizens who sue the government for violating their rights had better watch out: under a bizarre state law called “Anti-SLAPP,” they risk being sued by the government for doing so, on the theory that they’re violating the government’s own constitutional rights.

You read that right: California courts have ruled that government itself has a right to free speech, and therefore that anyone who goes to court to challenge the legality of something the government does risks being punished for trespassing on its expressive freedom.

At least, that’s the argument lawyers for the city of Rancho Mirage are making in an ongoing lawsuit in which property owners challenged the constitutionality of an ordinance barring them from renting out their houses. Viewing that ordinance as a violation of their constitutional right to private property, they filed a lawsuit—only to have the city respond by filing an “Anti-SLAPP” motion against them. The city argues that their true motive in the case was to censor the government’s free speech. If granted, such a motion would require the property owners to pay the city’s legal bills.

Read the rest...

This Afterlife by A.E. Stallings

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I examine the new anthology by poet A.E. Stallings. Excerpt:

A. E. Stallings—perhaps America’s best living poet—doesn’t live in America. She moved to Greece in 1999, the year her first book, Archaic Smile, was published. And she’s used that combination of American and European, ancient and modern, to fine effect in poems that bring together the classical and contemporary worlds with cleverness and insight. She’s written about Hank Williams, freight trains, and Facebook—and about Apollo, Penelope, and Medea. She’s written on the joys and frustrations of married life and motherhood—and translated Hesiod and Lucretius. And she’s done this in some of the most perfectly designed lyrics of the 21st century—poems that sparkle with ingenuity and glow with understanding. Now, in This Afterlife, she has assembled her best work into an anthology that no one who still believes in poetry’s power to move, persuade, and surprise should miss.

Read the rest...