Your Humble Blogger owns some dozen or more Dick Francis novels in paperback, but by no means all of them. I took Knockdown (NY: Fawcett 1974) out of the library, since I hadn’t read it in years. It’s the one where a stalwart but modest hero is put under tremendous pressure, but stubbornly refuses to give in to wealthy, ruthless villains, and ultimately triumphs through a combination of guile and fortitude.
No, seriously, it’s a good one, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Dick Francis may be the most obviously Conservative of my favorite writers. Well, J.R.R. Tolkien is Conservative in his own way, of course, but its an apolitical way. Dick Francis frequently puts the poor-people-are-lazy-and-morally-inferior speech into his hero’s mouth; it puts me off only briefly. Tom Stoppard, of course, is an old Cold Warrior; I wonder if he is still publicly a Tory, or if New Labor appeals to him. Most likely, I suppose, is that he likes the Neocons.
I don’t think any of my favorite American writers are Conservatives (or for that matter, Republicans). In fact, now that I think about it, almost all my favorite American writers are pretty obviously leftists of one stripe or another: Terence McNally, Tony Kushner, and Lanford Wilson in the theatre, Dashiell Hammett, Connie Willis, Tom Robbins for novels, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Heywood Broun and that gang for essays and such. I don’t know if Lois McMaster Bujold is on the left or not; it isn’t clear to me from her books. She certainly isn’t obviously a conservative. Robert Silverberg? Is he a Republican these days?
I’m not sure whether there’s cause and effect there, or if there is which way it goes. It may just be a coincidence.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I suspect Silverberg is a Republican. I seem to remember back when I had a subscription to Asimov’s and was reading his column, he would frequently start spouting off about how political correctness was going to be the destruction of all sorts of things. Usually there was a valid point or two in there buried in the middle of the rants, but you really had to look carefully for it.
Well, I don’t think raving about political correctness is necessarily the mark of a Republican per se. (It tends to be an indication of some form of conservatism, in my experience, but not necessarily Republicanism. But note, for example, that Connie Willis (who V. characterized as some form of leftist) complains about PCism at great length in her stories.) But yeah, as of sometime around 1997, according to a libertarian sf review, Silverberg wrote in a book of essays: “my basic attitude in these essays, I suppose, can be called libertarian/conservative.” Doesn’t necessarily mean that’s his attitude outside of the essays, and who knows how/whether he’s changed views in the past seven years, but probably a decent indicator.
I’ve never read Robert Silverberg’s essays, or, rather, I read one a long time ago and have never felt the urge to read any others. I do like a lot of his short stories, and more than one or two of his novels, so if he’s Republican/ish, I suspect he’d top the list for me.
I read Connie Willis’ stuff as quite leftist, despite mercilessly knocking both pc-ism and academia. Carville is pretty nasty about both, as well, so there it is. I could be wrong about Ms. Willis actual views, but her stuff doesn’t have the whiff of the Right that Dick Francis’ stuff does.
R.I.,
-V.