The Single Greatest Moment in Russian Literature

Or, possibly, the literature of any nation. Or, possibly even, any possible literature of any possible nation:

Убил отца не ты.

“It wasn’t you who killed father.”

Years & years ago, I “taught” The Brothers Karamazov at the University of Chicago, and was quite taken with it.

Just now, I’ve been revisiting the book, in an audiobook performance of the Magarshack translation, as I drive into and back from work. The line I’ve just quoted, from Book 11, Chapter 5, is, in context, so brilliant, so devastating, and so completely unexpected…I’m lucky I didn’t crash my car.

Der Leiermann

Nothing – I mean, really, nothing – gets any whiter than this.:

“Genuinely Great”

Vox Day can be fun, but, honestly, he needs to get over his Japanese girl-rock thing.

He posts this bit of routine commercial junk:

…and then goes on to enthuse about how this pop-crap debris is “genuinely great, the perfect combination of music, voice, instruments, and lyrics…”

I wonder if this great defender of Western Civilization has ever even heard of Die Winterreise.

What a Gift

We on the dissident right are always hoping for something – anything – that will finally “red-pill” the normies, and force them to see what they don’t want to see: that they are now second class citizens in the country built by their ancestors, and that it’s way past time for them to start fighting back.

Is the Sarah Jeong case what we’ve been waiting for?

Time will tell.

 

Derbyshire Doubles Down

John Derbyshire got a lot of grief, in comments at Unz, over last week’s Radio Derb. Most of it well-deserved, I think.

This week, he doubles down:

July Diary

I mean, here’s a guy who was (like so many of us) completely made a fool of by Western “intelligence” agencies in the run-up to the Iraq War – and here he is, fifteen years on, trusting their word on the Skripal case – and calling anybody with doubts a “pro-Putin troll.”

And then it’s off to the races, citing lefty NGO’s like “Transparency International” and “Freedom House” (both of which would ban him at the earliest opportunity!) in support of his judgments about corruption & freedom in Russia.

I guess you can take The Derb out of The National Review, but you can’t take The National Review out of The Derb.

Vox Day vs David Cole

This…

…strikes me as mostly right.

I was living just a couple of miles down the road, in Venice, California, when the McMartin pre-school story broke, way back in 1983. What was done to those poor innocent people can never be forgiven.

This…

…on the other hand, strikes me as mostly wrong. I mean, c’mon. If you’ve got serious evidence of criminal wrong-doing, let’s see it.