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Money Can't Buy Me Good Books
Ross Douthat wonders if, somewhat paradoxically, the number of good books by conservative intellectuals hasn't gone into decline at the same time the quantity of books published and number of copies sold has gone up. In Ross' comments, the always-intersting Steve Sailer agrees this has happened and blames the Jews. Surveying the scene in a holistic and pan-ideological manner, it seems to me that the rise of the political bestseller has, indeed, had a pernicious impact on the quality of political books. The temptation now exists on a scale it once did not for a writer interested in politics to churn out a rather silly potential blockbuster rather than try to really do his best work. I'm quite certain, for example, that Rich Lowry would have been capable of producing a more interesting, more intelligent book than the hackish and absurd Legacy: Paying The Price For The Clinton Years. And if nobody had been willing to pay him a bunch of money for Legacy he might have tried to actually write it.
I'll refrain from speaking ill of any of my elders on the left side of the aisle, but suffice it to say that one could find similar examples there. From my perspective inside the editorial staff of The American Prospect, I can say that one key factor in holding quality up is that near as we can tell there's no conceivable way to make our publication (or any of the other publications in the category) a really popular mass market success. If we believed dumbing things down would get us 900,000 subscribers, we'd be under a lot of pressure to do it. Since nobody thinks that's the case, we try to just do the best we can of influencing the influential. An analogy could probably be drawn to the adverse impact of the growth of the international market on Hollywood filmmaking (Dark Water of course, being the exception that proves the rule).
UPDATE: Slightly kidding about Sailer. He doesn't blame the Jews per se, he blames the influence of the Israel lobby on the contemporary American right. I'd be mad if I blamed something on the influence of the Israel lobby on the contemporary American right and someone characterized that as blaming the Jews. So, apologies on that score, I just don't find his theory very plausible.
May 25, 2005 | Permalink
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» The Dumbing down of conservative books from bennellibrothers.com
The premise of conservative pulp writing (and selling) today compared with actual conservative scholastic writing of the past shouldnt surpise anyone that has watched as our entire society is embracing the "dumbed-down" approach. For God sakes, look a... [Read More]
Tracked on May 26, 2005 10:19:28 AM
Comments
There's a conservative/liberal differential here, I bet. Yet another example of the hack gap you noted.
Posted by: rifffle | May 25, 2005 11:23:27 PM
"In Ross' comments, the always-intersting Steve Sailer agrees this has happened and blames the Jews."
Not at all what Sailer said.
Posted by: oxbow incident | May 25, 2005 11:25:11 PM
exbow incident nails it. Matthew is flat-out LYING about Sailer's comment. It's just another example of how the left is so devoid of ideas, all they have left are ad hominem attacks and the race card!
Posted by: Al | May 25, 2005 11:33:15 PM
I would say that Al Frankin is an example of someone who, while not necessarily dumbing down his subject matter (can one speak intelligently about Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly) has found the politics of insult works just as well coming from the left. Maybe Matt is speaking more about political scientists trying to pass off their hack jobs as legitimate academia but in Frankin (and, unfortunately Michael Moore) the left has carved out its own niche in the political bestseller market.
Posted by: EPMason | May 25, 2005 11:39:13 PM
I don't know how much more explicit Sailer has to make it. From the comment:
"The first generation of neoconservatives would have been crazy for Pinker, but the current generation is leery of him because he is a Darwinian, and that fact sets off complicated "Is it good for the Likud Party?" calculations in their minds about whether publishing Pinker in their journals will endanger the Religious Right's support for Likud (although I doubt that the creationists would even notice)."
Posted by: Jason McCullough | May 26, 2005 12:04:41 AM
Jason --
"Likud Party" <> "Jews"
Posted by: oxbow incident | May 26, 2005 12:16:50 AM
oxbow, it's the dog whistle technique. Sailer and his intended audience know exactly what he means, as Jason says.
Posted by: quietstorm | May 26, 2005 12:23:35 AM
quietstorm --
I don't agree with your interpretation of Sailer's comment.
Posted by: oxbow incident | May 26, 2005 12:27:36 AM
The far more interesting bit of the Sailer post is the insistence that conservatives are missing out on the "Darwinian analysis of human behavior," which presumably means stuff like his excellent "black people are genetically superior in trash-talking" thesis.
I agree with the "always-interesting" assessment.
Posted by: Dave Weigel | May 26, 2005 12:29:54 AM
"UPDATE: Slightly kidding about Sailer. He doesn't blame the Jews per se, he blames the influence of the Israel lobby on the contemporary American right. I'd be mad if I blamed something on the influence of the Israel lobby on the contemporary American right and someone characterized that as blaming the Jews. So, apologies on that score, I just don't find his theory very plausible."
Classy clarification/apology, Matt.
Posted by: oxbow incident | May 26, 2005 12:34:50 AM
Following links I just read Sailer on Sowell explaining why Sowell is wrong about African American culture being redneck culture - which it is as anyone who has been to a country bar, can sing along with Hank Williams, or seen a pimp knows. But Sailer goes on to discuss Africa as some single culture place where people don't value families like people in Western Europe did, and that is why African AMericans (meaning the descendents of slaves I assume) outside the South have bad family practices.
This is crazy at best.
Posted by: razor | May 26, 2005 12:43:57 AM
Al: "It's just another example of how the left is so devoid of ideas, all they have left are ad hominem attacks and the race card!"
Yeah, right, Al. It's only people "on the Left" who attack the "today's neocons just care about the Likud" camp as anti-Semitic. So I guess you consider David ("Unpatriotic Conservatives") Frum a leftist...
Posted by: David T | May 26, 2005 12:54:41 AM
I don't think its so simple. You don't want to look only at books by produced by journalists of the right and left, and think that they represent the whole body of "conservative intellectuals" and "liberal intellectuals".
My impression is that demand for political writing is up across the board. Writers like Lowry may, it is true, move to fill the profitable slots in the burgeoning hack niche for mass market screeds. But serious political, social and economic scholars are now filling the niche abandoned by Lowry for more serious and higher quality, but still somewhat popular work, while continuing to produce their own work. For example, the Middle East History and Current Affairs section of my local Borders appears to have grown six or seven times since 2001, most of it filled with books of quality that might have been published before, but for a much more limited specialist audience.
And quality writers from overseas appear to be rushing now to producing serious work for an American audience - work that previously had too small a amrket to attract them. There does seem to be a broader popular market now for certain foreign writings - like the speeches of Dominique Villepin, and the reflections on American politics by historians like Anatol Lieven and Niall Ferguson - that would have attracted fewer readers in the 90's. And maybe just a whole lot more serious people, from all fields, are writing now about politics, and temporarily abandoning other fields like literary studies, philosophy and sociology. And maybe more young people are going in for the study of politics, history, economics and other areas of social thought.
Rising demand across the whole field may produce a re-allocation of producers, but in the end there is just more of everything. So even if some of the people you know personally are cashing in and writing more crap, there are plenty of competent people who were just waiting in the wings behind them eager to employ their expertise to supply a hungry public with serious work that previously appealed only to scholars.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | May 26, 2005 12:54:43 AM
"exbow incident nails it. Matthew is flat-out LYING about Sailer's comment. It's just another example of how the left is so devoid of ideas, all they have left are ad hominem attacks and the race card!"
*snicker*
But I don't misspell other commenters' names.
Posted by: Al | May 26, 2005 1:17:08 AM
This is Steve Sailer. May I post here what I actually posted?
I quite agree. The extinction of the "Public Interest" periodical is symptomatic of the decline of the heroic first generation of neoconservatism -- typically, domestically-oriented social scientists -- into a second generation of foreign affairs-oriented propagandists.
One major intellectual problem on the right is the that the alliance of convenience between neoconservatives and the Religious Right over support for the Likud Party has caused the neoconservatives to miss out on the great intellectual excitement of the time: the rise of Darwinian analysis of human behavior. Commentary, for example, repeatedly runs articles arguing against Darwin's basic theory of 1859.
This keeps the neoconservatives from recruiting fresh talent. The most obvious example is the spectacularly talented Steven Pinker, whose 2002 book "The Blank Slate" was probably the most important/influential big book of this decade so far.
The first generation of neoconservatives would have been crazy for Pinker, but the current generation is leery of him because he is a Darwinian, and that fact sets off complicated "Is it good for the Likud Party?" calculations in their minds about whether publishing Pinker in their journals will endanger the Religious Right's support for Likud (although I doubt that the creationists would even notice).
Commentary still has good people writing for them like Dan Seligman so all is not lost, but the opportunity cost is very large.
Posted by: Steve Sailer | May 26, 2005 1:30:18 AM
I'd like to thank the commenters who pointed out that Mr. Yglesias was completely distorting my comment and Mr. Yglesias for having the decency to admit it.
Posted by: Steve Sailer | May 26, 2005 1:43:38 AM
But for those who claim the "'Likud Party' <> 'The Jews,'" I think you owe an apology to the large fraction of Israelis and the sizable majority of Jewish Americans who do not approve of the Likud Party.
Posted by: Steve Sailer | May 26, 2005 1:46:44 AM
Steve Sailer --
I'm on your side -- "<>" is "not equal to".
Posted by: oxbow incident | May 26, 2005 1:53:28 AM
I relish the day anyone out of the Strauss tradition embrace Pinker. I will pay to watch.
Posted by: razor | May 26, 2005 2:03:25 AM
"I'm on your side -- "<>" is "not equal to"."
My mistake. Thank you.
Posted by: Steve Sailer | May 26, 2005 3:22:01 AM
so wtf does steven pinker have to with likud anyways?
Posted by: sym | May 26, 2005 3:54:21 AM
I think that's the question many of us are asking ourselves.
Posted by: Dustin Ryan Ridgeway | May 26, 2005 5:22:39 AM
Maybe someday, in the distant future, when we are ‘grown up’ as a society, we will actually be able to discuss the pernicious impact AIPAC has had on the United State foreign policy. And domestic policy. And I don’t mean “discuss” in blogs or in obscure journals. I mean on the floor of the United States Congress. And on the campaign trail. And, miracles of miracles, maybe someday, on the Sunday Morning Talk shows. But that time is not here yet. We know the specific name calling that shuts off that debate.
Posted by: jon st | May 26, 2005 5:51:45 AM
The War on Christmas: How the Conspiracy to Subvert Our Most Sacred Holiday is Worse Than You Thought, by John Gibson of Fox News
Is this not conservative intellectualism? I don't get it.
Posted by: Bush Sr. | May 26, 2005 5:54:49 AM
There hasn't been a decent book by a conservative intellectual since Plato died . . .
Posted by: rea | May 26, 2005 7:13:10 AM
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