Free Republic

On Monday’s America This Week Walter Kirn read from a bizarre introduction to his 75th Anniversary edition paperback edition of 1984. Written by Harvard-educated author Dolen Perkins-Valdez, it came with a trigger warning. I had to go looking for the foreword by Perkins-Valdez, a black female writer whose Twitter page features a line from the “discussion questions” portion of her book Take My Hand: “History repeats what we don’t remember.”In Take My Hand Perkins-Valdez stressed the importance of remembering episodes like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and the use of the Henrietta Lacks cell line. Her essay about 1984 argues at...

Manliness and the Mindless By James Bowman Published 3/22/2006 12:08:51 AM The sneering review in the New York Times Book Review by a novelist called Walter Kirn of Harvey Mansfield's Manliness could have been anticipated, but its obtuseness -- especially when viewed alongside the subtle and supple line of argument pursued by Professor Mansfield -- is unusual even for the mainstream media culture which Mr. Kirn represents. He compares the professor to Hans and Franz, the German body-builders portrayed by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon on Saturday Night Live back in the 1990s. "Remember how unwittingly fey they seemed," he...