- Dalrymple, Theodore.
Our Culture, What's Left of It.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.
ISBN 1-56663-643-4.
-
Theodore Dalrymple is the nom de plume of Anthony
Daniels, a British physician and psychiatrist who, until his recent
retirement, practiced in a prison medical ward and public hospital
in Birmingham, England. In his early career, he travelled widely,
visiting such earthly paradises as North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba,
Zimbabwe (when it was still Rhodesia), and Tanzania, where
he acquired an acute sense of the social prerequisites for
the individual disempowerment which characterises the third
world. This experience superbly equipped him to diagnose the
same maladies in the city centres of contemporary Britain; he is
arguably the most perceptive and certainly among the most eloquent
contemporary observers of that society.
This book is a collection of his columns from
City Journal,
most dating from 2001 through 2004, about equally divided between
“Arts and Letters” and “Society and Politics”.
There are gems in both sections: you'll want to re-read
Macbeth after reading
Dalrymple on
the nature of evil
and need for boundaries if
humans are not to act inhumanly. Among the chapters of social
commentary is a prophetic essay which almost precisely
forecast
the recent violence in France three years before it happened, one
of the clearest statements of the
inherent
problems of Islam in adapting to modernity, and a persuasive
argument
against drug legalisation by somebody who spent almost
his entire career treating the victims of both illegal drugs and
the drug war. Dalrymple has decided to
conclude his medical
career in down-spiralling urban Britain for a life in rural
France where, notwithstanding problems, people still know
how to live. Thankfully, he will continue his writing.
Many of these essays can be
found on-line
at the City Journal site; I've linked to those I cited
in the last paragraph. I find that writing this fine is best enjoyed
away from the computer, as ink on paper in a serene time, but it's great
that one can now read material on-line to decide whether it's worth
springing for the book.
January 2006 