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: A few years ago, I remember writing a review (at the instigation of a “Web specialist”) of my latest opus and submitting it to a book review site under an assumed name. I felt somewhat sleazy, but the “specialist” had insisted that everyone does this sort of thing. To ease my conscience, I stressed in the review that I was associated with the house which had published the book. The site’s operator, however, was apparently neither impressed by this gesture nor aware that “everyone” was exploiting operations such as his. He rejected my submission with the inimitably lofty disdain of a liberal intellectual. I have often marveled at that sense of very special purity in other contexts: “So what if the Kyoto Accord would have had negligible environmental impact and would certainly have plunged our economy into ruin? So what if the Soviets no longer exist as such, and in any case only started honoring missile treaties when their interest shifted to bacteriological warfare? WE, at least, can be pure!” If there were less grandstanding in these algarades of righteous indignation—if they were not always the same heroic role reprised before any audience that would sit still for it—one might have called such responses naïve. : Well, anyway… where the skull-and-crossbones flaps in friendly skies, I can openly admit that I have written another perishin’ book and that I wish to plug it. The title, as I recall, is The Entelechy Kid: His Life and Times (An Epic in Progressively Polysyllabic Prose… Or Maybe Just Another Bad Novel). The back cover features exciting blurbs from such luminaries as William F. Buckley, who writes warmly, “I wish I could be more helpful, but I can’t. Requests to look at or relay a manuscript are frequent, and there is nothing I have ever been able to do to help out.” Did I say warmly—how about with ungrudging tepidity? The gist of the thing is that a Central American revolutionary (except he’s really a counter-revolutionary, or just trying to stay out of jail) evades unpleasantness by signing with the Red Sox, starting a computer-dating service, and engaging in various other subterfuges of a distinctly postmodern (or at least post-plausible) aroma. Link with excerpts at www.conservativebooks.org/kid.htm ; or later this summer, try www.literatevalues.com/conservativehumor.htm. I assure you, it’s all good clean fun at the expense of political correctness—no scatologies or scurrilities (not really… not many: not compared to what you’re used to, hypocrite lecteur). : Thanks for the Masthead, JR.

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