beauty | PERRIN LOVETT

Tags

More than just a military expert, Andrei Martyanov is a very astute cultural commentator. He reiterates a point from America’s Final War:

Those Who Read My Books …

… they may have noticed that in my latest book about war I seemingly go on a strange tangent, but it is not strange. It is directly related to the issue. Here it is.

But even more has been accomplished by Russia in staring down a combined West. Modern Western culture has become recognized as ugly in every sense of the word, from freak shows at the demonstration of fashions, to people looking increasingly dirty from tattoos covering their bodies, to the body positive movement extolling unhealthy and aesthetically repulsive lifestyles, to the rampant use of drugs. The modern West has lost the understanding of beauty. The late Roger Scruton warned: “Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.” It has almost completely vanished, pushed out by the post-modernist dystopia and perversion of the Western intelligentsia. As Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot, “Beauty will save the world.” The West has lost the meaning of and desire for beauty, thus losing the tool for its own salvation, and the world has taken note.

While I didn’t quote that part of his work in my previous review, I did highlight it in my Kindle. It’s not strange and it’s not a tangent. The Dostoevsky quote is telling, or it was to me. A culture and its literature go hand in hand. And Andrei’s article is the third I’ve seen over the past month or so lamenting the collapse of Western (American) culture and books.

I contacted two of the three dismayed authors regarding Judging Athena, the book Emma Cazabonne called, “a novel in total defiance of postmodern trends, where the emphasis is on faith, prayer, thanksgiving, going to church, obedience to God, clean honest dating, and a genuine understanding of the real dimension of marriage, in real joy and happiness.” The Substitute isn’t as pretty, but it also defies the postmodern mess. Most of my forthcoming books, both those with the publisher or in draft form, do the same.

Americans really should turn off the TV and start reading books that uplift rather than distort. I, for one, hope they do so now. But as Chris Orcutt kind of noted in our recent interview, the better messages of today might have to wait for future audiences. If you’re reading this in 2025-30, then please get ahead of the trend.