Long-time friend of and commenter at MavPhil sends me the very good news that he is on board at NRO. Congratulations, Spencer! We definitely need more philosophically-trained journalists, and given the corruption and ever-worsening decline of the academic world 'thanks' to leftists, young philosophers like Case do well to consider alternative careers in which they can write and think and preserve their liberty far from the hothouses of political correctness.
Spencer's debut article is Polemics and Philosophy from a British Contrarian, a review of two new books by Roger Scruton, the novel Notes from Underground, and the philosophical work, The Soul of the World. Case's description of the novel make me want to read it, especially given my visit to Prague last September:
Notes from Underground is mainly set in 1985 in Communist-occupied Prague. Earlier in his career, Scruton covertly visited Prague behind the Iron Curtain, traveling as a lecturer, so the harsh descriptions have an authentic ring to them. Such descriptions allow Scruton to argue against leftist collectivism merely by describing its effects. Sometimes the storyline is coupled with searing polemics, which are most effective when they catch the reader off-guard. For instance, his protagonist observes, “Defenestration is a Czech tradition, the only one that the Communists had retained.”
The story is told in the first person by Jan Reichl, a Czech academic in the United States, who recounts his youth under Communism. Once valued for his past as a dissident writer, he now finds his worth diminishing in the eyes of the academy. Jan writes about his experiences from a meditative distance, full of references to the literature of Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Zweig, as well as to the music of Schubert and Mahler. The book’s title itself is a reference to Dostoyevsky, whose novella Notes from the Underground is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature. The narrator’s distance from events reduces the emotional immediacy of some scenes, but it also gives the whole story a thoughtful melancholy.
Spencer has some meaty things to say in criticism of Scruton, so I suggest you all head over to the former's ComBox to register your approbation, disapprobation, congratulations, whatever. My guess is that he will be evaluated by the NRO editors in part by the length and quality of the comment threads he generates.