A Conservative Journey Through Literary America – Part 5: A Conversation With John Derbyshire
by Matt PattersonJohn Derbyshire, columnist, essayist, critic, raconteur, has an opinion. On everything, it seems. Thankfully, he is not shy about sharing them, and was kind enough to speak with me by phone one afternoon.
In addition to wearing the above listed hats, Derbyshire has also written a strange and wonderful little novel called Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, a book described in the New York Times as, “a bouncy, Capraesque tale of midlife crisis, romantic confusion and spiritual regeneration.” (The Times review was so favorable that it puts the conceit that conservative authors can’t get a fair shake from the liberal media in a good bit of jeopardy).
I asked Derbyshire about Coolidge, the writing of which he recounts with both fondness and exasperation, with decided emphasis on the former. He claims that writing fiction puts one in a state of “aesthetic bliss” (to paraphrase Nabachov), the prime virtue of which is an expansion of perspective that “…separates you from the everyday world.” He tells me that writing a good novel gives one a pleasure many times that of reading a good novel, which, if true, must be a high state of bliss indeed. (more…)
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