News
(Also see our newsletter, Permanent Things.)
Kirk in Traverse Magazine
John J. Miller has a lovely article about Dr. Kirk and his life and legacy in the January issue of Traverse Magazine, now released online. Take a look.
Kirk in the 1950s
We have new posts of several articles of Russell Kirk in the online archive, including four from the 1950s. Kirk covers topics including tradition, revolution, the age of boredom (addressing themes that later became Eliot and His Age), and ”The Inhumane Businessman.” Do take some time and read them.
The University Bookman
We have posted the latest number of the University Bookman, which is our penultimate print issue. The Bookman will be expanding our presence online after this point. This number features reviews on two very different historians—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Carlton Hayes—and continuing efforts to define the right. The full contents are available here.
Spring Permanent Things
The Spring 2010 number of our Permanent Things newsletter is up featuring updates on past Wilbur Fellows and articles on other admirers of Russell Kirk. You can download a copy of the PDF from this link.
Intercollegiate Review on Kirk
To commemorate the 16th anniversary of the death of Russell Kirk on April 29, we would like to highlight the new archives of the Intercollegiate Review, particularly the 1994 commemorative issue on Russell Kirk, featuring essays from several noted writers and friends of Dr. Kirk.
Kirk Center in Italy
Senior Fellow Marco Respinti announces progress on the web site for the Centro Studi Russell Kirk based in Milan, Italy. It is still under development, but you can visit at www.russellkirk.eu. We have also recently posted an updated bio for Marco.
Permanent Things Newsletter
We are pleased to announce a new number of Permanent Things, the newsletter of the Russell Kirk Center, edited by Ben Lockerd. The Fall 2009 edition features a report on 2009 activities at the Center. You may download it at this link (PDF, 2.6MB).
Online Support Opportunity
The Kirk Center now has a PayPal account which enables secure donations via credit or debit card. We appreciate any contribution you can make toward our publications and seminars to further the Permanent Things. You can make a gift from this page. Thank you!
George Nash Interviewed
Senior Fellow George H. Nash has been interviewed for a new documentary on President Herbert Hoover. An edited transcript is available here.
New Solzhenitsyn Edition
The Kirk Center knows of few better friends or champions of the moral imagination in humane letters than Edward E. Ericson Jr., Emeritus Professor of English at Calvin College. A distinguished authority on the life and works of the Russian man of letters Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a longtime friend of the Center’s founder, he was distinctly influenced by the writings of Russell Kirk, who favorably reviewed Dr. Ericson’s seminal work, Solzhenitsyn: The Moral Vision (1980). The Kirk Center is proud to announce that the unexpurgated version of Solzhenitsyn’s first novel, In the First Circle, has been recently published by Harper Perennial, with an insightful foreword by Dr. Ericson. Readers of the foreword and of Solzhenitsyn’s long-anticipated novel of soul-trying spiritual struggle within the Soviet prison system will discover truths articulated by Kirk nearly thirty years ago: “Solzhenitsyn’s moral vision is what Eliot called the ‘high dream’ —the vision of Dante, the Christian extrasensory perception of true reality. Even more than Dante, Solzhenitsyn passed through the Inferno, and was purged of dross.”
Review of the new edition of Kirk on Eliot
James Matthew Wilson reviews the new edition of Eliot and His Age by Russell Kirk for First Principles, the ISI web journal. Kirk considered this among his best books, and we are grateful for so sympathetic a review.
Bookman interviews
The University Bookman has posted two recent interviews: “The Predicament of the Individual,” an interview with James Poulos, editor of the Postmodern Conservative blog, and “The Freedom to Use Common Sense,” an interview with Philip K. Howard, author of Life without Lawyers.
Kirk in Time and Newsweek
Russell Kirk has been invoked recently in both Time and Newsweek—briefly in Joe Scarboroough’s article on strategies for the Republican Party in Time, and more extensively in Jon Meacham’s article, “A Modest Case for a Burkean Boomlet” in Newsweek.
Forgotten Founders
University Bookman editor Gerald J. Russello reviews biographies of Gouverneur Morris and Luther Martin, from the new ISI series on “forgotten founders” of the United States in an online exclusive.
Duggan on McLuhan
Joseph P. Duggan reviews two posthumously published books by Marshall McLuhan in a new University Bookman online exclusive article.
Kirk Video Companion Site
On this, the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Russell Kirk, April 29, we would like to announce the posting of a link to a companion website that features video interviews with scholars, prominent persons in the conservative movement, and with Russell Kirk himself. Among the persons interviewed about Kirk’s contribution and work are: William F. Buckley, Roger Scruton, William Rusher, Dick Armey, Fred Thompson, Ed Feulner, Lee Edwards, Kenneth Cribb, Vigen Guroian and many others. Our deep thanks to David Schock for his many hours of work in creating the site and editing the videos. You can view them at kirkcenter.wordpress.com.
Permanent Things Newsletter
We are pleased to announce a new number of Permanent Things, the newsletter of the Russell Kirk Center, edited by Ben Lockerd. The spring 2009 edition features a retrospective of thirty years of the Wilbur Foundation program. You may download it at this link (PDF, 2.6MB).
Winter Bookman
The new Winter 2008 edition of the University Bookman is now available online. It is a special edition featuring an assessment of the work and legacy of Russell Kirk on the fifteenth anniversary of his death. Subscribe here.
New Interview
The Bookman has posted a new exclusive interview with M. Edward Whelan, III president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on judicial activism and other topics.
Is conservatism dead?
The Bookman responds to a recent essay by Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic with a symposium from such distinguished writers as Joseph P. Duggan, Austin Bramwell, Daniel McCarthy, Lee Edwards, James Poulos, and Roger Kimball.