Happy warrior of the mind …

… The University Bookman: How Dwight Became Dwight. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Even at the height of whatever sympathy for the Soviet régime Macdonald had, he recoiled from joining the Communist Party, let alone committing himself to the administration of same. The first Party meeting he attended was also his last; and characteristically, his loathing of it (which he never lost) was deep down emotional rather than logical. In 1979, three years before his death, he told Diana Trilling: “I said to myself, my God, these people, they’re just simply wobbits, they don’t have any brains and they’re scared to death of each other and they have no sense of humor, no life! How could anyone live in this airless atmosphere?” We are here very far from the mindset which (to quote one instance among hundreds) caused an aristocratic ultra-aesthete like Luchino Visconti to agitate on behalf of Italian communism because only communism could ensure his own ability to hobnob with A Better Class of Person.