A winning combo …

… Rare and Common Sense by Theodore Dalrymple | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Great writers and artists should take part in politics only as a defence against politics.

–Tchekhov

In that last quotation lies the explanation of how a man as fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to politics as Leys should not only have written so much about it, but have written so well about it. Only a man for whom politics is a regrettable distraction from what is most important in life has the detachment to be so clear-sighted.

What Leys says about the opening sentence of Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers is correct, but I think the novel justifies it. He should have read it.