The Fiery Angel
Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West
-
- $33.99
-
- $33.99
Publisher Description
Without an understanding and appreciation of the culture we seek to preserve and protect, the defense of Western civilization is fundamentally futile; a culture that believes in nothing cannot defend itself, because it has nothing to defend. The past not only still has something to tell us, but it also has something that it must tell us. In this profound and wide-ranging historical survey, Michael Walsh illuminates the ways that the narrative and visual arts both reflect and affect the course of political history, outlining the way forward by arguing for the restoration of the Heroic Narrative that forms the basis of all Western cultural and religious traditions. Let us listen, then, to the angels of our nature, for better and worse. They have much to tell us, if only we will listen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Walsh (The Devil's Pleasure Palace), former music critic at Time, discusses nearly 100 musical, artistic, and literary works, from the epic of Gilgamesh to a Tom Wolfe novel, to illustrate "the soul of the West" and how it supposedly is threatened. Exactly what that soul is, however, Walsh never succinctly spells out; it seems to involve a struggle of God and good against Satan and evil, as well as heroic struggles by (male) protagonists, sometimes against fate. Unfortunately, Walsh's style is often rambling; he doesn't build an argument so much as make claim after unsupported claim. He undermines his credibility with blanket statements, some counterfactual, such as that women entering the workforce has caused "an effective halving of the family's income" because of additional expenses in "child care, meals, etc." Other assertions are simply bizarre ("Homer has more to teach about governance than Harvard, and always will"). Walsh will lose many readers with his mini-tirades against the "satanic" Left; feminists, whom he contemptuously sees as obsessed with "transvestism, transsexuality, and non-gender-specific personal pronouns"; and Muslim refugees, who he claims have turned "English cities hotbeds of radical Islamic theology Pakistani rape gangs." Aside from educating readers about important cultural artifacts, this diffuse, often bilious work does little, if anything, to advance the author's goal of uncovering "the soul of the West."
