Is There Such An Animal As A Conservative Novel?

The site Hey Miller is in the process of compiling a list of conservative novels. The comments would be of interest to book lovers. I am going to reproduce my comment here in hopes of spurring some discussion.

"I am intrigued by the category being considered at all. Why do we read novels? To experience beauty? To learn more about the human condition? For entertainment and to pass the time? I think that it tends to be a mixture of all of these. If I am reading mainly for entertainment, sure, I don't want a bunch of leftie foolishness invading my free time. But some of those lefties write very well and can be entertaining, e. g., Norman Mailer can deliver on occasion and Ken Kesey can be good. And I am secure enough in my world view that I think Sholokhov is not going to turn me into a commie.
"If I am reading to experience beauty I don't think conservative values are in jeopardy. Since truth is an element of beauty conservatism will tend to win out. Or the mind automatically makes adjustments to neutralize the lies. My favorite example would be James Joyce. He was an atheist and a socialist but still a great artist who wrote beautiful and entertaining books. His characters are interesting and and frighteningly real. And he does us the favor of not pushing his politics on us (though I think that there tends to be a bleakness, emptiness and depression near the core of his works that has been brought on by his atheism). And Joyce's work reinforces conservative values because it is so self-aware of its place in the Western tradition that the reading of his works forces the reader to think about and investigate further so many ideas and books that most nonconservatives ignore or attempt to sabotage.
"But if we are looking for overtly conservative novels I think The Devils by Dostoevsky has to be near the top of the list. It is an all out attack on socialism and progressivism. It shows that these ideologies are all merely fronts for atheism and displays where they inevitably lead.
"I'm surprised no one mentioned The Screwtape letters or Orwell's 1984.
"Waugh is always worth reading. The works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are beautiful and an entertaining journey into another world.
"Heinlein's Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress bring up issues that conservatives will always think and write about. But if you look at Heinlein's whole body of work the over all judgement would have to fall in the area of weidorama.
"I don't imagine that Faulkner was self-consciously a conservative. But many of his novels delve deeply into the issue of race in America that we have not begun to see the end of. And he looks at the questions from many perspectives and never falls into the useless left wing class consciousness formulas."

Cross Posted at The Chinese Jar

Ochi Chernye

There is a great jazz version of this song by Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt and others (it's called 'Dark Eyes').
I like the pure gypseyness of this version. Often in Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky a character will be described as spending days with the gypsies, often burning through great wads of money in the process. Sometimes the squandered money will be a plot device. This clip gives an idea of the mix of dissipation and joie d’verve that the character must experience. The Russian writers seem to assume the reader knows what is going on with the gypsies (cultural imperialism that I’m sure Obama would frown on). But it doesn’t look to me like the money could have been totally wasted.

Demons

Always Be Closing: a Hash of Orwell, Mamet, Dostoevsky, Mill, etc.

That is a room full of talent. But I have put it here because it illustrates why lefties are so given to Orwellian double speak. The Fairness doctrine is anything but fair. The Employee Free Choice Act is about taking freedom away from employees. The Democrat Party is not democratic: the superdelagates have virtual veto power over any choice arrived at democratically. Obama’s transparency is apparently designed to keep information from the mass of citizens. Racism once meant one race feeling superior or oppressing other races but no longer seems to apply when whites are oppressed. These are just the first examples to come to mind.
Why does the left habitually resort to twisting language beyond recognition? I’m sure there are many reasons. One of the first that comes to mind is their lack of respect for rules and boundaries. I don’t think most of them even care that debasing the language weakens social order. Many might even be glad to participate in the destruction of society since the final conclusion of most every lefty thought process and action is anarchy. (But I’m not going to seriously delve into that here beyond the observation that their misuse of language is a destructive and nihilistic process.)
Alec Baldwin’s (and David Mamet‘s) ‘always be closing’ speech fits in because liberals often twist language for marketing purposes. If they were open and honest about employee free choice, the Fairness Doctrine and the nondemocratic process of the Democrat party they would be about as successful as the Green Party. But to paraphrase Alec B., “They're sitting out there waiting to give you their vote. Are you going to take it? Are you man enough to take it? Because someone else will.”
And some of the marketing involves convincing themselves they are in the right. A perfect example of this is Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He is a poor student suffering from dire poverty in Czarist Russia. He accepts the basic tenet of utilitarianism that whatever serves the greatest good for the greatest number of people is the highest good. He then takes this and manufactures a rationalization system whereby he feel justified in murdering a rich old woman. He reasons that he will take her wealth, become an engineer and help countless people thus more than wiping out the smaller evil of the one murder. How progressive! He has embraced the evil of murder with a mental trick and strangely enough his little transgression furnishes him with a bunch of money: how convenient. Rather like ACORN’s lax oversight led to forged voter registration forms and finally to many votes for Democrats while they mouth bromides about the democratic process or whatever.
A large web of lies are created to justify perverting the language, thereby speeding the dissolution of society. And the creators of the lies and perversions end up with lots of votes, money, power and a strangely inflated sense of moral superiority.