Thursday, April 16, 2026
"We Shall Not Fight on the Beaches"
The plot is simple. A huge armada of rotting hulks, bearing a million impoverished and half-starved Bengalis desperate to reach Europe, which they suppose to be a land flowing with milk and honey, sets out from Calcutta and eventually reaches the south coast of France. The local population flees before this invasion, no official efforts having been made to repel it. French society collapses; the success of the armada spells the downfall of Europe, and the whole of the West, as a civilization.
Read all of Theodore Dalrymple's review of The Camp of the Saints.
First Lines
It hurt us to breathe.
Inside a small barrack room whose remarkable cleanliness derived from its inhabitants' sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping three times a day, six of us lay down on worn mattresses of wool, with thin cotton sheets to cover us. Yellowish lamplight outside passed through the room's square windows without curtains, mixing with its darkness and recasting our surroundings in grisaille hues.
- From The Monastery of the Damned: From the Ivy League to the French Foreign Legion by Nicholas Tobias
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Marketing Twist
Have been getting marketing feedback on Pilate's Magician. I was pleased, of course, to hear that the novel has been recommended by a minister but was surprised at the primary nature of his audience: lawyers.
[Photo by Rick Rothenberg at Unsplash.
Recognize Free Iran
I don't want a peace agreement with the mullahs of Iran. I want them gone.
No agreements with a "mullah-lite" regime. It would be like negotiating with Vichy bureaucrats.
Today's diplomatic task should be to recognize the new Iranian government.
Period.
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