THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader NOT THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS From 1982 until its demise in 1988, the Claremont Review of Books was an important publication, particularly for conservatives who had few...
...Actually, Lehmann reports, he was "a Las Vegas-based con man" named Michael Pellegrino, and he took Simon & Schuster for a half-million-dollar advance...
...The real Michael Gambino is Gambino's great-grandson, a sixteen-year-old boy in New York...
...In his first chapter he gives a brief political and philosophical explanation of conservatism (which occasionally sounds as though conservatism is defined by "us versus them...
...Likewise, though he offers suggestions for right-wing activism that would certainly serve to give campuses a much-needed opposing voice, he offers little vision for moving beyond it...
...In a chapter entitled "How to Harpoon a Liberal," he describes his own rhetorical methods for undercutting liberal cliches...
...Yet young readers should be a little careful...
...I gave up a lot of money and power, but I feel so much better...
...The Godfather would have been proud...
...While the satire is the best part of Letters to a Young Conservative, what D'Souza really offers is a plan of action for conservative college students...
...Returning to print in November 2000, the revived quarterly has just put out its Fall 2002 issue—and what seemed through its first seven issues to be a promising addition to our intellectual life has now become a real and (we hope) permanent ornament...
...All of these will be valuable to the uninitiated...
...Books in Brief Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza (Basic, 224 pp., $22...
...Meanwhile, for publishing moving in the other direction, take a look at John Lehmann's hilarious account in the August 28 New York Post about Simon & Schuster's printing of Michael Gambino's The Honored Society...
...He also runs the risk of isolating some readers by making a distinction between "high brow" and "low brow" universities...
...And there's more...
...The Standard Reader NOT THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS From 1982 until its demise in 1988, the Claremont Review of Books was an important publication, particularly for conservatives who had few other venues in which to present their ideas...
...The member of the International Students Association who admires India for being "liberating" though he has never been there to observe the caste system...
...The protester who screams, "Stop this man from speaking," and then, "I am being censored," as the police drag her away...
...And for everyone else, it is a very funny reminder of what they've managed to escape...
...He then calls for radical anti-liberalism from young conservatives, based on his own experiences in college as an editor of the outspoken Dartmouth Review...
...Still, Letters to a Young Conservative is a useful book to have in hand when enrolling in a university these days...
...I'm committed to making a different life for myself," Pellegrino aka Gambino writes in The Honored Society...
...The scholar of postmodernism who objects to economic elitism while writing in language that is intentionally inaccessible...
...With a redesigned layout and art by Elliott Banfield (who also contributes a fine essay on a proper September 11 memorial for New York), the issue features fine review essays by, among others, editor Charles Kesler, Mark Blitz, James Higgins, and Delba Winthrop, on topics as diverse as America, Heidegger, globalization, and Tocqueville...
...The polarized battle D'Souza paints between liberalism and conservatism—while certainly appropriate to the extremism of a university setting—may not be the best paradigm for those trying to figure out where they fit...
...Take a look at www.claremont.org...
...Simon & Schuster is suing Pellegrino and his literary agents (the remnants of Michael Ovitz's Artists Management Group) for fraud in the unlikely hope of getting their money back...
...The latest in Basic's "Art of Mentoring" series, D'Souza's collection of letters to a fictitious college student provides a sharp and funny deconstruction of contemporary university life...
...Erin Sheley...
...Described by the publisher as "the highest-ranking mob member" ever to write about the Mafia, the author said he was the grandson of Carlo Gam-bino (often claimed to be the original for Mario Puzo's The Godfather...
Vol. 8 • September 2002 • No. 1
