1,535 words

When I arrived to Sweden in February I had not seen much snow in over a year. I walked down an ice- and snow-covered road, learning to read the street names. (more…)

4,109 words

Part 2 of 2

Bill Hopkins

3. “The corrupt vigour of fascism.”

In early 1958, Time magazine ran a humorous squib titled “Sloane Square Stomp.”[9] It told how Colin Wilson (and presumably Bill) had attended a premiere of their friend Stuart Holroyd’s new play at the Royal Court Theatre. Bill and Colin’s onetime friend Christopher Logue stood up in the stalls with Kenneth Tynan, denouncing Holroyd and Wilson as fascists. During the interval, this led to a shoving match in a nearby bar. The whole thing was a tempest in a teapot, (more…)

3,016 words

Part 1 of 2

Hopkins, around the time of Declaration and The Divine and the Decay (1957).

(Told in the discursive spirit, if not quite the style, of Jonathan Bowden.)

“The evidence of exhaustion stares out from the columns of the daily newspapers. The references to ‘Angry Young Men’ for example, record a general astonishment at the vigour of simply being angry. Another instance is the hero-worship of the late James Dean, who posthumously remains as the embodiment of Youth’s violent rebuttal of a society grown pointless. That the rejection is equally pointless does not appear to matter; the sincerity redeems it.”

— Bill Hopkins, “Ways Without a Precedent,” in Declaration, 1957  (more…)

3,094 words

Alfred Rosenberg
Memoirs
Ostara Publications, 2015

According to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, Rosenberg was the only condemned man who, when asked at the gallows if he had any last statement to make, replied with only one word: “No.”

If only he had kept his mouth shut in the first place! (more…)

4,540 words

Bradley R. Smith
A Personal History of Moral Decay
Charleston, W.V.: Nine-Banded Books, 2014

“I’m setting out to see the world and make my fortune, just like they did in the old days. I know I’m past the age when these things are normally taken care of, but I’m a slow starter.”

(more…)