Monday, January 29, 2007

Anthony M Ludovici





Never heard of Ludovici [wiki: Ludovici], but a lot of his stuff here, including, essays, reviews, short stories, poems, novels and much more.

This is the first paragraph of his 1940-41 review of Derrick Leon's Introduction To Proust, in The New English Weekly:

Ever since I closed the last of my nineteen volumes of Proust, which it took me eight years in my leisure hours to read and on the last page of which I wrote the date — February 5th 1938 — I have been looking for just such a book as Mr. Derrick Leon's "Introduction To Proust.

Look out for the What-Proust-wrote-of-Anatole-France quote at the end.


A quick check of the rest of his writing brought up amongst others a review of the Kinsey Report in which he writes:

Never having been to America, we have no knowledge of American women, but no informed Englishman would agree with the authors that transvesitsm — at least over here — is a male rather than a female aberration. Very rarely indeed is a male transvestist seen or prosecuted in this country; whereas, although prosecutions do not necessarily follow, it is a common spectacle to see females of all ages hurrying to assume male clothing on the slightest provocation. Proust says in Vol. II of the Coté de Guermantes, "Dans la vie de la plupart des femmes tout meme le plus grand chagrin, aboutit a une question d'essayage." To apply this to English conditions, we should suggest paraphrasing it as follows: "In the life of most English females, every crisis, domestic or national, culminates in their finding some pretext for getting into men's clothes."
In Anthony M. Ludovici The prophet of anti-feminism by R. B. Kerr does a bit of intellectual biography ending with:

He is a brilliant writer with an unhappy tendency to run to exaggeration and absurdity.....All that he needs to give him his proper place in literature is an accession of moderation and common sense.

Ludovici specialised in Nietzsche, and thought the Nazis jolly good. But his writing can be very funny.





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