The essence of conservatism: the now-deceased Russel Kirk was at the forefront of conservative thought, adept at showing both conservatism's correctness and liberalism's faults

Where's the Fiction?

Also, although Kirk's brief (five pages in this edition) essay entitled "A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale" was included in The Essential Russell Kirk, none of his 22 short stories, nor any excerpt from his three novels, were included. Kirk famously referred to his "Gothic mind" and he certainly understood his fiction to be "of a piece" with the rest of his writing. Thus "A Cautionary Note..." offers only the briefest of introductions to a significant portion--roughly 20 percent--of Kirk's published work. At the risk of hyperbole, one might say that reading Kirk's essays without giving consideration to his fiction would almost be analogous to reading T.S. Eliot's essay "The Idea of a Christian Society," while ignoring his poetry. Those readers who are interested in reading Kirk's fictional writing should acquire his Old House of Fear (originally published in 1961, but republished in 2007) and Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (2004).

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Despite these minor criticisms, this volume is an extremely helpful introduction to the thought of one of the most important bookmen of our age. The decision to end The Essential Russell Kirk with the essay "Is Life Worth Living?"--the same essay which concluded Kirk's posthumously published memoir, The Sword of the Imagination--was wise, and allows the anthology to end on the same hopeful note with which he concluded his own labors:

   Humankind has it on authority that
   riches cannot well pass through the
   needle's eye into the world beyond
   the world. Being unencumbered
   with pelf, Kirk is not distressed by
   that difficulty; his worn old knapsack
   will suffice him for the tramp from
   corruption to incorruption. In imagination,
   at least, may he be permitted
   to carry with him, into another realm
   of being, beyond time, his Mogul
   sword? That blade might repel certain
   Watchers--the old Egyptians
   dreaded them--at the Strait Gate.
   Quite conceivably imagination of the
   right sort may be so redemptive hereafter
   as here. Forward!

Kirk's writings are permeated with such optimism which bespeaks confidence in the Lord of heaven and Earth, who has already won the victory. In the midst of the darkness of this present age, conservatives will be well-served by the rekindling of such a lively hope.

Rev. James Heiser is the pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas.

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