Notes & Asides

National Review, Nov 10, 2003

-- Remarks on awarding the Bradley Prize to Thomas Sowell, October 7, 2003

I do not undertake to summarize, or even to list, the thirty books written by Dr. Sowell or the one hundred learned essays or the one thousand newspaper columns. Nor to summarize academic honors and tributes he has been paid, except perhaps any such tribute as especially springs to mind, the most palpable of which is that of the Bradley Foundation.

It is interesting to learn that Dr. Sowell does not give us his annual book because that is the book he has just finished. He writes his books only when he has something on his mind that demands parturition. He writes down that much of it as attracts his thought, and it might sit there for a long time awaiting supplementary exposition. He gave a speech in Switzerland in 1982. It reposed in his mind and in his notes and, seventeen years later, sprang forth as his notable Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

His writing style is admired by many, among others by the nominators and selection committee for the Bradley Prize. It is admired for its directness and fluency. However resourceful and comprehensive as a scholar, Professor Sowell writes to be read and understood. Not necessarily to persuade, but that failure is not his as a teacher, it is the problem of invincible ignorance. But he does not stop trying, and indeed he often reminds us, as recently in his book The Quest for Cosmic Justice, of the futility of grand social and political designs, miscalculated to bring heaven on earth. As much can be said of great intellectual designs for universal knowledge. His study of native cultures, of the migration of peoples, of what they bring with them to their new homelands, of the difficulties in communicating with them in the absence of a knowledge of their cultures, is a great investigative story, illuminatingly set forth. His book Conquests and Cultures: An International History testifies to his conquest of our own culture.

Not everyone has experienced him as a teacher and conversationalist. There is no more vivid memory in my own experience than of the Socratic eloquence of Tom Sowell when answering a questioner or confronting a dissident, whether on the public platform or in the living room; or, one supposes, in the classroom. There is a patience there that must have derived from Biblical mandates, because it does not come naturally to Tom Sowell. There are duties in living a role substantially public in nature, and he assumes them, though not always gladly.

Writing some time ago about the pains of book reviewing he spoke of the 600-page clunker. "After only 20 pages, it becomes painfully clear that this one is a real dog. The rest of the ordeal is like crossing the Sahara Desert -- except that often there are no oases." There is the one compensation, namely that the reviewer "gets to slaughter the author in print at the end of it all, but," he complains, "this merely appeases the desire for revenge, which only real blood would satisfy." Some who have been witness to Tom Sowell on the offensive would not know that what he was causing to flow was anything less than real blood.

In his newspaper columns he is always on the scene to make the necessary points, as when last week Rush Limbaugh was denounced for the mere mention of race in connection with a football player. "The denunciation and demonization of Pat Moynihan," he recalls, "marked a major turning point in public discussion of racial issues. None of those who demonized Daniel Patrick Moynihan has paid any price. But the black community has paid a terrible price because the problem he tried to point out was swept under the rug. Broken homes and children raising children have produced poisonous consequences, from educational failures to drugs and murder."

His emphasis on the need to acquire genuine knowledge and to free one's thinking of cliche and conformity he imposes exemplarily on his own work. His impatience with cant is at every level, from lofty presidential speeches to workaday transgressions of copyeditors. "Some years ago," he recalls, "a copyedited book-length manuscript [of mine] was turned back to me with literally hundreds of little tabs attached to the pages, in addition to the usual stylistic vandalism in the text."

So how did he handle that? "Remembering General MacArthur's warning against getting bogged down in a land war in Asia, I decided not to become engaged with the copyeditor." He just sent a duplicate clean copy of his manuscript to the publisher and told him to get on with the publication of his book.

He recognizes, of course, the little fallibilities in life, one of them being the typographical error. "Typos have an uncanny ability to survive reading and rereading. If there is anything that could survive a nuclear attack, it is probably typographical errors."

Our honoree has always been patient in the matter of his own learning. His early submissions, he informs us, were rejected not as a matter of unrecognized talent. Rather, he says, "it was a case of quickly recognized incompetence. When I first started writing, in my teens, I lived in New York City and worked in downtown Manhattan. That is how I got my rejection slips back so fast. If I had lived out in Podunk, I could have dreamed on, in a fool's paradise, from Monday morning until Thursday or Friday evening before the brutal truth, the rejection slip, caught up with me."