In my July 7 & 14 New Yorker, in an article by Adam Gopnik about the writer G. K. Chesterton, subtitled, 'The troubling genius of G. K. Chesterton', I found this:'Mercantile capitalist societies profess values that their own appetites destroy; calls for public morality come from the same people who use prostitutes. Meanwhile, the workings of capital turn the local artisan into a maker of mass-produced objects and every high street into an identical strip mall….Chesterton is the great critic of...homogenization, the levelling of difference in the pursuit of cash. He is the grandfather of Slow Food, of local eating...''
I wasn't sure whether to post this; I liked it so much, but Chesterton was such a disgusting filthy old rascist bastard. I agonised over it for a while.
Later in the article, Gopnik writes, 'if obviously great writers were allowed onto the reading list only when they conform to the current consensus of liberal good will - voices of tolerance and liberal democracy - we would be down to George Eliot.'
So here it is.
