Nietzsche and the Andover Shop.

[LabelKing]

Horace posted this on the FNB and I thought it was rather interesting in that unfortunate sort of way: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~salient/...erbasement.htm This person shouldn't be a deputy editor of anything, except maybe the Boy Scouts Newsletter.

 

[Augusto86]

Originally Posted by FTFA

A democratization and leveling has occurred, with denim and other coarse materials of the laboring classes attaining ascendance, so that ugliness has become beauty. It is even fashionable for stockists to charge more to make beautiful things ugly.
The man should be dragged out back and beaten to death for crimes against prose. Preferably with ribbon belts.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by Augusto86

The man should be dragged out back and beaten to death for crimes against prose. Preferably with ribbon belts.
It's not a man; it's a boy who got a scholarship in 2004, a poor man's Nietzsche: Julius hails from a town of about 1,100 people in rural South Dakota, where he attended a high school with an enrollment of approximately 100. During his years there, he has been editor of the school newspaper, captain of the knowledge bowl team, student council vice-president, an actor in several school plays, and has participated in innumerable other activities. He plays the alto saxophone and qualified for the South Dakota All-State Band the last two years. Julius’ favorite hobbies include reading the classics and studying politics and history. He is also active in his church and community. Julius hopes to pursue a career in constitutional law and, if the opportunity presents itself, enter the political arena.

 

[Augusto86]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

It's not a man; it's a boy who got a scholarship in 2004, a poor man's Nietzsche: Julius hails from a town of about 1,100 people in rural South Dakota, where he attended a high school with an enrollment of approximately 100. During his years there, he has been editor of the school newspaper, captain of the knowledge bowl team, student council vice-president, an actor in several school plays, and has participated in innumerable other activities. He plays the alto saxophone and qualified for the South Dakota All-State Band the last two years. Julius’ favorite hobbies include reading the classics and studying politics and history. He is also active in his church and community. Julius hopes to pursue a career in constitutional law and, if the opportunity presents itself, enter the political arena. http://www.presidentialscholars.org/...s_Krein_SD.jpg
The thought of this kid on the supreme court, or indeed anywhere near it, is terrifying.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by Augusto86

The thought of this kid on the supreme court, or indeed anywhere near it, is terrifying.
I think he would be a great novelist for one of those vanity presses. Maybe he could be a presidential aide too.

 

[Edward Appleby]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

I think he would be a great novelist for one of those vanity presses.

Yes, or perhaps one of those obscure publishers that produce softbound tracts of political philosophy which inevitably have an air of subversion about them.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by Edward Appleby

Yes, or perhaps one of those obscure publishers that produce softbound tracts of political philosophy which inevitably have an air of subversion about them.

Maybe he could become the president of the Harvard Law Review. He'll really push the Categorical Imperative into everyone's faces.

 

[Edward Appleby]

At least someone around there must take the or whole thing with a bit of a grin, or at least I should think so from the third one down. The rest are trite, but that one's rather good.

 

[LabelKing]

I don't know--here's a little something penned by our junior John Marshall from the current issue of The Salient:

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~salient/...0420_krein.htm

The prose is only slightly better than that industriously awful Andover Shop piece.

 

[Augusto86]

I'm now convinced this is some sort of sick joke. No one could sit down to write something this bad without realizing it.

 

[zjpj83]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

It's not a man; it's a boy who got a scholarship in 2004, a poor man's Nietzsche:

Julius hails from a town of about 1,100 people in rural South Dakota, where he attended a high school with an enrollment of approximately 100. During his years there, he has been editor of the school newspaper, captain of the knowledge bowl team, student council vice-president, an actor in several school plays, and has participated in innumerable other activities. He plays the alto saxophone and qualified for the South Dakota All-State Band the last two years. Julius' favorite hobbies include reading the classics and studying politics and history. He is also active in his church and community. Julius hopes to pursue a career in constitutional law and, if the opportunity presents itself, enter the political arena.

There's no such thing as a "career in constitutional law." Unless you're a professor, I suppose.

 

[LabelKing]

This person shouldn't be let near a computer or typewriter.

 

[Nantucket Red]

Just the sort of ambitious goody-two-shoes I was born too cynical ever to like.

I get the feeling he thinks all that pretentious conceptual language will score him brownie points.

 

[jdkrein]

i) the article is primarily intended to parody the academic tendency to appropriate Nietzschean and Heideggerian phrases with little regard for their original context or meaning. I also attempted to mimic the humorously exaggerated tone of most men's style writers.

ii) the Presidential scholarship is merely an honor given by the Pres. and the Dept. of Education--it is not a scholarship with a monetary award. The entirety of my education has been paid for by my family, whose primary source of income is rents from over 10,000 acres of farmland.

iii) Nietzsche, like most great philosophers, was from a small town as well.

iv) I can admit that my career plans were not fully developed immediately following high school. My apologies. I am actually entering investment banking and will be working in NYC this summer with one of the largest firms.

v) With the possible exception of Augusto, you're all idiots. And if you are such gifted prose stylists, then why is this pathetic blog your only forum? Most of you are probably nothing more than dispossessed, wastrel nobility, whose fathers squandered the family fortune on bad investments or simply excluded you from it. You cling to your old wardrobes--which are becoming more and more threadbare--only to help you forget your ugly, working class wives, second-tier education, and middling back office drudgery. Alas, it appears that classic style, the gentleman's last bastion against the vulgar, has now been overrun.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by jdkrein

i) the article is primarily intended to parody the academic tendency to appropriate Nietzschean and Heideggerian phrases with little regard for their original context or meaning. I also attempted to mimic the humorously exaggerated tone of most men's style writers. ii) the Presidential scholarship is merely an honor given by the Pres. and the Dept. of Education--it is not a scholarship with a monetary award. The entirety of my education has been paid for by my family, whose primary source of income is rents from over 10,000 acres of farmland. iii) Nietzsche, like most great philosophers, was from a small town as well. iv) I can admit that my career plans were not fully developed immediately following high school. My apologies. I am actually entering investment banking and will be working in NYC this summer with one of the largest firms. v) With the possible exception of Augusto, you're all idiots. And if you are such gifted prose stylists, then why is this pathetic blog your only forum? Most of you are probably nothing more than dispossessed, wastrel nobility, whose fathers squandered the family fortune on bad investments or simply excluded you from it. You cling to your old wardrobes--which are becoming more and more threadbare--only to help you forget your ugly, working class wives, second-tier education, and middling back office drudgery. Alas, it appears that classic style, the gentleman's last bastion against the vulgar, has now been overrun.
It's nice to have the actual author here with us. Nobody criticized your small-town roots; but insofar as ambitions are concerned, the compulsion to work in the Big City is a bucolic tendency. If, in fact, that purple prose was intended as some sort of satiric gesture, nobody could see it. You are no Jonathan Swift. Now, your latter points are nothing but presumptions and rather ugly ones at that. As well, it seems to me odd that someone who writes a fawning praise of the Andover Shop then pens some turgid, insulting commentaries about so-called "displaced aristocracy" when in fact the majority of the forum's inhabitants are Americans. While America may have some form of an ersatz aristocracy, likening the whole conceit to say, the Portuguese Royal House is anything but apt. Are you merely bitter at the "Legacies"?