Lately I’ve been enjoying Mark Steyn’s articles more. The New Criterion has featured Theodore Dalrymple rather less frequently of late (although, really, to feature him more they would have to rename the magazine “All Dalrymple, All the Time”), and I found that Mr. Steyn had filled the favorite-author void. The nice thing about his articles is that when he mentions people I have never heard of, I feel interested and pleased to learn about them (much like the man I saw in the ER who had been brought in for alcohol/vicaden/gunk-his-dog-found-under-the-fridge overdose—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a human over the age of three with a more pleased, interested, and self-satisfied expression). This is a nice change from the way I feel when the editors of that magazine mention unknown people. Really the only appropriate reaction to them is to slit your wrists in despair at ever having presumed to try to learn anything, and then write in the last spurts of life-blood, “Sorry about all that…aw…damn…presumed aga…” So anyhow, I found that my mental picture of Mr. Steyn was changing from an intelligent skull to a kind of kindly skull.
The last page of this month’s New Criterion substituted a “Dartmouth Review” ad for their regular nekkid-girl-in-New-York picture. Again, pleased, I looked it over. In the middle, I was shocked to see a picture of a lumberjack on his yearly day in the city. My gaze bounced around to something more congenial. Ah, Father Rutler, looking very fatherly and intellectual. Then, yarrgghh, mountain man. Back to Father. Finally I hit on the words: “Mark Steyn,” then “Keynote speaker: Mark Steyn.” Then … Good Lord.
There seem to be two things to say. One is that there seems to be much more of Mr. Steyn to fill the void than I had imagined. The other is that I’m not certain if he looks like a skull or not, since there’s a noble growth of bushy beard between him and the onlooker.
