On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, John Young wrote:
> Wash Post snippet today:
>
> It would be wondrous if Charles divorced the neo-trad enclavists
> and took on wider and far more difficult public responsibilities. But
> hiring a professional iron-fisted Thatcherite to run his colonial op is
> just adding another head-bustng cop to suppress inner city anger
> and anguish -- like the cowardly Kunstler/New Untervolkers mallishly
> retail.
>
Well, you never know--Chas. appointee just might have a heart.
Having just read Kunstler's *Home from Nowhere* I'm puzzled by your
reaction to him--is he really buying into the Disney-fic(a)tion of NYC? I
don't much like Kunstler's attitude towards poverty--he endorses some
policies that seem to me very wrong-headed. Balancing those, however, he
also opposes the development and slum-creation practices you object to,
and supports city plans which he believes will offer genuinely decent
low-income housing. He's primarily a novelist and he gives generally a
supportive account of new urbanism; the account of the decisions made in a
local city counsel meeting is hysterically funny. I was puzzled by him
until that account and then I realized: Kunstler writes like a genuine
conservative--someone who sincerely believes that older designs and the
social patterns associated with them are superior to current ones. I've
gotten so accustomed to the opportunistic sort of faux conservative that
finding Kunstler to be a real conservative was something of a shock.
But, say, what? Has he bought into the malling of Manhattan? What makes
him so objectionable to you, beyond political disagreement?
--
Randolph Fritz
randolph@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Wash Post snippet today:
>
> It would be wondrous if Charles divorced the neo-trad enclavists
> and took on wider and far more difficult public responsibilities. But
> hiring a professional iron-fisted Thatcherite to run his colonial op is
> just adding another head-bustng cop to suppress inner city anger
> and anguish -- like the cowardly Kunstler/New Untervolkers mallishly
> retail.
>
Well, you never know--Chas. appointee just might have a heart.
Having just read Kunstler's *Home from Nowhere* I'm puzzled by your
reaction to him--is he really buying into the Disney-fic(a)tion of NYC? I
don't much like Kunstler's attitude towards poverty--he endorses some
policies that seem to me very wrong-headed. Balancing those, however, he
also opposes the development and slum-creation practices you object to,
and supports city plans which he believes will offer genuinely decent
low-income housing. He's primarily a novelist and he gives generally a
supportive account of new urbanism; the account of the decisions made in a
local city counsel meeting is hysterically funny. I was puzzled by him
until that account and then I realized: Kunstler writes like a genuine
conservative--someone who sincerely believes that older designs and the
social patterns associated with them are superior to current ones. I've
gotten so accustomed to the opportunistic sort of faux conservative that
finding Kunstler to be a real conservative was something of a shock.
But, say, what? Has he bought into the malling of Manhattan? What makes
him so objectionable to you, beyond political disagreement?
--
Randolph Fritz
randolph@xxxxxxxxxxxx