[guest post by JVW]

Back in the days of the original Clintonian Ascendency, I took out a subscription to National Review, hoping to expand my conservative worldview beyond the horizons of The American Spectator, which I mostly read because P.J. O’Rourke was a contributing editor. When my first issue of NR arrived in my mailbox I immediately starting poring through it. Eventually I came to the backpage column, cheekily titled “The Misanthrope’s Corner” and written by this incredibly informative, astonishingly perceptive, and irascibly witty writer named Florence King. I have no recollection of which column it was, but it could have been this one or any of her similarly delightful offerings:

Real humanitarians tend to be curmudgeons because they must deal with bureaucratic blockheads. One of the shortest fuses in history belonged to its foremost angel of mercy, Florence Nightingale, who was also a foremost female misogynist. Admonished by a do-gooder about the dangers of exposing patients to night air, she exploded: “It’s the only kind of air there is at night!”

Miss King died earlier today, one day after her eightieth birthday. Fiercely independent her entire life, she had until her final months lived on her own in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Jack Fowler, the publisher of NR, has written a lovely remembrance which captures her distinct style and her maddening yet endearing idiosyncrasies. She was famous among her editors for eschewing email and only reluctantly using the telephone, preferring the old-fashioned method of communicating via U.S. Mail. Her P.O. Box address in Fredericksburg was always listed at the end of her column for people who wanted to contact her. Yet somehow, as her editors could attest, her submissions always arrived before the deadline fell. She was also famous for fighting tooth-and-nail against attempts to edit her prose, leading to the book volume of a collection of her columns being titled STET, damnit!, with stet, Latin for “let it stand,” being a publishing notation to ignore a copy editor’s suggested change.

Once Miss King (naturally she disdained the modern substitution of “Ms.”) retired from the back column in the magazine (the page was renamed “The Happy Warrior” and helmed by Mark Steyn until his unhappy fallout with the magazine), she continued to contribute occasional book reviews for NR (before her retirement she had been a longtime reviewer for The American Spectator as well). In an age where younger reviewers wrap their cynicism up in snark and attempt to pass it off as sophistication, Miss King revived the Menckenian tradition of cultured — even vaguely aristocratic — scorn for the ephemeralness of popular sensibilities and faddish intellectualism. Here she is nearly a quarter-century ago excoriating Gloria Steinem’s self-help book, Revolution from Within: a Book of Self-Esteem:

Much of the book reads like the content of a 1972 time capsule. Early Women’s Lib themes such as Chinese bound feet continue to haunt her, and the clitoris remains the whistlestop between maidenhood and personhood on her train of thought. Clitoridectomy among the Bantu is still happening, and Miss Steinem [note that she won’t extend “Ms.” even to the founder of the magazine bearing that name] is still against it. . . .

Self-esteem takes many forms. I read this mewling, puking book, but I’m still vertical and able to quote back. When Samuel Johnson was asked to comment on the plot of Cymbeline, he replied: “It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility.” My sentiments exactly.

Her reviews are anthologized in two marvelous volumes: Deja Reviews, a collection from 1991-2002, and Withering Slights, a collection of reviews from 2007 to 2012. Both are well-worth the purchase price and investment in reading time.

She wrote several other books, most if not all of which are still in print, but let me mention one that led to a semi-famous dust-up between conservative Virginia writer Florence King and liberal Texas writer Molly Ivins. In 1975, Miss King published Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, which 30 years later remains in print. It included this classic observation:

The typical Southerner:
—Brags about what a conservative he is and then votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
—Or brags about what an isolationist he is and then votes for Richard Nixon.
—Or brags about what a populist he is and then votes for Barry Goldwater.
—Or brags about what an aristocrat he is and then votes for George Wallace.
—And is able to say with a straight face that he sees nothing peculiar about any of the above.

Seventeen years later, Miss Ivins published her best-seller, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, which included this entirely unattributed passage: “Keep in mind that Southerners are so conservative they voted for Franklin Roosevelt, so isolationist they voted for Richard Nixon, so populist they voted for Barry Goldwater, so aristocratic they voted for George Wallace, and that they see nothing peculiar in any of this.” Reviewing the book a few years later, Miss King came across this quote along with a another very similar observation that Miss Ivins appropriated without attribution, and it led her to write an article for The American Enterprise titled, simply, “Molly Ivins, Plagarist.” A letter from Miss Ivins which apologized for being “sloppy” prompted this properly haughty admonition from Miss King:

August 24, 1995

Dear Miss Ivins:

Rather than rehash what I call plagiarism and you call careless attribution, I will speak in general terms.

First, the Washington Post, in breaking this story, referred to your “side” and my “side.” How can there be a “side” in this when everyone involved is either a writer or an editor? All of us, by definition, are on the same side—the word side. Every word I write is a piece of my heart, and I presume you feel the same way.

Second, I’m wondering how you managed to recycle me unchanged from the 1988 Mother Jones article into the 1991 book. When I compiled The Florence King Reader, I reread everything I’ve published over the last 20 years. I polished, revised, even rewrote some of the early selections to bring them up to my present standards, and I also prepared a fresh manuscript. This is how you catch mistakes. Anthologies are harder than they look, so please look next time.

Third, your publisher contends that I am seeking publicity by “attempting to hang onto the cape of Molly’s notoriety.” (You may want to take issue with him over his choice of words.) I have no need or wish for “notoriety”; celebrity is bad enough. I already have the only thing I want: the admiration and respect of people who know good writing and love the English language as I do.

Finally, it’s a shame this had to happen because you and I are such a pair of old rips that we probably would have gotten along like gangbusters. Please don’t spoil any more potential friendships.

Sincerely,
Florence King

She was prickly, she was grouchy, she was stuffy, and she was old-fashioned. But she was also a supremely talented writer, a throwback to the Southern prose stylists like Faulkner or O’Connor in an era when most bloviators are thoroughly indoctrinated dilettantes and schnooks from the Columbia Journalism School factory. I hope there are typewriters in Heaven.

– JVW