Great Literature is Right Wing (Newsletter #74)

People involved in the arts, literature, or other creative fields are generally politically left wing - even far left. It’s much rarer to see someone who is explicitly and openly to the right, though it does happen occasionally.

But there’s another way to look at it. Our ideas of left and right in politics descend from the French Revolution. But what if we defined them differently than we currently do?

My preferred definition of the right, properly understood, is discerning and aligning oneself and the world around him with the truth. Thus, because great art often expresses Truth, that art is implicitly right wing regardless of the politics of its creator. The best art, journalism, etc. often overflows the intentions of its creator.

But many of those who have the greatest insights about today’s world are not Christian at all. Sometimes this makes their work offensive to American Christian readers. But those who pay careful attention will often find incredible truth, particularly about the deformed nature of contemporary society, hiding in plain sight. Today I want to give some examples of this in the form of three contemporary European literary figures: Hanne Orstavik, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Michel Houellebecq.