Fresh Lies (1994)
A few deserving authors on the Right have really made their bones in the wake of 9-11. Bernard Lewis went from being well-regarded in the ivory towers to a prominent place on magazine covers as the leading public voice in the West on Islam. Victor Davis Hanson went from being a distinctive but little known military writer to one of the most popular geopolitical columnists in America. Christopher Hitchens was saved from a life of thralldom to the tenets of Marxism as he became a leading, if improbable, defender of Western values. Daniel Pipes became just as much the celebrated scourge of Islam as his dad had been the scourge of the Soviet Union. And, on the comedic front, we all "discovered" James Lileks.
If you've ever looked at a blog, particularly a war blog, you'll have seen--and hopefully followed-- innumerable links to Mr. Lileks's Daily Bleat. But he's no recent phenomenon, as this collection of columns from 1994 shows. Mr. Lileks has been toiling away in the vineyards for many years now, or in his case the pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The older satire here is just as funny and just as politically incorrect as his writing over the past few months has been, including rants about NPR, women's hair dye, the metric system, and the Taster's Choice couple.
Columnists, especially those who write humor columns, have a tough task,
called on not only to be consistent but consistently funny. Mr. Lileks
is among the very best.
(Reviewed:24-Jul-02)
Grade: (A)
