Busts Of The Greats

Is that John Milton at the bottom? Pshaw.

That fourth one down looks like Foster Brooks.

Well I am getting a St. Augustine once my tax refund comes in. Great to know.

Dolly Parton post…

You are showing your age. Dolly Parton jokes are so 1980s other than Pinki and The Brain:

Dolly Parton:
I’m your biggest fan, what do ya say to that?

The Brain:
I’d say puberty was inordinately kind to you.

I can see a few I want. I may have to hold out for Flannery O’Connor, though.

1. I’d like to see one of Einstein.
2. I think that Dante, when he got older, would look a lot like Uncle June from the Sopranos.

We could organize them on shelves, by levels following Dante’s. Western civ, or bust!

I’m not surprised at the inclusion of Mortimer Adler, he of the Great Books of Western civilization fame. I consider him a far better modern philosopher than, say, Michel Foucault.

Adler wrote How to Think About God as one of his cases for the proof for God, even if that was the prime mover, still a long way, as he wrote, from the God of the Jews, Christ or Mohammad.

This God of the Philosophers became his personal trust in Christ near the end of his lifelong quest.

I suppose if you need a target for your paintball gun or something to blow up… Ugh! Double Ugh! Triple Ugh!

I would be terrified to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and have one of those things looking at me in the hall. I would rather wake up to see the ghost of my mother.

Chesterton? Mortimer Adler? Why? In the name of all that is decent and holy, why? Is it to so terrify any potential guest that one can safely become a hermit for no one would go into the house for fear of the insanity of the occupant? Or is it to make the poor sufferer laugh so hard that he loses control of his bodily functions? What kind of madman would have such things?

This is the stuff you expect to find decorating the home of Hannibal Lector though I would expect even that worthy to have better taste. (Ok, I can see putting the head of Adler on a stick in the back yard…)

Thank you for the laugh this morning. I need it. But honestly, I cannot imagine anyone with an ounce of taste having one of those. They are just plain hideous.

Dolly IS great. Don’t knock her.

In all seriousness, do they take requests? Our formal living room is actually called “The Peacock Room” (guess the theme), and I feel it will not be complete until we have a Flannery O’Connor wall relief, or even a full bust on the escritoire.

Adler?! The man got me through grad school with one little tome called How to Read a Book. That might be one worth having, even if no one else I’ve worked with knows who he is.

Third from the top in that photo: Ignatius Reilly!

Mortimer Adler is probably there for “How to Read a Book”. It was pretty popular at the last Classical school where I taught.

I sense a theme here — the first thing I thought was, they better have Flannery O’Connor! Glad to see I’m not the only one.

Can I get ChesterBelloc bookends? YES PLEASE!

“I consider (Adler) a far better modern philosopher than, say, Michel Foucault.”

Hell, Foster Brooks was a better philosopher than Foucault.

I have a bust of a laughing Voltaire I picked up on the Rue de Rivoli a few years ago and the Houdon bust of Franklin that can’t his good nature. I’ll keep either over any of these sour, sanctimonious, scowling faces. Really, that Dante bust looks like he just smelled a fart in church.

“Hell, Foster Brooks was a better philosopher than Foucault.”

It’s rational response, rather than imbibing Foucault.

I don’t know why anyone, particularly any conservative, would take people like Mortimer Adler or Peter Kreeft seriously. They purport to bring back the classical philosophical tradition, but their take on it is pretty shallow and easy to dismiss.

If you’re interested in the Platonic/Aristotelian tradition, far better to engage with the likes of Edward Feser, David Bentley Hart, Jonathan Barnes, Jonathan Lear, Christopher Shields, David Oderberg, J. Budziszewski, as well as the audio lectures of Michael Sugrue and David Roochnik.

Incidentally, Feser’s new book on the philosophy of nature will be out in a few days.
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Third from the top in that photo: Ignatius Reilly!

I see what you mean, but I think that’s meant to be Chesterton. Thought, ironically, from a couple of angles it almost looks to me like Oscar Wilde.

We could organize them on shelves, by levels following Dante’s. Western civ, or bust!

Supposedly at one library in Oxford–don’t remember whether it’s the Bodleian–the bookcases had busts of the Twelve Caesars from Suetonius, and the books were once catalogued according to which case they were in, then shelf number, then how many books from the left. So a catalogue card might read, e.g., “Vespasian-5-11” vel sim.

I know this is a little late but I cannot resist adding this. The best line that I ever heard about Mortimer Adler was, “It is fascinating that work entitled “How to Read a Book,” was written by a man who never learned how to write one.

On Chesterton, from Punch. “It is come to our notice that Mr. Chesterton is to be appointed Furniture Inspector to the Crown on the not unreasonable assumption that any chair that can survive his considerable gravity will be safe for His Imperial Highness to sit upon.”

Another good one from long ago. “It is not surprising that Mr. Chesterton has not fallen through the crust of the earth given that the amount of hot air he produces is more than sufficient to balance out the force of gravity.”

Not sure about the last one but I think it was G. B. Shaw.