Stet, Damnit!: The Misanthrope's Corner: 1991 to 2002

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Florence gores every ox, pops every balloon, and steps on every toe. Someone needs to make a daily calender of Florence King quotes.

Florence King is one tough broad: a meat eating, heat packing, bisexual Republican who has NO patience for whiners, slackers,huggies, fuzzy wuzzies, or anyone even remotely PC. But this stiletto sharp Southern gal can also laugh at herself and she'll make you laugh until you're breathless. George W haters will be thrilled to know she hates the sight of him. Nor does she align herself with anti-intellectual cornpone GOPS. She calls herself Conservative, but a woman who spurns (and hates) marriage and motherhood is radical in my book. She's the perfect antidote to a sea of mushy self-esteem/body image/self-help/Chicken Soup for the Soul BS. I don't agree with everything she says, but she gives me a helluva intellectual workout. You go,girl!

This is a complete collection of all the 'Misanthrope's Corner' columns Miss King wrote for the National Review from 1991 to 2002. Every column is a joy to read as Miss King gives her views, usually jaundiced, on current affairs, and is always amusing, whether you agree with what she is saying or not. She is savagely funny writing about the Clintons, the Bushes, the feminisation of America, and anything else that takes her fancy. she is painfully funny writing about the Clinton/Lewinsky affair. Reminising about her own teen years she recalls: ....It is 1952. Now 16, I hav elost my baby fat and gone from duckling to swan, and my mother, who normally pays no attention to anything except baseball and her hero Sen. Joe McCarthy, is being uncharacteristically maternal. We are washing dishes when suddenly, out of the blue, she says: "If a man ever asks you to do something funny to him, you tell him to go to hell, you hear?" "What do you mean, 'something funny'?" "Never mind, just promise me" Mystified, I promise. The mystery deepens as she swung off on one of her patriotic tangents. "That's why the French can't win a war without us! It saps their strength! They're so busy doing something funny to each other that the Germans just walk right in!" Another favourite passage of mine is where she is writing about the effect that the draft had on men of her generation: The draft produced the kind of men that today's girls have never known, and relations between the sexes were better for it. What sticks in my mind about them is their self-sufficiency and competence in fixing things that broke and figuring out solutions to emergencies. Thanks to the draft I belong to the last generation of American women who could scream "Do something!" and get results. Most of my men were intellectuals, but they had been taught in basic traning to change a tire in 90 seconds, rig up electrical wiring, tie knots that stayed tied, and take a rifle apart and reassemble it while blindfolded. This last was never necessary in civilian life, but it made for a self-assured deftness that was awesome. Occasionally Miss King becomes quite lyrical in her praises, whether of the Post office, of Woolworths, Mario Lanza, or Alice Faye. There is a quite enchanting description of her first trip to Paris, and a very touching tribute to her aunt. Whatever Miss King's views on the subject she is writing about, every column is a joy to read.

"Stet, Damnit!" is the complete collection of Florence King's 1991-2002 columns for the National Review. This reviewer is one of many who used to read National Review beginning with her weekly posting on the last page. King's keen insight into human nature, stubborn common sense, and acerbic wit made her column entertaining whether she was goring sacred cows and pompous egos on the left or right of the political spectrum. Her frequent reviews of movies and books were equal parts insightful and unforgiving of sloppy or pretentious work. Her retirement was a real blow to those who enjoyed her writing style. This volume is highly recommended for those who are nostalgic for her column. The content holds up pretty well in spite of being a little dated. Hard core junkies of political commentary will also find this entertaining.

Florence King authored "The Misanthrope's Corner," featured on the back page of "National Review" for many years. The column was known for "serving up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques about rubes and all else bothersome to the Queen of Mean," as NR put it. It's a rare writer who is not only a skillful wordsmith, but insightful and witty as well; Miss King's columns never fail to be all three. "She is an unconventional satirist," said Louise Rothe of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, "funny, unpredictable, sometimes raunchy. Nothing, however trite, escapes her wit." And now, a few excerpts...here are some of Miss King's amusing musings on stress in America: "The American way of stress is comparable to Freud's 'beloved symptom,' his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol." Nor does England escape her withering observations. Her thoughts after watching a week's worth of TV coverage on the death of Princess Diana: "My saturation viewing helped me make a vital decision. For some time I had been thinking of emigrating to England to bring my nationality in line with my blood, but I have now abandoned the idea. There is no England, just this demi-realm, this scepter'd loony bin set in a sea of rotting flora, this U.K. of Utter Kitsch where the crud de la crud build teddybear temples to a gilded hysteric who was nothing more than Judy Garland with a title. If I must live in a country where people who once tipped their hats now tip the scales, I might as well stay home and save myself the trouble of learning to look right instead of left to avoid an oncoming hug. My hyphen, right or wrong." I like how she summed up her writing efforts in another column: "Being a writer has made me a lifelong practitioner of no-holds-barred insight, driven by an irresistible impulse to shovel through mountains of received bull to get to the bottom of things." It was a said day in 2002 when Miss King wrote her final column and laid down her shovel. But at least with this volume we can keep enjoying all the digging she did. Long live King, the Queen of Mean!