A.J. Rowley is a moderately disappointed twenty-something.

He is currently on book leave from his MA in History.

And this is his website.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY MODERATELY DISAPPOINTED?

Being moderately disappointed is perhaps best described as lapsed misanthropy: you may not have given up on the species entirely but you certainly no do not identify with positive thinking or idealism.

And that’s sort of the underlying theme to this site.

George Grant said something to the same effect in his five-year retrospective update to Lament for a Nation (1965):

We live in an era when most of our public men are held by ignoble delusions — generally a mixture of technological progressivism and personal self-assertion — all that is left of official liberalism in the English-speaking world. In such circumstances a writer has a greater responsibility to ridicule the widespread ignoble delusions than to protect the few remaining beliefs which might result in nobility.

That still has a certain relevance, doesn’t it? We’re still living in that era.

ON STYLE

This is technically a “blog” but I’m not really throwing myself in with the sphere. Most of the content on this site will reflect academic convention and style — even if it does wander from topic to topic without much discipline.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’ll be completely academic.

One persistent and particularly destructive academic trend is to weaponize certain words — agency, authenticity, culture, even literary — for exclusionary purposes. This is often done by “experts” that are uncomfortable with their own “expertise” (or lack thereof) and generally because their ideas are not being validated.

If that’s what the cool kids are doing then they can keep it.

One should write to be read or not at all.

CONTENT

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CONTACT

Emails to: aj [at] ajrowley [dot] org

ENABLERS

Special thanks to BraveNewCode for this classy theme.