"But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!"-- Herman Melville, MOBY DICK

Ahoy! Order yer www.jollyroger.com t-shirt and yer very own copy of Moby Dick! Send an ahoy! to shirt@jollyroger.com ! To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change yer home-port e-mail address, send an ahoy! to shipping@jollyroger.com .

Don't miss our anniversary issue next month with Elliot's, "The Young Conservative Intellectual as Hamlet." Our literary fathers have been murdered, and now in their places are the lecherous Our literary fathers have been murdered, and now in their places are the lecherous feminists and the subordinate, cowering Polonius-University- Administrators. And in class we're flanked by dope-smoking Guildenstern-postmodernist-brown-nosing liberal wanna-bes. But woe to ye, Poloniuses and Guildensterns, for Hamlet said, "'Tis a world turned upside down-- that I was ever born to right it." And classics cannot be kept off of the shelves, they shall forever reenact themselves.

Ahoy Black Hawk, House Plant Spanner, Terrible Ted, and Zachary B. Taylor! Rig the sails to the truth's raging wind and weigh the anchor say I! Fire the Western Canon as we sail forth, and may the resounding shot awaken the moral imagination of this generation! It has been trampled upon, corrupted, drugged, ravaged and denied it's Right to Life by the dervish liberals and soulless advertising executives who have plundered the publishing and educational institutions which were originally instituted to protect and propagate the Permanent Things.

As the late Russel Kirk stated in the introduction of THE PERMANENT THINGS:

"Another cause of literary decadence has been the centralization of writing and publishing, which has tended to reduce diversity and discussion in the realm of letters, has put powerful influence into the hands of very small circles of writers, reviewers and publishers, has ignored the literary interests of the great part of this population, and has forced those outlanders to conform their tastes to the notions prevalent in the literary capital. In these United States, the hegemony of New York literary circles and publishing firms is nearly absolute. T.S. Eliot said once that the worst form of expatriation for an American writer is residence in New York City. Yet it is New York's book reviews in major newspapers and magazines that determine the fate of nearly every new book published in this country. A major reason why the writings of nihilists and people possessed by the diabolic imagination sell well is that the New York book-review media consistently puff up such books and authors, apparently on principle, in part, a principle politically perverse."

We aboard THE JOLLY ROGER contend that the printed word, and thus literature, reside at the root of culture. A decadent literature will be reflected in a decadent culture. In the same way that liberals claim character is of no significance in a President, so too is character impossible to discern in their neon Novels. By the written word we establish justice, by the written word we define character and moral behavior, and by the printed word we acquaint ourselves with God. Thus to say that words are meaningless, and to enforce this point of view upon college campuses, is to deny the celebration of the Great God absolute. And being that God is, "the centre and circumference of all democracy," to deny God is to deny freedom.

It's not just that liberals are unable to write Great Literature, or that they don't want to, but their primary objective is to prevent Great Literature from reaching the people. Like the Biblical woman who would rather have the baby cut in half rather than see it in the possession of its rightful mother, the liberals would prefer that literature did not exist. There is a reason for the liberal's abhorrence of the fundamental vessel of Truth. There is no better way to maintain power, as President Shapiro of Princeton well knows, than to muddy the waters, deceive the people, and obfuscate reality to such a degree that the moral, conscientious individual will feel repulsed and alienated, thus leaving the nihilistic elite alone to perpetuate their power structure. By having become so adept at this treacherous technique, liberals have ensured that liberalism now possesses an unparalleled ability for self-propagation. By writing and publishing pornographic, debased, nihilistic books that nobody reads, the feminist is accomplishing several feats simultaneously. She is making it harder to find good literature in the book store, she is redefining literature so as to ensure rational people won't be inspired to spend time contemplating it, and she is ensuring that her disciples will be those who are attracted to professions but for the debased politics alone. Thus the liberal agenda and institutionalized nihilism is propagated, and 'tis why we say that as far as a liberal is concerned, it is not important what gets written-- just as long as nobody reads it, and that the author possesses an appropriate gender or sexual orientation.

Liberals buried the Greats and intentionally write books that suck, so as to atrophy the Will to Read. And as the printed word wanes, so too does the device which introduces the student to their moral imagination. The academic liberals scramble for funds to finance programs that execute the student's ability to think at a more fundamental level, with the hopes that the student will resort to watching MTV to find out from heroin addicts who one has to vote for to be cool. And MTV tells them to vote for Clinton, because they can count on his administration to tax the people and fund more liberal programs aimed at atrophying the young moral imagination. And thus the vast amounts of money the liberals make by tempting children of the world with indecency and pornography will continue to pour in. As Elliot once wrote:

"Ahoy! Liberals strip kids down for ads, sell us pornographic nihilism to erode our souls so we don't notice that feminist professors are destroying the peaks of culture, thus eradicating the Way by which one might climb up out of the postmodern fog. And the feminists destroy the peaks of higher culture, making it ever more difficult to climb out of the postmodern fog, so as to ensure that we remain numb to the fact that we have no alternative to the alternative, nihilistic crap which the corporate liberals erode our souls with. And the corporate liberals erode our souls with their substance-inspired fog so that we won't notice that the resentnik feminists are eradicating the peaks of our intellectual heritage. Ahoy! This generation is assaulted on all sides I say! Thus this generation enters into Holy Matrimony being told, Heads it shall prevail, and Tails it won't. 'Tis a conspiracy so immense, 'gainst eternal love!"

But do not despair, for the reason why the liberals will ultimately fail at their conscienceless campaign for power is the same reason why Marxism never succeeded. At the base of each man's soul lies the notion of God. And that is why the liberals are today being defeated, for though they can tear down the external culture, and bury all the Great Books, it is far, far more difficult to conceal a man's soul from himself, although that is what liberal education is presently all about. I say God is resilient, and as this generation matures we shall seek to assume the Divine Responsibility of Adults. Ahoy! We sail forth upon the WWW to introduce a generation to its moral imagination! And the Good Fight has just commenced, me merry maties!

cccli.
Her softest expression caught in street light,
Wistful brown eyes, perceptive smiling mouth,
So warm for a first of December night,
Wispy clouds blew by-- sky winds from the south.
She has become something special to me,
In the way things were special yesterday,
When in a girl's face I saw but beauty,
And I could believe in the words I 'd say.
Oh but I became lost, drowned in the void,
It's hell to see but evil in a rose,
But there's something 'bout her, by which I'm buoyed,
There's an essence to her, more than a pose.
She touched me, I knew it would be alright,
My life was saved again on that starless night.

The ramifications of over fifty years of the liberally-led downward cultural spiral has been the placement of socialist nihilists at the helms of the presses and universities of this nation. And this has resulted in the overall debasement of culture which affects all of us on a daily basis. Even Harold Bloom, author of the Western Canon, erred in his assertion that literature is ultimately an utterly useless thing. He stated that literature exists but for aesthetic pleasure and entertainment, and that it is wrong to view it as a source of moral principles and platitudes. 'Tis not so. Great Literature embodies Great Morality. For the creators of the Bible, from Moses to Amos to Jesus to Matthew to Mark to Luke to John were all inspired by moral divinity. Bloom states, "I am your true Marxist critic. . . I have been against, in turn, the neo-Christian New Criticism of T.S. Elliot, and his academic followers. . . and even more dubious moralities of the literary Canon." Ye are a morbid individual, Harold, for in the opening of yer acclaimed book, ye write a chapter entitled, "An Elegy for the Western Canon." Who gave ye, a mere Marxist, the Authority to declare Dead that which Thrives in me Eternal Soul!? Granted that the Canon is not being taught in the Academy, but this signifies the death of the Academy, for the Canon is Immortal. Do not confuse today's teacher's of the law with the Great God absolute! Ah Harold! Are ye so quick to dismiss literature as an utterly useless thing because ye yerself never created any? If ye don't feel the urge to express the word of God, does that give ye the right to declare that God no longer exists? It would seem that for the liberal this would be so. As for me, in addition to hearing a man comment on what he thinks life meant to other men, I would also like to hear what life meant to the man himself. And I say that Harold Bloom's academically ubiquitous attitude has contributed to the decline of the intellectual institutions of this nation. For he himself laments that the career he enjoyed could not be pursued today, as the resentnik culture has made the study of the Great Books impossible! And where was ye, Mr. Bloom, when the feminist was attempting to murder my soul in the creative writing class? Why were ye so content to let it die? Instead of behaving like a religious bigot and discriminating against T.S. Eliot because he was a Christian, ye would have done well to contemplate the deeper significance of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral:

Those who put their faith in worldly order,
Not controlled by the order of God,
In confidant ignorance, but arrest disorder,
Make it fast, breed fatal disease,
Degrade what they exalt.

Ahoy! Why did not the Marxist critic go to China or the Soviet Union to pursue the career of a Marxist critic? Avast me maties-- this glaring hypocrisy will only be reported aboard this Fine Frigate, for aboard this deck we're not landlocked by liberalism's mountainous fallacies! To be hired at a University, all ye liberals have to do is demonstrate proficiency in hate towards some embodiment of Greatness! And Ahoy Bloom! Dost ye pass judgment on me for stating that literature should be read and taught with a moral purpose in mind? Ah yes, ye do, Captain Bloom! Ye think ye are above me, in all your pedantry. Then ye too possess a morality of yer own, which is rooted in the critic's snobbery, stating that the critic's amorality should be held in higher esteem than the artist's morality! Defund the liberal left academics, say I! For even while appearing to serve greatness, ye are yet desecrating it! Argrgrhrhrgrgrrhrgh!

But me faith is imperishable! For I think upon the moral Melville. Can ye yet see Melville diligently laboring on BILLY BUDD after MOBY DICK had been published and ignored by the literary experts of the day? Deep down within the liberal critic is ashamed and embarrassed to receive a salary to offer frivolous commentary on such holy scriptures as MOBY DICK, yet their immense liberal ego prevents them from humbling themselves before Greatness. And the Bible perpetually says unto the liberal critic: "Woe to ye, teachers of the law and Pharisees, ye hypocrites! Ye build tombs for the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous. Ye say, 'if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of their prophets.'" Ahoy! Ye write immense books on the Western Canon, and simultaneously abandon the moral context in which the Canon was written, and the moral aspect by which it was inspired. For the enduring significance of Twain's, Shakespeare's, Melville's, and Conrad's work is the fact that within it the moral character is enshrined in words. The language derives its beauty from the subject. Tell me Bloom, that Hamlet did not possess a moral conscience, nor did Ishmael, nor did Huckleberry Finn, nor did Lord Jim, nor did Socrates, nor did Jesus, and ye shall be a liar. The immortalization of the moral character is the unifying aspect of all Great Literature.

Was Captain Melville out there petitioning the government for more money to create, or writing eulogies for the Western Canon? Was he complaining of oppression and discrimination or soliciting funds to offer his opinion on other people's opinions? Nay! He was too busy serving God!

ccclxvi.
I have published my poems in young girl's hearts,
I have printed my verse in old men's minds,
Between these lines people have heard their parts,
Something different in art everyone finds.
But trying to hold more than just one hand,
Becomes too big a burden for one man,
His strength drains, as he makes the artist's stand.
When you try to say it all, words grow wan.
So I stick to the few things I know best,
The magic in an eighteen year old's kiss,
My hand on her neck, driving towards the west,
We only ever know that which we miss.
Snow's on the ground, but I can't be too cold,
For what I write stays young while I grow old.

The decline of Western Civilization, the depressing fact that divorce has a higher approval rating than the president, the pornographic crassness of TV talk shows, the difficulty of dating someone for over a month, the extreme litigousness of society, the ever-increasing fear of walking in one's own neighborhood, the eradication of the Sacred, and the failure of the New York editors to publish our Great Literature can all be attributed to the clandestine, self-serving actions of amoral, rudderless liberals like President Shapiro of Princeton. Nihilism was the prized asset by which they were chosen by their fellow resentniks for the coveted position of leadership that they so adeptly fill with the void of their soul.

And thus the H.N. Swanson Literary agency , which attempted to sell Elliot's novel THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP to the non-existent New York Publishing Industry, is no longer. H.N. Swanson had been the oldest literary agency on the Left Coast, and earlier this century they had represented the works of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They signed Elliot aboard in 1994, just before they were bought out by Renaissance, which represents the likes of Judith Krantz. Elliot's agent was offered a job at Renaissance, but he didn't take it, because he'd rather smell coffee in the morning than pot. The liberal Shapiro's of the world, through their dedicated indifference to everything intellectual coupled with their insatiable appetite for money and the perverse, saw to it that the traditional institutions which would have published, promoted, and praised our Great Literature were destroyed. Thus our maverick plan for swift vengeance:

On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, Coman, Curtis wrote:
Subject: Nantucket Ghost Story

Ahoy Red Avenger:

I just read "Nantucket Ghost Story" and must say that Bootsy's made me a believer ( http://jollyroger.com/beaconway/bootsy.html ). Of course, I was a believer to begin with...maybe she's just confirmed what I already knew. There IS such a thing as Truth, for those who are not too timid to embrace it. When you get Kirk's "Conservative Mind" in stock, I'll order it from you. I'm very impressed with your book list; all the great books available for ordering on one handy website!

I printed out some of your poems from the web pages and sent them to a young friend of mine who is a freshman at Berry College in Rome, Georgia (my alma mater). Fortunately, Berry has not been deluged with the multiculturalist/relativist/postmodern drivel that is spoon-fed to unsuspecting undergrads at so many other institutions of higher learning, but Melinda needed a dose of Drake Raft anyway. I'll let you know what she thinks.

Sam (my five-year-old) and I are reading George MacDonald's fairy tales at bedtime, and he loves them. Say, how about adding some children's literature to BeaconRay Books? You know, sort of a "Western Canon" for kids? I saw this page on the Web, I think it was called Home Arts, where several authors (Maurice Sendak and Harold Bloom included) gave their opinions about books they would include in a Western Canon for Children.

Their suggestions included standard popular works as well as some surprises...Bloom really got my attention when he suggested tales from Norse mythology, because my wife and I are big on Western mythology, folk tales, fairy tales, etc. (especially Irish/Celtic stuff). Anyway, think about it.

I've got some ideas for books you could include.

To borrow from the native parlance: You dudes are totally cool.

Curt ("Billy Bones")

THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS:

Ahoy Billy Bones! Bootsy will be psyched to hear your praise. We've thought about opening a children's section-- it's a great idea, and we're thinking that perhaps later this year we'll expand to include more. Kirk's book is on back order right now, but we should see it soon. Great to have you aboard-- I remember you were the one who was fond of Romans, and now I am too. Right now our major project is publishing THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP later this spring-- we'll talk more about it in the upcoming JOLLY ROGER. See you aboard the Good Ship! All the best-- The Red Avenger