<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2990"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2991">Burkophiles,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2992"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2993"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2994"> A
nice article on Burke in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2995">Sparta
Independent</i>, Sparta a township adjacent to Andover. The only thing I’d take
exception to is the claim that Burke has become mostly “forgotten.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2996"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2997"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2998"> First
off, Burke was never in his lifetime what we call today a “public
intellectual,” a famous academic or savant of one kind or another we often read
and hear about in popular media. Burke was not a Galbraith or Kennan or Lippman, or even a Niebuhr (Burke’s
favorite theologian, he told me). Can’t be “forgotten” in a venue in which he
was never famous. <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2999"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3000"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3001"> Second,
Burke’s influence in the fields he is most associated with has hardly missed a
beat, rhet/comm and literature. I think
there’s been a bit of a diminution in
the number of Burke articles appearing in the journals the past quarter of a
century, but not much. I think Harold
Blum of Yale had it right. I wrote to Blum in early 1992, asking him to give a
plenary address at ECA in New Haven that spring. One of the topics I suggested: Would Burke
survive into the future, what with the steamroller of postmodernism seemingly
pushing aside everything else in its path. Blum replied he had no doubt at all
that Burke would outlive the “Frenchies.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3002"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3003"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3004"> (Blum
did not address us. He would be out of town that weekend. Blum had been a
featured speaker at the [literary] Burke
Conference at Seton Hall in December, 1986. I was there, Herb Simons was there,
Don Burks was there, and a whole contingent of grad students from some Southern
state under the aegis of I forget who. The students were thrilled to get their
picture taken with Burke.)<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3005"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3006"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3007"> Who
lives on in public or academic consciousness is always a fascinating query. I
recall a <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3008">Time</i> mag cover story on <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3009">By Love Possessed</i> by James Gould Cousins
circa 1958. It suggested that Cousins’
work would live on in our “literature.” Haven’t heard anything about Cousins in
recent decades, except for John Updike’s retrospective on a 1949 novel by
Cousins, in 1999. Those of us in eastern PA who have had some distant association with Updike (know people who knew Updike’s
family; one such: Of the sexual element in Updike’s novels, “I can’t believe
little Chonny writes like that!”) wonder whether Updike himself will survive.
Absent the oversexualized “Rabbit” quartet---now publoished by Knopf as one
book---Updike, it says here, would have won a Nobel.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3010"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3011"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3012"> The
“greatest rhetorician since Cicero”! I like that, Dave.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3013"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3014"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3015"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3016"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_2873">
</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3017"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3018"> Ed<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1511636760949_3019"></o:p></span></div> <div class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class="yahoo_quoted" style="display: block;"> <div style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div dir="ltr"><font size="2" face="Arial"> On Friday, November 24, 2017 9:42 AM, David Blakesley <david.blakesley@gmail.com> wrote:<br></font></div> <br><br> <div class="y_msg_container"><div id="yiv4239479166"><div dir="ltr">Thought I'd share this new story about KB:<div><br></div><div>Kenneth Burke: Sage of Andover</div><div>By Joseph Picard</div><div>The Sparta Independent</div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.spartaindependent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20171122/FEATURES01/171129981">http://www.spartaindependent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20171122/FEATURES01/171129981</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Dave</div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>KB mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:KB@kbjournal.org" href="mailto:KB@kbjournal.org">KB@kbjournal.org</a><br><a href="http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org" target="_blank">http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org</a><br><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></div></body></html>