At Home in Hespeler

There’s a bad novel out there somewhere that starts thus:

Like Houdini, I escaped again. I’m less optimistic than I used to be, and if my prediction of total civilizational collapse doesn’t come to pass, I’d be very happy to be proved wrong.

Mark Steyn, on the other hand, ends his new collection of his writing, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, with more or less the above. It is much a more effective ending, and a strange book indeed that can be summed up by wishing that predictions of civilizational collapse is wrong.

More relevant perhaps, is this, from his 2008 column, The Limits:

I made the mistake of going to Europe to visit the famous banlieues of Paris and other Continental Muslim neighborhoods. And at that point… I began to see that it’s not really about angry young men in caves in the Hindu Kush; it’s not even about angry young men in the fast growing Muslim populations of the west – although that’s certainly part of the seven-eighths of the iceberg bobbing just below the surface of 9/11. But the bulk of that iceberg is the profound and perhaps fatal weakness of the civilization that built the modern world.

That’s a nice summation of Steyn’s writing since, and of The [Un]documented Mark Steyn.

The [Un]documented Mark Steyn is a comprehensive collection of Steyn articles spanning the last 20 or so years. From 9/11 to Japanese demography; Burkas to Viagra; James Bond to Doris Day, Steyn writes about it all with an eye on the big picture and humour. Total civilizational collapse has never been so much fun.

Brian Gardiner Book Review, Mark Steyn Mark Steyn, The Undocumented Mark Steyn