Of Crossbones, Good Lit and Life on the Bow:
Drake Raft and the Crew of the Jolly Roger
Originally posted September 1998
|
|
| |
| |
Glancing up at the clock on the wall above my computer, I take note of the time. It's 2:00 am but
I'm wide-awake, cruising the internet aboard the Jolly Roger (www.jollyroger.com), "flagship of
Grungeservative Renaissance" - a cyber-frigate that hoisted its skull & crossboned flag in
March of 1995 and has since been cruising the seas surrounding the cultural bastions of the
liberal academic/media complex, looking for a good skirmish. Its mission - to plunder, attack,
reason, beckon, mock, lampoon, and otherwise fire well-stocked cannonades over the startled
sensibilities of an entire generation of websurfing landlubbers whose minds are aswirl in the
opaqueness of a powerful nemesis, post-modern relativism. Originating in America's guilded
Universities, this living, insidious, relativistic fog has slowly seeped across the cultural
landscape to where it now influences a significant segment of the general American
consciousness. What makes the voyage of the Jolly Roger fascinating is that it is piloted by a
band of Princeton graduates and former grunge rockers, a real-life Dead Poet's Society with a
dash of Robert Louis Stevenson and old-fashioned American values thrown in the mix.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Like real pirates, there is the whiff of intrigue about them and speculation rises as to whether
the group is comprised of three individuals, two or even one. For our purposes, we shall
consider them a trio, as they present themselves on their site: Captain Drake "Red Avenger"
Raft, Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham and Elliot "Ahab" McGucken. Read their Convocation
Speech or the crystalline prose of Drake Raft's eloquent essay on The Two Nantuckets and it
becomes apparent that these men believe a few things strongly and have the means to state
them with force and artistry. To them, the Founding Fathers are hardly Dead White Males but
luminescent forces; men whose reading and thinking, writing and discoursing left a high
watermark that we would do well to note. Forget the current stable of manufactured, Next Great
Authors. They'll take Herman Melville any day.
To borrow Melville's metaphor, they are hunting a whale of their own, one whose malevolent
coursing through their generation has left a black wake that plagues those who fall into its foamy
roil, costing them their ability to discern the lasting from the cursory, the profound from Madison
Avenue-trashy. Wake up and smell the ambiguity. Welcome to the age of Post-Modernism.
What is this malady that begs metaphorical expression? What is this black wake, this whale,
this fog?
|
| |
|
In the culture generally, postmodernism is associated with a playful acceptance of
surfaces and superficial style, self-conscious quotation and parody, and a celebration of
the ironic, the transient, and the glitzy. It is usually seen as a reaction against a naive and
earnest confidence in progress, and against confidence in objective or scientific truth . . .
In its post-structuralist aspects it includes a denial of any fixed meaning, or any
correspondence between language and the world.
(Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford Univ. Press, 1994)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
One of the tenants of postmodernism is a rejection of what is called the "Grand Narrative" or
"meta narrative" approach to human history and destiny - the belief in universal, absolute truths.
Darwinism, Marxism, Freudianism - most "isms" fall into the arena of the Grand Narrative.
During certain epochs of Western history, men have arrived on the world stage with the insight,
talent and serendipitous fortune to address the universal human need for a good explanation
(as Will Rogers might have put it) for why things are the way they are, how they got that way, and
where they might be going. At times, the Grand Narrative has appeared to a fair portion of the
world as a kind of messianic message wrought from the wellsprings of ultimate truth, bringing
order out of seeming chaos, tying together disparate events and explaining all of life in a
rational, linear fashion.
By contrast, the postmodern mindset is one of "skepticism towards all metanarratives"
(Jean-Francois Lyotard). Critics of the metanarrative approach to knowledge have pointed out
the relationship between knowledge and power, claiming that Western metanarratives have
tended to legitimize white male privilege at the expense of women, minorities and those at the
margins of society. This is what gives postmodernists their moral sword. Although postmodern
rejection of certain Western values is trendy, there is also a fair stream of moral justification
coursing through its assumptions so that it seems only right to denounce the system that ran
roughshod over the Indians, created and maintained slavery, forced Colonialism upon naive
and powerless societies, taught the world to lust for gold, plunged nations into numerous wars in
this century alone and is responsible for a host of other ills that currently plague the planet.
Drake Raft and Crew represent a growing number of dissenters who are reacting against this
one-sided view of Western civilization that has itself become a Grand Narrative, one that is
coming under scrutiny by those who would question its simplistic interpretation and
denunciation of Western culture and values.
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
Had certain Princeton literary academics seen fit to acknowledge at least some of the
greatness of the Western literary canon, the Jolly Roger might never have left port. It was the
snobbish disdain brought to bear upon the Western Canon (and Western culture, generally) and
the juxtaposition of the Great Authors against the Madison Avenue-annointed Generation-X
soup line hackers whose work was being extolled that gave the guys the impetus to break away
from the mainland and begin to build their cyber-frigate from which to harass the ivy towered
professors and "professional manuscript rejectors" of the literary/media complex. Countering
postmodernism, offering an alternative to the "fog", constitutes a mission, akin to a charter
tacked with a keg nail upon the mast of their frigate.
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
Elliot "Ahab" McGucken, Drake "Red Avenger" Raft, and I, Becket "Bluebeard"
Knottingham, hailing from Ohio, Wisconsin, and South-Dakota, showed up as
freshmen at Princeton with little more than a profound love for literature, embroidered
with a subtle Puritan lust for all things gothic and profound, like her enchanting smile
and ineffable poise. The three sonneteers became inseparable friends after meeting
on the J.V. tennis team and then writing songs and skits for and acting in the
Princeton Triangle Club. General Washington's words do well to capture the
essence of the profound camaraderie felt between the chief literary officers of the
Good Ship: My first wish would be, that my military family and the whole army should
consider themselves as a band of brothers, willing and ready to die for one-another.
(classicals.com/)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
In the past three years their flagship site has evolved into one of the most fascinating and
adventuresome ports-of-call on the web. Comprised of a collection of various domains
clustered around the idea of a cyber-University, the website is a virtual Platonic Academy with a
bracing charter: to reawaken and reenliven the concept that a good immersion in the Western
Canon, the literary, philosophical and aesthetic heritage that built Greece, Rome, Europe and
the entire Western Hemisphere and continues to influence much of the planet, is capable of
restoring some semblance of rationality to the silliness and meaninglessness that pervades
literature and the general national dialogue these days. According to a figure cited in one of
their essays, The Founding of Classicals, Inc. (classicals.com) twenty thousand others have
signed on and are sharing the adventure. The New York Times has written about it and one
senses this is just the beginning. It has taken a quarter of a century, but the mission of the Jolly
Roger (and others like it), piloted by the sons and daughters of excess, may be a long-awaited
antidote to the sad dramas and philosophical follies of the Baby-Boomer generation.
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
To understand where Drake Raft and Crew are sailing from, I believe we need to take a short
walk back through time. I picture myself sitting around a campfire with the Jolly Roger mates.
The frigate is anchored fifty yards off shore, rigging silhouetted under moonlight, while we share
lines from Moby Dick, expounding on the thought that inspiring, life-changing literature, like
exemplary lives, seems to be in decline. One of the guys, maybe Becket "Bluebeard"
Knottingham, asks me how things got to be this way, why my generation let the Western Canon
fall into a state of disrepair. Everyone is attentive. I pause, aware of several feelings, some
contradictory, running through my mind: beware of over-generalizing; on the other hand, be
specific. A wild dog, perhaps a coyote, bays somewhere in the distance. I begin my story.
It is early November 1963, and lines - old, trusted markings - are blurring. From civil rights to
literature, from music to film, the black and white, standard conceptions that have held for
decades are continuing to crack around the edges, a trend born in the realities of a stalemated
war (Korea) and the polarized rhetoric of the Cold War throughout the fifties when what would
become known as the credibility gap had its beginnings.
While most of America works and dozes, reads the paper each morning and maintains the
status quo, there is a restlessness afoot. Structure and form are giving way to freedom of
expression, confrontation and spontaneity. The trend is growing but at present it courses the
backroads of the dominate culture, breaking out sporadically in headlines and newscreeens,
interrupting our evening leisure. It is a kind of mid-point. Six years have passed since the US
Army was called upon to escort nine black students to classes in Little Rock. Six years remain
in the decade. Nineteen sixty-nine, the year of Woodstock, will be, to many, the last hurrah. For
many mainstream Americans, busy with the details of bills and kids, the major movements,
even Civil Rights, are still on the periphery of their working lives. Dylan is redefining the concept
of popular music but the charts are dominated by mainstream pop groups. The Beatles are two
months away from the Ed Sullivan show. There are advisors in Viet Nam but, we're told, no
actual fighting soldiers. It is the quiet before the gathering storm.
Two events, one sudden, the other gradual, will mark the end of a major act in our generational
play. One poisons our native desire to believe in Camelot and the viability of pristine ideals; the
other damages our ability to trust, first individual government leaders, then the establishment,
then anyone over thirty, then much of anything. The events in Dallas, the tragedy of Viet Nam . . .
|
| |
| |
| |
Along with the assassinations, the broken dreams, the great political betrayals, the credibility
issues, we become enamored of a central philosophical truth, one that seems to capture and
express our disillusionment. Given formal expression by Descartes, it is the concept of a gap
between the actual and the apparent, the objective and the subjective, the thing vs the thing in
itself. Words implying value become soft in this context; they lose all capability of conveying
anything hard and actual. To say a thing, whether a book or a painting or a person, is good is to
float an opinion up into the philosophical ethers. In reaction, we retreat, some of us, to simple
goods: the poor, the homeless and children, trees, endangered species, whales and dolphins,
clean water and the environment, civil rights. Other entities - literature, art, ethics, well, who can
really say what is good, what is bad? Francis Schaeffer, Christian apologist and founder of
L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, once expressed the fundamental truth that nature eats up or
tends to eventually dominate grace. For the purposes of our brief historical narrative the point
has been expressed before and it is this: when we lose the ability to differentiate art from trash,
trash rises to the level of art. This is the dilemma facing the NEA: they should know, intuitively,
that a cross in a jar of urine is not art but defending that point-of-view takes work and may cost
them a certain amount of respect amongst the beret and Euro-cigarette crowd mingling at the
Starbucks of the world. Back to our story . . .
The disillusioned youth of the sixties move into and through the seventies, some to honor and
achievement, others to drugs and insanity; some to Viet Nam and death on jungle trails, others
to communes, to the Peace Corps, to politics, to artistic, literary or journalistic careers. Most
land jobs, marry and move toward the middle; some, burnt out by excess and dead-end, empty
pursuits, seek the spiritual dimension, turning to Christianity. Perhaps Zen. Still others finish
college, earn advanced degrees, gain assistant professorships and, eventually, tenure.
A fraction of the latter wind up teaching at America's elite universities, schools like Harvard,
Stanford and . . . Princeton. The thirty-something rebels of the sixties, baggage in tow, Ph.D's
framed, arrive with their angst, their existentialism and their sense of moral ambiguity. The
blindsided leading the blindsided. The eighties arrive. The rebels slip into middle-age while
their children, the generation called X, comes of age. Who would have thought that a few X-ers
would see the cultural play as a farce and seek out the writings of men who wrote centuries,
even millennium, earlier? It was probably only a matter of time before the pendulum reached its
apex and began a slow swing back.
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
This is the generation of professors and academics that greeted Drake Raft and Crew upon
their arrival at Princeton as Freshman. What had evolved around them was a culture dominated
by the sound byte and the stifling climate of political correctness, of long-winded academics,
lawyers and political fall-out spin doctors manipulating and trivializing the English language to
the point of absurdity; of mind-seering images created by MTV-inspired media programming
executives; of trashy literature and poetry marketed as though the latest incarnation of the Last
Great Author had just arrived. "It was almost ten years ago that we came down with a bad
case of sea fever ourselves. We showed up on the Princeton campus hoping to acquaint
ourselves with the greatest that had ever been thought and said, and too, we were looking
forward to being united with others in the common context of the Western tradition, for
cultures only truly come to life when they are shared. But upon arriving, we soon found out that
there was no program of study centered about the Great Books. There existed programs of
study which were centered about various vocations, a gender, and some selected cultures, but
one could not major in Western Civilization. We were at the number one University in the
greatest country, and yet we could not major in our own heritage, nor minor in it, nor even
receive a certificate in Western Culture. No curriculum existed which would aspire to introduce
us to the greatest that had ever been thought and said. No professor nor provost possessed
the courage to step forth and say, "This is what you must know! This is where you must go!
Come now, I'll lead the way!" A Princeton legend has it that back in the seventies a provost
did speak these very words and was shot the following sunrise."
(jollyroger.com/beaconway/wc.html)
|
| |
| |
The group evolved as a lark in the spring of 1991 and its inception is the stuff of campus
legend:
|
| |
|
Like most lasting memories from one's college years, it all began as a joke. It started out
as a secret society at Princeton, The Princetonians After Dark, and it soon evolved into
The Jolly Rogers about ten minutes before we convened for the first official meeting. We
were seniors at Princeton with a week of exams yet left in the spring semester, and
everyone who hadn't been let into a secret society yet was feeling a bit nervous. There is
a tide in the affairs of men, as the saying goes, and as Becket had stumbled upon a
treehouse a week earlier while taking a shortcut through the Institute for Advanced Study
woods, the time was ripe. After we'd composed and delivered the invitations on a
portentous, thundering, late May night, it began to dawn upon us that we'd done it all just a
bit too well. We realized that all forty people were going to show up the next night, at five
after midnight, at the ramshackle treehouse half a mile out in the Institute woods. We'd
christened the treehouse the Pirate's Nest on the maps we'd included in the invitations,
just to make sure that all the inductees would have no doubts as to our authenticity. So
we rounded up a few more people and props, and we secured officers and created a
history which dated the secret society back to 1772, and allowed us to include James
Madison as one of the founding fathers, for he had attended Princeton sometime around
then. That would be the same James Madison who said, "Without educated citizens,
popular government is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both." Then
came the moment where we had to formulate some sort of a mission statement, so we
decided to devote The Jolly Rogers to the Great Books, as all credible secret societies
must be associated with banned substances and daring deeds performed in the dark of
night. All romance is a rich blend of the profound and the forbidden, and in the
excommunicated rhyming, metered poetry penned by dead white males we found both.
Thomas Jefferson had once said, "I cannot live without books," so we made that the secret
motto on the invitations, to be revealed only at meetings or in times of extreme crisis."
(classicals.com/)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
After graduation, the guys moved down to Chapel Hill, NC for grad work and formed a grunge
band. Music, it turned out, was not capable of communicating the full weight their passions. As
fortune would have it, though, a new technology was emerging that would give them the means
to take their vision global. The website was conceived and launched in 1995. Now they could
bypass the entire publishing/distribution chain and bring the classics, the Great Books, directly
to the people. Music couldn't capture the Apollonian concepts that we had been born to
express, such as Fidelity, Prudence, Commitment, Character, Virtue, Loyalty, and Reverence,
and we found ourselves far more at home upon this profound new medium rooted within the
printed word, the World Wide Web. And besides, grunge wasn't ours-- it was pretty much the
corporate pagan's, and it wasn't too much fun working for them, having to follow all their
stringent marketing-manager rules and conforming to their aging, nihilistic mindset, so we quit.
|
| |
| |
| |
As with all idealistic endeavors, the voyage of the Jolly Roger will likely have its share of storm
and stress. Everyday concerns will press upon the crew. Wives, children perhaps, money
issues - the stuff of life will undoubtedly swell up and slap against the sides of their vessel
(Captain Drake, we learn, is engaged to a Ms. Bootsy Starbuck McCluskey - read her original
email and ghost story at (http://jollyroger.com/beaconway/bootsy.html). Critics will rise to
denounce the Jolly Roger as an attempt to reintroduce and reinvigorate the dead white male
literary corpus with all its provincialism and cultural-centric ideology. They will be cited for
leaving out the great body of minority writing and for extolling the virtues of a select group of
men while overlooking their foibles, including prejudice and philandering.
|
| |
| |
|
From time to time we have been accused of arrogance upon our sites for
doing nothing more than being outspoken about the Convictions and Ideals
we hold dear. This is one of the more pronounced ironies of this inverted
postmodern age, that those who humble themselves before God and the
Greats should be considered arrogant. For we are the most humble men
aboard the Good Ship. We have humbled ourselves before the profound
rugged individuals who labored countless collective hours to pen the
definitive Laws which today protect the entrepreneurial soul's Natural
Rights in America. (classicals.com/)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
Then, too, there are business ventures in the making which will take time and funds to keep
afloat. Their newest endeavor, Classicals Cafe, is located outside Triangle Park and caters to
souls looking for lively conversation, good literature and coffee. The good news is that most of
the classics are public domain and Drake & Crew won't need a lawyer to draw up royalty
agreements should they turn to publishing a classic now and then. One of the nice facts about
literary economics in the postmodern era is that, while the latest, mindless best-seller might put
you out $25, nineteenth century classics, hardbound, are selling for $7.95 in special editions (I
picked up Moby Dick and Walden recently at Barnes & Noble for $16).
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
I had the experience several years ago of visiting Washington, DC, Boston, Concord and
Lexington for the first time. To understand the spirit that moves the Jolly Roger, it may be
necessary to stand before the monuments in the Capital mall; to read the inscriptions etched in
marble and visit the great edifices and allow the words and deeds of the honored settle in. Let
their best selves speak and you may find, as I did, men and women who were, in the existential
sense, fully awake, alive with freedom and treason and revolution.
|
| |
|
Today our dream is to create a classical context-- to lay the
foundations for the millenium's renaissance. The WWW is allowing
us to unite the scattered lovers of classic literature about the
globe, and even as seafarers whose eyes have never been
opened to the glories of literature come across our sites, a
forgotten aspect within their spirits is awakened. (classicals.com/)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
The times are right for the Jolly Roger and its mission. We've spent too long with our sails
down, bobbing in the doldrums, looking to blame someone, something, for our lack of progress.
What happened was this - we stopped the quest, we dropped our anchor and it cost us the
ability to commit ourselves to our best ideals, to much of anything, really. Commitment is
central to a pirate's life. You don't leave the safety of the city and harbor and cast your fate upon
the mercies of the sea without commitment. Commitment is what separates visionaries from
mere thought peddlers, those who carry around a bag of trendy popular notions and political
correctness, pass it off as learning and take solace in the comforts of their tenured position.
So, let's hoist a tankard and toast. Here's to sea spray and more Pirates!
I wish Drake Raft and Crew favorable winds as they sail on. They are out on the bow of a
memorable, even remarkable, adventure. May they have the clear-eyed focus to stay the
course. In the midst of the marriage of conglomerate business and literature, of the quick buck
and the marketing spin, they remind us that it's time to resurrect a few simple ideas: words, like
actions, have meaning and consequences; that reading literature from eras where this simple
truth was intuitively known and practiced is a good antidote to the foggy cynicism swirling about
us.
|
| |
| |
| |
|
"So there you have it. That's how it all came to be. The WWW is the medium upon
which the rising generation is free to define its soul, and as it lends itself to the printed
word, it is the perfect place for a contemporary literary renaissance, where the
permanent profound can meld with the living romance of the gothic Carolina nights.
And after having said all that, I cannot deny the simultaneous simplicity of literature. I
guess what it all comes down to is that we wouldn't want to live in the "Southern Part of
Heaven" without setting some of youth's most sublime, yet fleeting, sentiments down in
ink, as best we can, before they're gone for good. God bless ye and God bless
America. (classicals.com)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
(c)1998, 2010 Taylor Stinson and Creekwalker LLC. All rights reserved.
tstinson@tawnybark.com
All quotations (c) 1997,1998, 2010 Raft, Knottingham & McGucken. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
A Jolly Roger Sampler
|
All Quotations (c) 1997-1998, 2010, McGucken, Raft, & Knottingham
from The WESTERN CANON UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION SPEECH by McGucken, Raft, &
Knottingham
"It was almost ten years ago that we came down with a bad case of sea fever ourselves. We showed up on
the Princeton campus hoping to acquaint ourselves with the greatest that had ever been thought and said, and
too, we were looking forward to being united with others in the common context of the Western tradition, for
cultures only truly come to life when they are shared. But upon arriving, we soon found out that there was no
program of study centered about the Great Books. There existed programs of study which were centered
about various vocations, a gender, and some selected cultures, but one could not major in Western
Civilization. We were at the number one University in the greatest country, and yet we could not major in our
own heritage, nor minor in it, nor even receive a certificate in Western Culture. No curriculum existed which
would aspire to introduce us to the greatest that had ever been thought and said. No professor nor provost
possessed the courage to step forth and say, "This is what you must know! This is where you must go! Come
now, I'll lead the way!" A Princeton legend has it that back in the seventies a provost did speak these very
words and was shot the following sunrise. Ten years ago we set out upon a journey to acquaint ourselves
with the greatest that had ever been thought and said, and now, ten years later, we find ourselves in the midst
of a renaissance rooted in the printed word. As poets and authors coming of age at the end of the second
millenium, we came to realize that a modern cultural context for contemporary Great Literature was lacking.
So in addition to composing new works, we have also found it necessary to create a context in which they
can take root and blossom. The WWW has presented the ideal tool for this. These simple sentiments and
yearning for traditional values in both our lives and our literature, shared by the free-thinkers throughout the
world, have given birth to the world's largest literary journal and the world's most-active literary cafe, and
thus we have reason to believe that God willing, our sentiments might also beget the world's greatest
university.
|
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
from THE TWO NANTUCKETS by Drake Raft
Where else can one glimpse the rugged individual's wisdom and infinite independence in all it's glory but in the
printed word? Was it not in the founding document's and original American scripture's best interest that
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay studied Aristotle, Homer, and Moses, rather than Pulp Fiction and Good Will
Hunting? In the movies poets, scientists and philosophers are often portrayed, but the actual poetry, science,
and philosophy which comprises the essence of genius is absent. How many statesmen or scientists needed
a shrink or Robin Williams to unlock their full potential? The hallmark of genius is not the ability to solve math
problems, but it is the Will to Understand the Universe. Genius originates not in answering, but in asking. Did
not Einstein say that curiosity is more important than knowledge? We inhabit a culture that honors the actor,
or the seemer, far more than those who are-- most would rather watch or act in Dead Poet's Society than
live it-- for living requires work, vision, dedication, ardor, committment, and character. And let us ponder the
true nature and intellect of people who play poets and prophets. Contrast the temporal resounding private
correspondence of our founding fathers, and there ye shall see that fame and fortune did once favor the more
profound, humbler men. Why is it that after having gained publicity's podium these modern "Southpark"
celebrities refrain from announcing that freedom is a gift that God granted to the moral and righteous? Is their
spiritual, intellectual, and moral indifference a prerequisite for appearing in the pages? Then I have been
utterly banned and resolutely censored by the modern liberal elite. Did not the words of Locke and the
prophets quite aptly capture the sentiments of our fundamental freedoms and Natural Law without any
special effects, lighting, camera angles, cartoons, or movie stars? How is it that University Presidents can
smile and present Martin Scorsese with honorary degrees while the chief officers aboard their ships teach that
these words mean nothing? Do not get me wrong here, mate-- for I very much enjoy a good episode of
Seinfeld, just as I enjoy a stroll along the pristine Main Street in Nantucket on a dry June afternoon, sipping
on a Nantucket Nectar, but yet I find myself unsatiated at the end of the sojourn. I wish to see something
more, to hear something which resonates a little deeper within my soul, to witness something which leaves a
more permanent and enchanting after-image in me mind's eye. I seek both the experience and the meaning. I
seek character beneath every cobblestone, and significance under every slate shingle. For I need that more
fundamental Nantucket, mate, and I feel far less alone when in the company of others who seek it too. I find
myself perpetually attracted to the island within the island, the heart of the soul, the fundamental iron that
distinguishes all men of character, independence, and creativity. Perhaps that's why you and I make such
good shipmates.
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
from THE FOUNDING OF CLASSICALS INC. From The Jolly Roger to Classicals Cafe. The Spirit of
the Millenium's Renaissance by Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham
It was late one rainy April night, after a rehearsal for the spring Triangle show, that the spirit of The Jolly
Roger was conceived, and so it is that we believe the spirit begins at conception. We were hanging out,
sitting upon the props on center stage in McCarter Theater, when Drake produced a copy of Moby Dick
and began reading aloud from "The Lee Shore." I remember this one alternative girl, Tia, popped her head in
the back of the theater asked us what in the world we were doing there so late, and Elliot told her we were
holding a secret-society meeting. Drake told her we'd let her in if she humbled herself before Melville's
literary supremacy, whereupon she laughed and took off to go tack up some more posters or catch South
Park or something. And so we founded a secret society dedicated to living the vanquished literature of the
Great Books, which eventually evolved into a Chapel Hill grunge band for tax purposes when we all headed
South to the Research Triangle as graduate students. Boy, did we rock. What the Beats did for poetry, we
did for grunge. Probably our greatest album was "Alternative Girls." You've most likely heard the title track
on your college station-- it's the one that goes "Alternative girls never know my name, alternative girls are
the ones who dress the same," but it's pretty difficult to make out the words in the song, as we were trying to
sound authentic. It was pretty autobiographical, though. Then, in 1994, the spirit manifested itself as the
world's largest literary warship, flagship of the renaissance generation, The Jolly Roger, dedicated to restoring
Law and Order to literature, and reuniting Words with Plot, Character, Structure, Form, Content, Meaning,
and Divine Glory. While sailing aboard the Roger, we settled the world's largest virtual classical community
upon several websites, some of which were recently reviewed in a cool article in The New York Times.
Music couldn't capture the Apollonian concepts that we had been born to express, such as Fidelity,
Prudence, Commitment, Character, Virtue, Loyalty, and Reverence, and we found ourselves far more at
home upon this profound new medium rooted within the printed word, the World Wide Web. And besides,
grunge wasn't ours-- it was pretty much the corporate pagan's, and it wasn't too much fun working for them,
having to follow all their stringent marketing-manager rules and conforming to their aging, nihilistic mindset, so
we quit.
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
A (brief) Jolly Roger Cyberdex. Like the Great Books themselves, the Jolly Roger website cannot be
navigated quickly. If your thing is the rapid pass, keep moving, mate. Spend several hours with the site and
you'll have only browsed the surface. Like the sea, the site is broad and deep, covering several domains
(jollyroger, classicals, nantuckets, westerncanon, mobydicks, killdevilhill, starbuck, federalist), dozens of
branch directories and hundreds of files and links.
|
| |
| |
jollyroger.com
Beaconway Press
BEACONRAY'S GREAT BOOKS BOOKSTORE
HATTERAS A journal of conservative thought Published by BeaconWay Press
Treasure Island: Classic Books & Literature for Children & Teenagers
The Grungeservative Literary Revolution by Becket Knottingham
WESTERN CANON UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION SPEECH by Drake Raft
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
westerncanon.com
WESTERN CANON UNIVERSITY LECTURE HALLS & LIVE RECITATIONS Where The Great Books Come To
Life & Classical Liberalism Walks Hand-in-Hand With Modern Conservatism
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
nantuckets.com
Nantuckets.com: The Nantucket Literary Community including The Two Nantuckets by Drake Raft
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
classicals.com
THE FOUNDING OF CLASSICALS INC. From The Jolly Roger to Classicals Cafe by Becket Knottingham
FEDERALIST.COM SPIRIT OF AMERICA PORT
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
mobydicks.com
AHAB'S MOBYDICKS.COM CAFE: HOME PORT OF THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ARTIST AND INTELLECTUAL
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
killdevilhill.com
The Generation-X Renaissance: CONSERVING GREAT LITERATURE AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS. The
Crow's Nest http://killdevilhill.com/crowsnest1.html Shakespeare's Sonnet of The Day
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
starbuckclassicalpoetry.com
The Classical Poetry Port site of The starbuckclassicalpoetry.com Poetry Port by Becket Knottingham
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
federalistnavy.com
The home port for discussing the American founding Spirit of America Discussion Ports Federalistnavy.com
|
| |
__________________________________________________________________________________
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
© Copyright 1998, 2010 Taylor Stinson and Creekwalker LLC. All rights reserved.
All quotations © 1997, 1998 Raft, Knottingham & McGucken. All rights reserved.
|
| |
| |
Last modified Wednesday July 14 20:01:30 US/Pacific 2010
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
