[From "Laura Wood Remembers Lawrence Auster, After Seven Years"]

[Lawrence Auster, proprietor of the great immigration patriot blog View From The Right, [I]died[/I] of pancreatic cancer seven years ago today, March 29 2013. The following is adapted from recent remarks that Laura Wood gave at a dinner to honor his memory, and to celebrate the posthumous publication of [I]his magnum opus, [/I]Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism, which she edited. Copies may be purchased [I]here[/I]].

In October 1997, Lawrence Auster spent a night at the movies.

An excoriating letter to the film critic who had recommended the movie followed soon after. Auster was prone to excoriating criticism and he was very good at it. It’s worth quoting his letter to reviewer Michael Medved at length:

[...]

The writer and social critic who died of cancer seven years ago today and whose book, [I]Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism, [/I]was published by VDARE.com last fall, wrote many dozens of similar letters to editors, book reviewers, journalists, clergy, relatives and friends during his 64 years. One can only imagine the dismay with which many of these people perused these painstakingly detailed critiques and their stricken silence in response.

Rich in eloquence, Auster believed cultural warfare was his duty.

By the standards of the world, he was a failure. He had devoted readers at his blog View from the Right for the last 11 years of his life, but he died as he had lived, in poverty and unknown to the general public—with the disgrace of writing about the most shameful of all topics, race and immigration.

The roots of his motivation and perseverance despite few rewards can be found, I believe, in a formal recommendation by an assistant English professor at the University of Colorado where he had earned a bachelor of arts degree in his late twenties (he dropped out of Columbia years before because, he said, he was too immature to understand the books he was reading).

[...]

His great love of literature and Western art explains, I believe, why he became a critic of multiculturalism. The conversation the great canon represents is rooted in national attachments and loyalties.

Auster strongly believed America was finished. However, this was not cause for surrender. There was no reason to stop loving this country or to give up hope for the ongoing conversation. The crisis that is unfolding before us today with the COVID-19 virus would not surprise him. But it also would not demoralize him.