P ankaj Mishra is an Indian journalist, novelist, and travel writer; he is widely appreciated as a scold. The essays are themselves unified by a common rhetorical strategy, if not a common rhetorical subject, in which Mishra reveals that he knows something that others do not.
Never mind. Readers will get the point. They could hardly miss it. In hanging around London and New York, Mishra encountered a good many dopes.
Mishra was moved to republish these essays in their hardcover coffin, he remarks in his introduction, as a response to Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the COVID pandemic. They lack the degree of prophetic force that Mishra might think appropriate. I would have thought that Cheney, at least, had the beady eyes characteristic of the born bland fanatic.
Two of the sixteen essays in this collection are devoted to single combat: Mishra vs. Niall Ferguson and Jordan Peterson. Fluffy and forgettable, they did succeed in provoking their subjects to a display of petulance. Ferguson threatened to sue Mishra for libel, and Peterson proposed to slap him silly should they happen to meet.
T he essays in Bland Fanatics , if intelligent and brisk, are also imperfectly argued and badly written. Realities are brutal , falsehoods blatant , notions reek , prejudices are entrenched , binaries pop up here and there eager, I am sure, to escape gender confinement , crime rates skyrocket , adventurers are bumptious , history is blinkered , delusions climax, despotisms are ruthless , and, if breasts are not being bared, chests, at least, are being thumped.
