The Spectator

Florence King, 1936 – 2016: a great American conservative

Let’s not get sentimental — she would not have liked that — but Florence King, the American writer and splendid reactionary, has died. It is sad because Florence was brilliant, brave and most of all funny. Her best-known work, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, is a tremendous book — essential reading, I’d say, for anyone who wants to understand spirited American conservatism, rather than the lobotomised crap churned out on TV or talk radio, or by Republican Party candidates. She deserves to be better known, though it is heartening today to see fans sharing her quotes on Twitter. (My favourite: ‘while watching ‘Psycho’ a single question ran through my head: “Where can I get a shower head with that kind of capacity?”’) For a sense of her character, I recommend this obituary by her friend and publisher at the National Review, Jack Fowler. 

The Spectator was lucky enough to publish some of her articles in the last few years. We reproduce one below. I’ll miss her telegram-like emails, which popped into my inbox every now and then. The last one reads: ‘Been in hosp. since July 17. Out now, more or less o.k. Will be in touch soon. I have a devastating piece on U.S. med. Florence’

I wish we could have read that. RIP. 

Freddy Gray, deputy editor.

 

How niceness became the eighth deadly sin for women

9 August 2014 Fredericksburg, Virginia

I have come a long way with feminism. When it first hit the fan in the early 1970s I was living in a thin-walled apartment next to a woman who held assertiveness-training workshops that included bloodcurdling shouts of ‘This steak is tough! I demand to see the manager!’ Now, 40 years later, assertiveness is all about careers. The new steak is the glass ceiling that women can’t cut through because they are still too ‘nice’ to ask for a promotion and a raise, and the new shout is, ‘This job doesn’t pay enough! I demand to see the company president!’ Books by female executives have given them their marching orders: stop apologising, remember the new swear word is ‘sorry’, and above all, forget about being ‘nice’.

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