THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER18, 2019 73
BRIEFLY NOTED
The Lost Art of Scripture, by Karen Armstrong (Knopf ). This
unusual, often dazzling, blend of theology, history, and neu-
roscience argues that our hyper-rational, left-brain-domi-
nated society has become incapable of engaging with the
“mythos” of Scripture. In a tour of religious practice span-
ning centuries of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,
and Confucianism, Armstrong writes that past cultures
viewed myths as a “programme of action,” which, when en-
acted ritually or ethically, helped develop right-brain “hab-
its of empathy.” To demonstrate how close the link between
religion and action was, she quotes the Liji, an ancient Chi-
nese text: “Rites obviate disorder, as dykes obviate floods.”Shadow Network, by Anne Nelson (Bloomsbury). Having grown
up in Oklahoma and gone East for college, the author of
this account of “the secret hub of the radical right” saw the
dismay of friends back home at the gutting of environmen-
tal regulations and public education, and a marked deterio-
ration in public health. She lays the blame with the Coun-
cil for National Policy, a group that, though rooted in the
oil-producing states of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, has
national reach. Nelson describes the C.N.P., founded in 1981,
as a “pluto-theocracy”—an alliance between evangelicals and
wealthy funders, including the Koch, Mercer, and DeVos
families. Alarmed at declining numbers of white Protestants,
the C.N.P. has advocated privatizing public education and
replacing it with schools that promote a “biblical worldview.”The Revisioners, by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Counter-
point). Set in New Orleans, this sweeping novel tells the
stories of two women from different generations of one fam-
ily. Born into slavery, Josephine is, in 1924, a widow, a “con-
jure woman,” and, to the chagrin of her white neighbors, a
landowner. In 2017, Ava, a biracial single mother, takes a job
as caretaker for her wealthy white grandmother, against the
advice of her black mother, who inherited Josephine’s other-
worldly powers. As various white women attempt to exploit
black women, Sexton’s characters gain strength by finding
one another across the generations. “Who are you?” Jose-
phine asks a vision. The vision, ninety-three years in the fu-
ture, answers, “Whoever you are, that’s who I am too.”The Book of Daniel, by Aaron Smith (Pittsburgh). Contem-
plating movie stars, serial killers, and masculinity, the title
poem of this incisive, irreverent collection refers not to the
Bible but to a scrapbook dedicated to the actor Daniel Craig.
Smith’s poems expound a complicated and distinctly queer
relationship to beauty. “Gayness//has always been more
aesthetic for me/than sexual,” he muses. “I’d rather have
the magazine//than the man in the magazine.” He levels
a caustic wit at the pantheons of pop culture and modern
poetry, but also strikes resounding notes of hurt and rage
at homophobia, misogyny, rejection, and loss—at “how small
life is and how quick,//how contained we are inside some-
thing/we can’t contain.”monwealth immigration and sexual in-
security, memorably stating, “If there
were fewer eunuchs in the country, there
would be fewer Enochs in the House.”)
O’ Toole suggests that Powell’s xenopho-
bia was rechannelled, in consequential
ways. “No senior figure with credible de-
signs on power would again so explicitly
blame blacks and Asians for England’s
failings,” he writes. “This left a vacancy,
which was filled by the European Union.
A particular irony is that the scapegoat-
ing of the EU as the eternal source of
England’s ills was facilitated in part by
one of the more progressive develop-
ments in British culture: the gradual mar-
ginalization of open racism.”
Half a decade after the Rivers of Blood
speech, Britain, over the strenuous ob-
jections of men like Powell, joined the
European Community. But Powell re-
mains a lodestar for understanding the
brewing English-based rebellion against
Europe. Paul Corthorn, in “Enoch Pow-
ell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Brit-
ain” (Oxford), charts his subject’s fasci-
nating trajectory from a supporter of
empire to a skeptic of Britain as a global
power. Powell, of Welsh descent, was
born in the West Midlands area of En-
gland, and studied classics. He served in
India during the war, and initially had
dreams of becoming viceroy. The grant-
ing of Indian independence—both over-
due and, in execution, hasty—left him
stunned and unmoored, and caused a
fundamental rethinking of his views.
During the next several decades, he began
arguing that Britain must not live “in the
past of a world-wide empire and the do-
minion of the seas,” and should instead
“find its patriotism in England.” He was
privately skeptical of the Suez conflict,
which he viewed as post-imperial wish-
ful thinking, a pathetic attempt “to get
back what we had lost.” And all this con-
sorted with his long-held disdain for
America, his resentment of Britain’s “sub-
ordination” to an upstart power.
In the fall of 1974, Prime Minister
Edward Heath, the Europhile Tory, was
replaced by the Labour Party’s Harold
Wilson, who had promised to renego-
tiate the British-European relationship,
and won Powell’s endorsement. (In a
referendum conducted eight months
after the election, two-thirds of voters
supported remaining in Europe.) Powell
left the Conservative Party, declaring