Benjamin Welton is a writer whose work focuses on cultural criticism, literary history, and crime fiction. He contributed essays and reviews to The Weekly Standard in 2015 and 2016, covering topics ranging from detective fiction and Dashiell Hammett to Hollywood history and cultural commentary.
It was the decade of hot jazz and short skirts. Knowing what we now know about the 1920s, the Jazz Age can feel at times like the Decameron, with beautiful people dancing on the edge of oblivion. Even though liquor, wine, and beer were prohibited, thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment, the nation kept…
Conjure up the private detective. For those familiar with the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as well as the noir films of the 1940s and ’50s, this is easy magic. Tucked underneath a fedora, the archetypal P. I. chain-smokes cigarettes, goes nowhere without his trenchcoat, and…
Glenn Beck spoke recently with Fox News about his vision of a doomsday scenario. No, this apocalypse had nothing to do with Islamists capturing Megiddo and starting a world war with Rome and Jerusalem, nor did this Armageddon include either Rosemary's progeny or the trial lawyer Al Pacino. Beck's…
On November 28th, Tyson Fury did the unexpected—he beat Wladimir Klitschko, the Ukrainian pugilist who had gone eleven years without a loss. More importantly, in beating Klitschko, Fury, a 27-year-old Mancunian and the son of Irish Travelers, dethroned one of boxing's last true titans and captured…
Not so very long ago, commentators used to talk about human evolution. No, not actual, Darwinian evolution. This evolution was more along the lines of wishful thinking. In the 19th century, Marx and his followers rejected so-called "bourgeois morality" (which properly recognized that humans, if…
Like a lot of people my age and older, I first discovered Dalton Trumbo through Metallica. Spurred on by many late night viewings of the haunting video for the band’s anti-war single “One,” I discovered Johnny Got His Gun—Trumbo’s 1939 novel that inspired the 1971 film adaptation, which in turn…
French President François Hollande vowed to conduct a “pitiless” war against the people responsible for Friday’s atrocities, and over the weekend, the bombings of ISIS targets in Syria began. Le président also temporarily closed all of France’s borders, but only for those seeking to leave the…
A common conservative joke online is that if Tumblr were a country, it would look a lot like Sweden. Although some still see the Scandinavian nation as either a Christmas card full of blond-haired people listening to ABBA or a socialist paradise that America would be prudent to emulate, the truth…
If one were to build the archetype of a reactionary, it would probably look a lot like Montague “Monty” Rhodes James. Born in the village of Goodnestone, Kent, James grew up in an environment surrounded by history and legend. His father, the Reverend Herbert James, was an Anglican curate and the…
It has become common to liken Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders. They’re both “outsiders” who have seemingly bucked the system and have struck a nerve with the base of their respective parties. For Sanders, a self-described social democrat from the most liberal state in the union, his anti-Wall…
As with most things American literature, it all begins with Edgar Allan Poe. In 1841, Poe unleashed on an unsuspecting world “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” arguably the world’s first modern detective tale. The end result was a sensational story that coupled outrageous acts of violence (never…
The man who made the American style of detective fiction international and who, according to his peer and contemporary Raymond Chandler, “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse,” was born a poor farm boy in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Samuel…
Not long ago, one of my favorite, but alas now defunct radio shows used to keep an Apology Clock. This time-piece counted very specific numerals: The Apology Clock ticked off each time someone famous was forced to apologize for their indiscretions. Since the Apology Clock is a product of our SJW…
Unlike Scandinavia, where the police procedural form has been wedded to socio-political activism and pessimism since at least the 1960s, and unlike the United States, where different variations of the native hardboiled school continues to sell, the traditional mystery story is still alive and well…