From T.L. Davis’s Substack: A wide ranging interview with Robert Gore, author of the popular website Straight Line Logic. We talk about his books, especially The Golden Pinnacle and Gray Radiance.
The following comment from SLL reader Dave encountered technical difficulties, so I’m posting it directly to the article:
I have read Robert Gore’s books and found Pinnacle and Radiance to be interesting, informative, enjoyable, and in context, “profound.”
Pinnacle covers the 50-or-so years of the greatest period of human progress ever experienced by mankind! Robert demonstrates this in both obvious and subtle ways through both plot and characterizations. It is a period of history that otherwise is full of distortion, omission, and outright lies, made so by the ignoring of context, which Robert chooses NOT to engage!
Radiance deals with one aspect of the resulting America from WWI through Vietnam. An America that had begun to ignore its founding principles, through their distortion or outright repudiation – in the name of protecting them! The rise of secrecy associated with the Manhattan Project being a key aspect. I often quip that the path from the citadel of liberty into the dungeon of tyranny passes through the doorway marked “secrecy!”
The fascinating plot developed by Robert would not have been possible if America had not begun its descent into the same tired, worn, history of humanity’s journey, “interrupted” by the Enlightenment and America’s previous “pinnacle” manifestation of many of its ideals.
The transition taking place in the two novels is again, both obvious and subtle. Good and evil exist in both, but in Radiance, evil has begun to become politically powerful to a degree not present in Pinnacle, except between 1913 and the conclusion of the book in the 1920’s.
By the end of Radiance, however, evil is ever-present and, more or less, taken for granted. Both journeys were great reads!
Thank you Robert and thank you T.L. for the interview..
I just finished watching your 2 part interview with T.L.Davis. I particularly enjoyed your insights of being a dedicated writer striving for significance by your commitment to excellence. I follow his blog also so I can see how you two could be on the same video as allies.
TL is a good guy and a good writer, so yes, we’re on the same side of the battle.
Bravo! Good stopping point of The Nam and how brutal it was.
Short attention spans aren’t for book readers and you have to have mighty pattern detection to catch the nuance of the overall theme.
Bookshelf is still slim pickins with the most comprehensive Battle of Kursk book ever down to tactical level dispersing and times but it does have microprint and slow reading with magnifying lens, The Pentagon Papers, 100 Years, The Prophet, huge 1960s Catholic family Bible with Caravaggio galore.
All of those were gifts from family and friends. (h/t)
The Bible is where it starts and Wisdom comes from God.
This just in from Falco:
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