November 7, 2024, marked the third anniversary of long-time Bookman editor Gerald Russello (1971-2021). This week he was honored with the publication of his most representative essays and reviews. How Do You Do It? The Selected Works of Gerald Russello is now available from Cluny Media. Luke C. Sheahan sat down with the volume’s editor, David G. Bonagura, Jr., to discuss its contents and Gerald’s literary legacy.
Sheahan: Gerald Russello wrote for so many publications over three decades. How did you select the contents of this book?
Bonagura: “So many” is an understatement! How Do You Do It? The Selected Works of Gerald Russello contains 78 essays and reviews from 23 different publications. These are his “selected works” rather than his “complete works.” As I sifted through websites and databases, I kept finding new pieces for publications I hadn’t thought to look at. This went on until three days before the publisher set the type! Gerald did not keep a CV, but he did keep a box with the print issues that included his writings. It’s fair to say that he published in every mainstream publication that can be classified as conservative and conservative Catholic, along with a number of others. He also published a few scholarly essays in journals; two of these are included in the volume.
Sheahan: What were the primary areas of Gerald’s writing?
Bonagura: Gerald had an extraordinary range as a scholar. To think that his scholarly output was all extracurricular after he finished long days and nights working as an attorney is even more astonishing. I organized the book into nine sections that showcase the major areas of his work. The first section reflects Gerald himself and his love for his native place, Brooklyn, New York. The next two sections, on Russell Kirk and on conservatism, are arguably the most enduring; they are also mutually reinforcing, as Gerald was an expert in Kirk’s thought (his only full length book was a scholarly study of Kirk entitled The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk), and his conservatism was Kirkean in every sense. He brought what he learned from Kirk to the conservative issues of his day, from the impact of Edmund Burke to the rise of Donald Trump. A fourth section includes selections—certainly not all—of his work on the law and its impact on American life and culture. The other sections reflect Gerald’s personal and intellectual interests: he wrote on Catholicism, including the Catholic novel on a few occasions; on leading humanists, especially Christopher Dawson; on the American founding; on Latin and its legacy; and on the culture writ large.
Sheahan: Gerald met Kirk in Washington, D.C., as a student at Georgetown University. How exactly did Kirk shape Gerald’s conservatism?
Bonagura: Gerald’s introduction to Kirk was reading The Conservative Mind as a university student in preparation for launching a conservative newspaper on campus. He later called Kirk’s work “a revelation.” Gerald eventually met him in Washington in the early 1990s before Kirk passed away. Shortly thereafter, Gerald became involved with the Russell Kirk Center and began researching and writing on Kirk’s thought. How Do You Do It? showcases a few of Gerald’s conservative emphases that he learned from Kirk. First, he was a localist who prized community living as an expression of the best America has to offer. Second, he subscribed to Kirk’s belief that the “unwritten constitution,” that is, the beliefs and customs of a people from which a formal constitution arises, forms the real backbone of a civilization. Third, Gerald rejected attempts to define conservatism as the sum total of country club living and free market economics. In multiple pieces he writes approvingly of the “crunchy con” movement, a moniker created by Rod Dreher in 2006 to describe a cultural conservatism that was localist, religious, and close to nature as opposed to metropolitan and libertarian. For this reason, Gerald was pleased with the potential Donald Trump had to break the Acela Corridor’s grip on the Republican Party while expressing caution over Trump himself. The three pieces in this volume that discuss Trump and his impact on conservatism are some of the most engaging of the whole collection, and certainly among the most with lasting relevance.
Sheahan: As editor of The University Bookman, Gerald published countless reviews over the years. He also was something of a “professional reviewer” himself. Did he have a style for reviewing books?
Bonagura: Yes. “Bookman” was so fitting for Gerald, because he loved books and loved writing about them. He wrote tons of reviews for so many different publications. In the last decade of his life, reviews outnumbered original essays by a wide margin. He did have a style. He would start by framing the issue that the given book seeks to address before delving into the book’s contents. Often in this framing the discriminating reader can discern Gerald’s personal ideas on the topic, though he never stated so explicitly. In this volume, for example, three reviews on the American founding make reference to Barry Alan Shain’s work that asserted the first Americans were not Lockean republicans motivated by abstract conceptions of rights, but small town Protestants motivated by their religion and traditional English conceptions of liberty. He would always conclude with a powerful closing sentence. He would criticize what he found lacking in a book, but never caustically or sarcastically. Rarely did he review a book he did not enjoy. The only review in this volume that fits that category is his review of Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys.
Sheahan: What motivated Gerald to write as much as he did?
Bonagura: He certainly was not motivated by money nor fame. Gerald loved the life of the mind and engaging the culture with his pen. Though he was a lawyer by trade he was really an academic at heart. Writing was his way of exercising his passion for reading and learning. He wrote from his heart as an act of love. I try to bring this point out in my introduction to Gerald’s thought. Gerald believed deeply in the power of the conservative imagination, and I believe the essays and reviews in this volume showcase one dedicated man’s imagination at its best, working to preserve the Permanent Things for the next generation and beyond.
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is religion editor of The University Bookman. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith and Staying with the Catholic Church, and the translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning.
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