...there was something almost indecent in the haste with which I received the ticket, by comparison with what would have happened, say, if my car had been broken into and I had reported it to the police.

The cultural development in question is the systematic over-estimation of the importance not so much of emotion, as of the expression of emotion – one’s own emotion, that is. The manner with which something is said has come to be more important than what is said. Saying nothing, but with sufficient emotional vehemence or appearance of sincerity, has become the mark of the serious man. Our politicians are, in effect, psychobabblers because we are psychobabblers; not the medium, but the emotion, is the message.

“Having stopped the sale of all new tires,” he writes, “we had now to find some way of selling them again but only to the necessary and needful.”

Galbraith’s egotism and condescension toward most of the human race is evident in his admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt—or rather, in the grounds for that admiration...“I turn now to Franklin Roosevelt, the first and in many ways the greatest of those I encountered over a lifetime. And the one, more than incidentally, who accorded me the most responsibility.” I think you would have to have a pretty tough carapace of self-regard not to recognize the absurdity of this, or to have the gall to commit it to print.

His “revolution” consisted of forbidding neckties and making everyone abandon his European first name in the cause of African authenticity. It otherwise largely left people untouched: It had no choice in the matter, for it was so inefficient that the transport network virtually ceased to exist. Where it did exist, the revolution set up military checkpoints, but these were not much to be feared. I remember going through one in a truck without stopping, sending the soldiers flying in all directions. I asked the driver whether this was not dangerous; would the soldiers not fire at us?

“Oh no, monsieur, they’ve sold all their bullets long ago.”

That’s the kind of African revolution I learned to like (relatively speaking), the bogus one that sells its bullets.

Profeten en charlatans, Theodore Dalrymple’s 2009 Dutch language book publication for Amsterdam-based publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam, consists of a selection of 28 essays on literary subjects. They were chosen, translated and provided with an introductory essay by Dutch philosopher, author and translator Jabik Veenbaas. This introduction is titled ‘Theodore Dalrymple en het belang van de literatuur’ [‘Theodore Dalrymple and the importance of literature’]. In it, Veenbaas gives a brief and penetrating analysis of Dalrymple’s unique style and approach in writing about writers, books and the meaning of literature.