SOURCE: Champ, Robert. “Russell Kirk's Fiction of Enchantment.” Intercollegiate Review 30, no. 1 (fall 1994): 39-42.

In the following essay, Champ examines and praises Kirk's novels and short stories, tracing their origins and purposes.

Long before I became aware of Russell Kirk as the author of The Conservative Mind, I knew him as a teller of deliciously scary ghost stories. Indeed, it was not until I had worked my way through Old House of Fear (1961), his first novel, and The Surly Sullen Bell (1962), his first short story collection, that I began to poke around to see if this author, who seemed to have so much more substance to him than other modern adherents of ghostly and Gothic tales, had produced anything in a more philosophical vein. I found, thank heavens, more than I bargained for and thereafter sought out his social and literary criticism with a will. Yet anyone who has...