Listen now | The estate of the late writer might destroy thousands of pages of private papers and manuscripts. A conversation about the need to preserve cultural history.
"I swear to God not every podcast in this newsletter will be about Philip Roth!"
Thank God. I have to tell you, I read the book reviews in the paper back in the 80's and after two or three 'new Philip Roth!' reviews I thereupon decided that I would not read him because I didn't need a bunch of novels about some dude from Jersey maundering on about his dick and his ex-wives all the time. I just didn't. So I didn't.
I am a Philistine, yes.
(Something like the same applies to Updike, but sans venom. 'The suburbs are very boring [you don't say] and here's a 1600 tome about it.' 'Yeah, pass.')
"I can’t resist sharing this Gilbert Hernandez drawing which isn’t about Philip Roth but really does capture the last 20 years of Roth’s life."
Beto! Yay!
elm
i gave my copy of the first l&r (the self-printed version) to my cousin as a wedding present since she was marrying a comic book artist - and i sometimes regret that
Roth was a self-hating Jew. "Céline is my Proust!" is a comment about his self-hatred and Céline's. Roth was more honest in his writing than his chatter.
What is it about American liberals and art? "So far as I can tell, there is nobody in the great enlightened American middle class just now who is not an art lover." Alfred Kazin "Art is Good for You" from 1959.
We really are reliving the banality of the post war years, down to "mad Men" and "creatives"
"The Music the Money Makes"
---The Village streets, pads, coffee houses, and bars are jammed with people who look a million times more sensitive, artistic, and "interesting" than William Faulkner or Igor Stravinsky, but who live by teaching economics, analyzing public opinion, writing advertising copy, practicing psychoanalysis, or "doing research" for political candidates. They are not intellectuals, but occasionally dream that they will be. That is their secret ambition. Meanwhile, being young and frisky, they are not yet the "managers" in our highly organized technical society. But they have the skills someday to become managers.---
Warhol was a self-hating homosexual. "He has a problem" "Does he have a problem?" was his only language to refer to homosexuality. Do we cancel Houellebecq? Patricia Highsmith?
Or maybe she's safe because she's a woman and a lesbian. But I forgot Jews are now white. Though no one in my father's family can pass. They all look like Palestinians.
So does the state come in and confiscate the archives of famous writers? No. Sorry. The estate has the right to everything that's not been published. It has the right to burn manuscripts. Copyright is about monetization.
Foucault was always right about Liberal Fascism, but liberals who jumped on Jonah Goldberg don't read Foucault. And if you want to cancel him for this new scandal you'l have to cancel a lot of people, Ginsberg, Vidal, Orton, most of the famous ones.
Art is honesty and skill, resulting in something that goes beyond intent, something richer, more complex. If art were about morality killers wouldn't know how to dance.
"I swear to God not every podcast in this newsletter will be about Philip Roth!"
Thank God. I have to tell you, I read the book reviews in the paper back in the 80's and after two or three 'new Philip Roth!' reviews I thereupon decided that I would not read him because I didn't need a bunch of novels about some dude from Jersey maundering on about his dick and his ex-wives all the time. I just didn't. So I didn't.
I am a Philistine, yes.
(Something like the same applies to Updike, but sans venom. 'The suburbs are very boring [you don't say] and here's a 1600 tome about it.' 'Yeah, pass.')
"I can’t resist sharing this Gilbert Hernandez drawing which isn’t about Philip Roth but really does capture the last 20 years of Roth’s life."
Beto! Yay!
elm
i gave my copy of the first l&r (the self-printed version) to my cousin as a wedding present since she was marrying a comic book artist - and i sometimes regret that
Roth was a self-hating Jew. "Céline is my Proust!" is a comment about his self-hatred and Céline's. Roth was more honest in his writing than his chatter.
What is it about American liberals and art? "So far as I can tell, there is nobody in the great enlightened American middle class just now who is not an art lover." Alfred Kazin "Art is Good for You" from 1959.
We really are reliving the banality of the post war years, down to "mad Men" and "creatives"
"The Music the Money Makes"
---The Village streets, pads, coffee houses, and bars are jammed with people who look a million times more sensitive, artistic, and "interesting" than William Faulkner or Igor Stravinsky, but who live by teaching economics, analyzing public opinion, writing advertising copy, practicing psychoanalysis, or "doing research" for political candidates. They are not intellectuals, but occasionally dream that they will be. That is their secret ambition. Meanwhile, being young and frisky, they are not yet the "managers" in our highly organized technical society. But they have the skills someday to become managers.---
Warhol was a self-hating homosexual. "He has a problem" "Does he have a problem?" was his only language to refer to homosexuality. Do we cancel Houellebecq? Patricia Highsmith?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n05/terry-castle/gotcha-pat
Or maybe she's safe because she's a woman and a lesbian. But I forgot Jews are now white. Though no one in my father's family can pass. They all look like Palestinians.
So does the state come in and confiscate the archives of famous writers? No. Sorry. The estate has the right to everything that's not been published. It has the right to burn manuscripts. Copyright is about monetization.
Foucault was always right about Liberal Fascism, but liberals who jumped on Jonah Goldberg don't read Foucault. And if you want to cancel him for this new scandal you'l have to cancel a lot of people, Ginsberg, Vidal, Orton, most of the famous ones.
Art is honesty and skill, resulting in something that goes beyond intent, something richer, more complex. If art were about morality killers wouldn't know how to dance.