“That is precisely what is missing from literature today—a plea for meaning. Today, the publishing industry churns out writing that fundamentally resists meaning, from Sally Rooney’s one-dimensional characters stewing in political ennui to Ben Lerner’s autofictional stand-ins who never manage to articulate a single moral stance. These books will fade into oblivion in the next decade while great…
“This is the tragedy of Politics East of Eden. Politics is necessary for human life. But the tragedy of history is that humans were not created to be autonomous self-rulers. East of Eden political structures are humanly constructed facsimiles of Eden that vainly set out to provide peace. And this is the tragedy: Politics East of Eden seeks Sabbath but delivers the striving of the rebellious human…
“We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path, a chaos that engulfed generations in an orgy of destruction lasting almost a hundred years. A war with a death toll so high that it left a permanent scar on humanity’s soul. But we will…
“The internet isn’t worse today than it was 10 years ago because of the format of our communication tools. It’s worse today because the companies who design our online experiences have been allowed to consolidate to the point of no longer needing to compete in the market. As a result, these major companies no longer need to create better products so that you will use them instead of a competitor,…
“Many Tolkien fans have been dismayed to see words like Palantir, Anduril, Mithril, Valar, and Erebor take on meanings more closely associated with defense tech and stock tickers than their literary associations.” - That They May Have Clean Earth To Till
“Rome wasn’t brought down by the decadence of Nero and Caligula but by the shift of power to what is now Istanbul centuries later. The Hegsethian heroes described by Homer either destroyed their own society (a reading perfectly consistent with the endings of the Iliad and Odyssey) or were brought down by their failure to manage the economy and the environment.” - The Odyssey and the Bronze Age…
“That is the impending catastrophe that looms over Odysseus and every other character. That is the idea that guides the story. That is the climax and resolution of the story. In one of the many narrative licenses that Nolan takes, Odysseus does not stay in Ithaca when he finally arrives; he sails to the west with his wife in order to honor his fallen men. But this ending is uncannily similar to…
Hard to hear : The paragon of the diegetic or source-music soundtrack is surely Nashville (1975), Robert Altman’s densely woven tribute to the Mecca of country music which is also a dystopian meditation on the violence immanent in American politics. Set on the eve of the US bicentennial in 1976, Altman’s film is a complex pastiche of vignettes in which music plays a central narrative role, with…
What Really Happened to ‘Staying Woke’? : But “woke” didn’t enter the lexicon on Twitter or TV. It dates back to the Blues musician Lead Belly, speaking about his 1938 song, “Scottsboro Boys,” which he wrote after nine Black boys in Scottsboro, Alabama were falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931. Eight of the boys were sentenced to death, and after strenuous legal battles, collectively…
“The complete decimation of U.S. Higher Education may serve the anti-intellectual purposes of the fascist vision of the future, but it will not lead to the goal of American greatness. Much of the investment in AI as opposed to the academy is being pitched as forward looking: in a few years, we won’t need these pesky critical thinkers and intellectuals. We’ll just ask Claude or [shivers] Grok. But…
“I’m pretty damn sure that cutting police budgets in a quarter and releasing most non-violent criminals and closing prisons, then directing all that money to social welfare and transfer payments wouldn’t make the US any worse and would probably make it better.” - Defund The Police and Abolish Prisons?
“I think we’ve been mind-tricked by the fact that social-media companies and their algorithms were fairly bought-in to Woke One, then swung hard against it, making it feel like there was a huge, organic backlash that hurt Democrats. But Democratic officials in general, and Biden in particular, were not terribly woke. And the tenor of social media is a vibe, not a scientifically valid survey…