Naomi Kanakia and I talk early 20th century Russian intellectuals, internecine battles in the trans woman world, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and the task of keeping one's balance in these wacky times
I have thoughts on TCW and have not listened yet to the podcast, though it sounds quite fascinating and I will. I think one issue I have with him and other self-styled public intellectuals is his lack of output. TCW has published all of two books, one of them which appeared in 2010, and he writes only sporadically. Forgetting politics for a moment, Chomsky published something like 150 books and was always writing something. Sometimes I feel like our current intellectual class defaults to a sort of plodding punditry and doesn't actually set about doing the tougher work of writing books and attempting bigger projects. What does TCW *do* exactly? Get tangled up in the Atlantic about Walter Kirn maybe liking Trump? Walter has fallen into this trap too - punditry over production - but at least, at one time, he was quite productive, and he was one of the great novelists of his era. (Up in the Air is a middling movie but an amazing little novel, Don DeLillo for the skies, and I liked Thumbsucker a lot.)
I'll have to ponder that. Initially it strikes me as unfair, because probably he's largely trying to make a living, which can be tough. He had a contract with the NYTimes Magazine for a year or two, and wrote some long reported pieces, and then didn't have a regular gig for a while. Seems like just got the staff writer job at the Atlantic in the last six months or so.
Is the charge that he hasn't been productive enough, or that too much of the work he has produced has been too pundit-y. I guess I'm willing to give more of a hearing to the latter charge, given that I too am pretty unproductive. I mean, I'm not unproductive overall, given that I have a full time day job and a bunch of kids to parent, but my writerly output ain't that great. I do try, however, not to fall too deeply into the punditry temptation.
You're very productive! Williams has a large platform and writing opportunities and I'm not saying the stuff he does isn't good or interesting, it just feels like he's defaulted to a kind of static punditry over attempting bigger, overarching projects.
Yang is a fascinating figure. At his best I think he was better than almost anyone else writing today -- his essay on the Virginia Tech shooter was brilliant -- but it seems like he basically doesn't/can't write anymore. Has totally descended into anti-trans activism.
This was one of the first episodes where you spoke of the end of cancel culture, or perhaps of the tyranny of woke rules around speech. I also noticed this was an episode where you yourself spoke more openly on topics you might not have challenged your guests on in the past. The TCW exchange felt like a small instance of you pulling an idea back from the realm of the undiscussable. You didn't defend him categorically; you defended the right to debate his ideas in all their nuance and to not dismiss him out of turn. Those two things felt very related. Am I making more of that than you intended? Are you feeling more willing to tackle these more delicate topics?
Much discussion here is about the ideas of the podcast, and understandably so. I often feel drawn to the guests themselves and how you connect to each of them in different ways. Naomi is terrific. She can debate things that are so often off limits because they could threaten her identity. Her comment about being comfortable interacting with people who are on a political trajectory to abhor her in a few years was really poignant. That's an experience unknown to me and I hope I'd have her maturity and perspective if I were her.
That's a good point. It did feel a bit different to me, confronting her on TCW. It wasn't a pre-planned choice so much as me continuing to feel my way in, organically, to how I want to be in these conversations. A work in progress. And I too am fascinated by how her brain works - it is somewhat aslant to the norm.
Interesting convo that I just listened to on a long drive. I have to say I found the characterization of TCW unfair, and I appreciated your sticking up for him. I understand where the argument from Kanakia is coming from, but I think it ignores all the writing he does that’s not about race. I for example started reading him because he was writing interesting essays on being an American in Europe. I think it may have been him that really turned me onto Baldwin as well. And just to offer a recent example, he wrote an article in the Atlantic about the demise of the one handed backhand in men’s tennis! Give the man a little credit.
An interesting conversation that gave me at lot to think about. If I may make two points...
First, there's something about TCW that gets under people's skin (might even say there's a TCW derangement syndrome) that goes deeper than his couple of pieces about Coates years ago, particularly on the left, where there's no special affection for Coates. The review of his second book in ____ by ____ stands out in my mind as one of the ugliest pieces I read during the 2010s. I don't have any ideological commitments that would make me want to revile him, but even if I did, even if I hated his writing, I have a hard time seeing how I'd think of him as anything other than a centrist guy who made it as a magazine writer and has a nice life in Paris.
Second, there may be a good refutation of the views of the lady in Nebraska who feels at a disadvantage in publishing because she's being white, but "every single literary agent is white" isn't it. Unless she's trying it make it as a literary agent rather than as a writer, it's a non sequitur.
Yeah he immensely vexes people and I too am not sure why. There are some vibrations he's giving off that maybe I don't sense because ideologically I'm in the same orbit as him. That's not a knock on him, just agreeing with you. I had the same feeling about Bari Weiss, who seemed to drive people completely batty for reasons I couldn't discern, even though I usually didn't agree with her, but recently I've been finding her tough to take too.
I get Naomi's point, which I assume was a bit hyperbolic, but also your objection. I'm not hip enough to the literary agent scene to know the truth of it. There is maybe a sense in which it's true what Alex Perez said in his notorious interview, that it's the sensibility of a certain kind of white liberal woman that sets the tone of the publishing world, even if it's not the case that literally every agent is a white woman.
The point of Naomi's that I have an easier time assenting to, if I heard her correctly, is that it both is and isn't true at the same time that there are advantages to being a person of color within some contexts. There are so many different overlapping things going on in a lot of these contexts. It's still white guys who still run the show at most institutions. Publishing is still a culture in which writers and editors and agents of color often feel like outsiders, where the dominant culture is ivy league white liberal or something in that vicinity. And it is also true that sometimes writers of color have certain advantages in some spaces and in some moments. All of it's true, which leads basically to everyone feeling screwed, which is more broadly the state of our fucked up culture right now. Everyone feels screwed, and everyone is in some ways in fact being screwed, and it takes an immense amount of perspective to not lose one's way morally, politically, ethically, aesthetically.
oh yes I fully agree there are all sorts of circumstances where Nebraska lady's race is going to be an advantage, I just doubt that submitting manuscripts to literary agencies is one of them. but that said, I'll make three points against her (i) if she has any sense she knew the score in advance, so if she pursues literary glory anyway that's on her (ii) even if her odds are marginally worse than that of POC writers (at least those who submit non Perez-style manuscripts, ha), it's a super-competitive world, and most people of all backgrounds fail, and finally (iii) the number one thing you *don't* want to do as a white lady in Nebraska or anywhere else is to complain uncouthly about how the deck is stacked against you
and one more thought re TCW and Coates, if I remember correctly both of them were Sanders voters in the 2016 Dem primary, so in a way there may be a mountain-out-of-a-molehill quality to making much of their disagreements
agree on the Nebraska lady. I have sympathy but then not that much at the same time.
I honestly don't know what to do, and maybe there's nothing to do, about the brute fact that median white people have been, and will continue to be, displaced from the absolute center of American culture. It's not at all unjust. There's nothing wrong with it. White people still play a big role in our national identity, just not as uncontested a central role as they once did.
But for people who have counted on that utter centrality as a core part of their identity, it hurts. And telling them to grow up and get perspective is both fair and doomed to fail. I guess if I were in control of everyone's rhetoric, I'd make them follow the basic Obama liberal playbook, putting forth an optimistic, patriotic narrative of America that emphasizes what we all have in common, and that our diversity is the core of our strength, etc. That won't quiet all the resentment -- obviously -- but it's better than left wing triumphalism about the browning of America.
The moment that stands out in my memory from recent years is when, after the Biden administration traded Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner, at a press conference Karine Jean-Pierre celebrated the return of "a queer woman of color." I was stupefied, I mean in that context she's only one thing, an American. To call her anything else is insane. Meanwhile Paul Whelan is still stuck over there, an incorrect (bc actually Putin wouldn't release him) but natural conclusion to make from the statement is that to Biden, Griner matters more because of intersectional points.
As for solutions, the old Reihan idea of slowing down immigration for a while to give a new American identity time to coalesce has always seemed compelling.
That seems a very poor way to frame it, a self-own as the kids say. Oy.
I don't have much of an opinion on the immigration question. In the abstract that sounds good, but "a while" would have to be decades, right? And don't we need immigrants to keep our population young and our economy strong?
I have thoughts on TCW and have not listened yet to the podcast, though it sounds quite fascinating and I will. I think one issue I have with him and other self-styled public intellectuals is his lack of output. TCW has published all of two books, one of them which appeared in 2010, and he writes only sporadically. Forgetting politics for a moment, Chomsky published something like 150 books and was always writing something. Sometimes I feel like our current intellectual class defaults to a sort of plodding punditry and doesn't actually set about doing the tougher work of writing books and attempting bigger projects. What does TCW *do* exactly? Get tangled up in the Atlantic about Walter Kirn maybe liking Trump? Walter has fallen into this trap too - punditry over production - but at least, at one time, he was quite productive, and he was one of the great novelists of his era. (Up in the Air is a middling movie but an amazing little novel, Don DeLillo for the skies, and I liked Thumbsucker a lot.)
I'll have to ponder that. Initially it strikes me as unfair, because probably he's largely trying to make a living, which can be tough. He had a contract with the NYTimes Magazine for a year or two, and wrote some long reported pieces, and then didn't have a regular gig for a while. Seems like just got the staff writer job at the Atlantic in the last six months or so.
Is the charge that he hasn't been productive enough, or that too much of the work he has produced has been too pundit-y. I guess I'm willing to give more of a hearing to the latter charge, given that I too am pretty unproductive. I mean, I'm not unproductive overall, given that I have a full time day job and a bunch of kids to parent, but my writerly output ain't that great. I do try, however, not to fall too deeply into the punditry temptation.
You're very productive! Williams has a large platform and writing opportunities and I'm not saying the stuff he does isn't good or interesting, it just feels like he's defaulted to a kind of static punditry over attempting bigger, overarching projects.
I have been productive lately. I'll take it.
Listen to the episode, though. I'll be interested in your take.
I will! And it's plausible I conflate TCW too much with Wesley Yang, another promising mind who died the death of punditry. TCW is a better writer.
Yang is a fascinating figure. At his best I think he was better than almost anyone else writing today -- his essay on the Virginia Tech shooter was brilliant -- but it seems like he basically doesn't/can't write anymore. Has totally descended into anti-trans activism.
This was one of the first episodes where you spoke of the end of cancel culture, or perhaps of the tyranny of woke rules around speech. I also noticed this was an episode where you yourself spoke more openly on topics you might not have challenged your guests on in the past. The TCW exchange felt like a small instance of you pulling an idea back from the realm of the undiscussable. You didn't defend him categorically; you defended the right to debate his ideas in all their nuance and to not dismiss him out of turn. Those two things felt very related. Am I making more of that than you intended? Are you feeling more willing to tackle these more delicate topics?
Much discussion here is about the ideas of the podcast, and understandably so. I often feel drawn to the guests themselves and how you connect to each of them in different ways. Naomi is terrific. She can debate things that are so often off limits because they could threaten her identity. Her comment about being comfortable interacting with people who are on a political trajectory to abhor her in a few years was really poignant. That's an experience unknown to me and I hope I'd have her maturity and perspective if I were her.
That's a good point. It did feel a bit different to me, confronting her on TCW. It wasn't a pre-planned choice so much as me continuing to feel my way in, organically, to how I want to be in these conversations. A work in progress. And I too am fascinated by how her brain works - it is somewhat aslant to the norm.
Interesting convo that I just listened to on a long drive. I have to say I found the characterization of TCW unfair, and I appreciated your sticking up for him. I understand where the argument from Kanakia is coming from, but I think it ignores all the writing he does that’s not about race. I for example started reading him because he was writing interesting essays on being an American in Europe. I think it may have been him that really turned me onto Baldwin as well. And just to offer a recent example, he wrote an article in the Atlantic about the demise of the one handed backhand in men’s tennis! Give the man a little credit.
An interesting conversation that gave me at lot to think about. If I may make two points...
First, there's something about TCW that gets under people's skin (might even say there's a TCW derangement syndrome) that goes deeper than his couple of pieces about Coates years ago, particularly on the left, where there's no special affection for Coates. The review of his second book in ____ by ____ stands out in my mind as one of the ugliest pieces I read during the 2010s. I don't have any ideological commitments that would make me want to revile him, but even if I did, even if I hated his writing, I have a hard time seeing how I'd think of him as anything other than a centrist guy who made it as a magazine writer and has a nice life in Paris.
Second, there may be a good refutation of the views of the lady in Nebraska who feels at a disadvantage in publishing because she's being white, but "every single literary agent is white" isn't it. Unless she's trying it make it as a literary agent rather than as a writer, it's a non sequitur.
Yeah he immensely vexes people and I too am not sure why. There are some vibrations he's giving off that maybe I don't sense because ideologically I'm in the same orbit as him. That's not a knock on him, just agreeing with you. I had the same feeling about Bari Weiss, who seemed to drive people completely batty for reasons I couldn't discern, even though I usually didn't agree with her, but recently I've been finding her tough to take too.
I get Naomi's point, which I assume was a bit hyperbolic, but also your objection. I'm not hip enough to the literary agent scene to know the truth of it. There is maybe a sense in which it's true what Alex Perez said in his notorious interview, that it's the sensibility of a certain kind of white liberal woman that sets the tone of the publishing world, even if it's not the case that literally every agent is a white woman.
The point of Naomi's that I have an easier time assenting to, if I heard her correctly, is that it both is and isn't true at the same time that there are advantages to being a person of color within some contexts. There are so many different overlapping things going on in a lot of these contexts. It's still white guys who still run the show at most institutions. Publishing is still a culture in which writers and editors and agents of color often feel like outsiders, where the dominant culture is ivy league white liberal or something in that vicinity. And it is also true that sometimes writers of color have certain advantages in some spaces and in some moments. All of it's true, which leads basically to everyone feeling screwed, which is more broadly the state of our fucked up culture right now. Everyone feels screwed, and everyone is in some ways in fact being screwed, and it takes an immense amount of perspective to not lose one's way morally, politically, ethically, aesthetically.
oh yes I fully agree there are all sorts of circumstances where Nebraska lady's race is going to be an advantage, I just doubt that submitting manuscripts to literary agencies is one of them. but that said, I'll make three points against her (i) if she has any sense she knew the score in advance, so if she pursues literary glory anyway that's on her (ii) even if her odds are marginally worse than that of POC writers (at least those who submit non Perez-style manuscripts, ha), it's a super-competitive world, and most people of all backgrounds fail, and finally (iii) the number one thing you *don't* want to do as a white lady in Nebraska or anywhere else is to complain uncouthly about how the deck is stacked against you
and one more thought re TCW and Coates, if I remember correctly both of them were Sanders voters in the 2016 Dem primary, so in a way there may be a mountain-out-of-a-molehill quality to making much of their disagreements
agree on the Nebraska lady. I have sympathy but then not that much at the same time.
I honestly don't know what to do, and maybe there's nothing to do, about the brute fact that median white people have been, and will continue to be, displaced from the absolute center of American culture. It's not at all unjust. There's nothing wrong with it. White people still play a big role in our national identity, just not as uncontested a central role as they once did.
But for people who have counted on that utter centrality as a core part of their identity, it hurts. And telling them to grow up and get perspective is both fair and doomed to fail. I guess if I were in control of everyone's rhetoric, I'd make them follow the basic Obama liberal playbook, putting forth an optimistic, patriotic narrative of America that emphasizes what we all have in common, and that our diversity is the core of our strength, etc. That won't quiet all the resentment -- obviously -- but it's better than left wing triumphalism about the browning of America.
The moment that stands out in my memory from recent years is when, after the Biden administration traded Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner, at a press conference Karine Jean-Pierre celebrated the return of "a queer woman of color." I was stupefied, I mean in that context she's only one thing, an American. To call her anything else is insane. Meanwhile Paul Whelan is still stuck over there, an incorrect (bc actually Putin wouldn't release him) but natural conclusion to make from the statement is that to Biden, Griner matters more because of intersectional points.
As for solutions, the old Reihan idea of slowing down immigration for a while to give a new American identity time to coalesce has always seemed compelling.
That seems a very poor way to frame it, a self-own as the kids say. Oy.
I don't have much of an opinion on the immigration question. In the abstract that sounds good, but "a while" would have to be decades, right? And don't we need immigrants to keep our population young and our economy strong?