NYRB: In the Renaissance, reading became both a passion and a pose of detachment

Catherine Nicholson writes:

In A Marvelous Solitude, her new book on Renaissance humanists’ romance with reading, the Italian scholar Lina Bolzoni channels the allure, for Petrarch and those who came after him, of a life in books, its pleasures “more intimate and more intense than the satisfaction afforded by other worldly goods.” But such intimacy came at a cost: “A sense of being unsuited to one’s times, a feeling, almost, of extraneousness and alienation.”

There is often a whiff of misanthropy about Petrarch’s passion for books. In the fourteenth century, before the invention of movable type, books were artisanal objects, and even the simplest were inscribed and bound by hand. But once acquired, Petrarch observes, they asked little of their possessors; with books, unlike houseguests, “there is no tedium, no expense, no complaints, no murmurs, no envy, no deceit…. They are satisfied with the smallest room in your house and a modest robe, they require no drink or food.”

…Occasionally, one senses some strain in the narrative—a hint of how the self-flattering mythology of reading might compensate, or fail to compensate, for the inability to find other sources of purpose and fulfillment.

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The Tower and the Sewer

Mark Lilla writes:

Catholic postliberal thinkers opposed to modern liberal individualism are less interested in transforming people’s unhappy lives through the power of the gospel than in jockeying for political power as the vanguard of a conservative revolution…

It has always been more difficult to make sense of the radical right than the radical left. Back when there were serious left-wing bookstores catering to active socialists rather than leisured graduate students, those, too, were a little helter-skelter. Utopian authors rubbed shoulders with Stalinists, anarchists with Trotskyists, interpreters of the wisdom of Chairman Mao with interpreters of the wisdom of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha (a Seventies thing). Shelves were devoted to each and every postcolonial liberation movement then active, with many manifestos written by obscure revolutionaries destined to become infamous tyrants. Yet despite the intellectual and geographical variety, one always had the sense that the authors imagined they were aiming at the same abstract goal: a future of human emancipation into a state of freedom and equality.

But what ultimate goal do those on the radical right share? That’s harder to discern, since when addressing the present they almost always speak in the past tense. Contemporary life is compared to a half-imagined lost world that inspires and limits reflection about possible futures. Since there are many pasts that could conceivably provoke a militant nostalgia, one might think that the political right would therefore be hopelessly fractious. This turns out not to be true. It is possible to attend right-wing conferences whose speakers include national conservatives enamored of the Peace of Westphalia, secular populists enamored of Andrew Jackson, Protestant evangelicals enamored of the Wailing Wall, paleo-Catholics enamored of the fifth-century Church, gun lovers enamored of the nineteenth-century Wild West, hawks enamored of the twentieth-century cold war, isolationists enamored of the 1940s America First Committee, and acned young men waving around thick manifestos by a preposterous figure known as the Bronze Age Pervert. And they all get along.

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From 1986 TNR: Shut Up Senator Biden!

March 2, 2020, Brit Hume tweeted:

My article on Joe Biden as he was about to run for president 33 years ago, in which I told him he’s a “windbag.” He took that with good humor. I think it’s a balanced piece, though the editor promoted it on the cover with the line: “Shut up Senator Biden.”

I remember that essay. It shook me up that a national political correspondent for ABC News could write something so lively. It left an indelible profession. I never forgot the headline. It has been the primary prism through which I understand Joe Biden and it has never been refuted.

Another TNR article that stick in my memory from this time was on the idiocy of urban life and then a rejoinder on the idiocy of rural life.

Here are some excerpts:

the rhetorical fervor of his stump speeches and debating style have earned him the reputation of a man whose mouth often runs—and runs, and runs—well ahead of his mind.

Indeed, Biden gives the impression of utter spontaneity. It is an uncommon and in some ways charming quality, but it frequently gets him into trouble in the Senate.

… when he first learned this article had been commissioned, to a reporter not known, as his longtime press secretary Pete Smith put it, “as one of Biden’s greatest fans,” the senator telephoned the editor in chief of this magazine and tried to have the assignment called off. When that failed, he at first refused to sit for an interview, agreeing only to a preliminary informal chat over coffee, after which he would decide whether to cooperate. “I just want to find out why you don’t like me,” he said at the beginning of that chat in the Senate dining room. It was an awkward and extraordinary conversation, in which Biden finally asked if the reporter harbored any “deep personal antipathy.” He was assured that there was none. “Then what is it you don’t like?” he asked. “Senator,” came the reluctant reply, “I think you’re a windbag.” Biden seemed greatly relieved, laughed, and said he thought there was truth to that. He agreed to cooperate fully.

Biden has long had a considerable reputation among Capitol Hill reporters for enjoying the sound of his own voice. On the first day of the highly publicized confirmation hearing of Alexander Haig as secretary of state, for example, Biden took his entire first turn—ten minutes—to ask a single question, and when he was finished it was unclear what the question was. Everyone laughed, Biden included. In another Foreign Relations hearing a year later, he went on at such length late in a long session that broadcast correspondents at the press table fashioned a white flag from a napkin and a microphone pole and waved it in the air. The chairman, Charles Percy, howled with laughter, as did Democrat Alan Cranston. Biden seemed not to notice. Reminded of the incident, Biden said he knew he had a tendency to go on too long but had now curbed it.

… the impression of Biden as a man who does much of his thinking out loud and sometimes has difficulty figuring out what he thinks. And that, ultimately, is the most enduring impression Biden leaves. It suggests that a Biden campaign for the presidency would be colorful, newsworthy, and, unlike his oratory, brief.

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Decoding Unlimited Intimacy (6-5-24)

01:00 New fungus attacking gay men, https://nypost.com/2024/06/05/lifestyle/new-sexually-transmitted-fungal-infection-detected-in-nyc/
02:00 Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Intimacy-Reflections-Subculture-Barebacking/dp/0226139395
05:00 Video: How I Treated HPV – Full Timeline
16:30 WHO recommends gay and bisexual men limit their sexual partners amid the Monkeypox outbreak
18:30 Why Are Gay Men at Greater Risk for HIV?
28:00 The secrets of the Stasi, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/03/piecing-together-the-secrets-of-the-stasi
32:20 WSJ: Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping, https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/joe-biden-age-election-2024-8ee15246?mod=hp_lead_pos7
37:00 When whites are the other, objects rather than subjects, https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-white-man-has-no-friends
1:01:30 Donald Trump is asked about his relationship with God
1:03:40 WSJ: Biden’s Border Election Gambit, https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-border-executive-order-immigration-b1d681f8?mod=opinion_feat1_editorials_pos1
1:06:30 WP: Rep. Byron Donalds says Black families were stronger during Jim Crow era, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/05/byron-donalds-black-families-jim-crow/
1:09:00 Black economist points out the black family was stronger under Jim Crow, https://www.nvdaily.com/nvdaily/walter-e-williams-blacks-of-yesteryear-and-today/article_054c3856-c5b0-5c29-943d-112307d2e072.html
1:11:00 Hakeem Jeffries LIES About Byron Donalds “Jim Crow” Comments!
1:12:00 Dr Delgado’s anti-White scholarship, https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/dr-delgados-anti-white-scholarship
1:13:50 The Coming Race War: And Other Apocalyptic Tales of America after Affirmative Action and Welfare by Richard Delgado, https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Race-War-Apocalyptic-Affirmative/dp/0814718779
1:18:00 What Is Critical Race Theory?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zy6DQoRYQw
1:22:10 Is Fascism Right Or Left?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6bSsaVL6gA
1:23:40 ‘2000 Mules’ distributor pulls the plug on election conspiracy movie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azG5AeiITVc
1:29:45 TOTAL SHAM! Conservative Studio FORCED to Retract 2000 Mules!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pDFPrBsBFY
1:31:50 WP: Israeli detention center faces legal challenge after ‘unimaginable abuses’, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/05/sde-teiman-israel-detention-palestinian-detainees/
1:33:20 WSJ: Psychiatrist Henry Jarecki Says Relationship With Epstein Accuser Was Consensual, https://www.wsj.com/us-news/psychiatrist-henry-jarecki-says-relationship-with-epstein-accuser-was-consensual-30b21790
1:36:00 FT: Nationalism threatens the world order, https://on.ft.com/4ca1HDI

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Decoding The Lab Leak (6-4-24)

01:00 Three anecdotes
07:00 Unlike the fall of 2000, Republican legal elites are lined up behind Trump
13:20 Steve Sailer says this is his best interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fitLTIwao3Y
16:20 Women questioning their sexuality, https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/television/am-i-ok-review-dakota-johnson-tig-notaro-max-7ec20ba2?mod=arts-culture_lead_pos2
18:30 Joe Biden’s border crackdown
29:00 Paul Gottfried talks to Joseph Cotto about the Trump conviction, https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1rmGPMgEnydJN
31:00 The Atlantic: Pat McAfee and the Threat to Sports Journalism, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/pat-mcafee-threat-sports-journalism/678480/
33:45 Why are the experts arguing for natural origins of Covid?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html
1:05:45 Alina Chan on the lab leak, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC-eQmzZnqM
1:28:00 Elliott Blatt joins to discuss the lab leak
1:46:40 Republicans have lined up behind Trump regarding his felony convictions

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