Astray
A new podcast about the Frankfurt School's roots in Naples, my swooniness over a chapter of Musil, some new Instax, a bad sketch, and BIRDY!
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This week, I posted Episode 626 of The Virtual Memories Show, where Martin Mittelmeier traces the roots of the Frankfurt School in southern Italy and we celebrate his new book NAPLES 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory (Yale University Press, tr. Shelley Frisch). We talk about the epiphany on the lip of a volcano in Lanzerote that brought this book to life, the years he spent poring over Theodor Adorno’s writing (and the temptation to mimic Adorno’s style), how Walter Benjamin’s principle of porosity arose from both the tuff stone & the way of living of Naples, and the challenge of evoking the Naples of a century ago and how it led to a theory of society. We get into Critical Theory’s attempts at understanding populism and oligarchic takeovers and why Adorno is having A Moment in Germany, the fun of speculating about meetings among great thinkers — yeah, I get into George Orwell, Henry Miller, and Inside the Whale —, the utopian aspect of local life in Naples and Capri, the complexities of reputation and destiny, and whether Critical Theory can hold up during the hyper-internet era. We also discuss the difficulties of translation with critical theory’s associative language and how translation is only the first interpretation of a text, why I need to read Hernán Diaz’ Trust, his new work about Thomas Mann working with Adorno on Doctor Faustus in Pacific Palisades (a.k.a. Weimar Under The Palm Trees), how he’s changed in the decade-plus since writing the book, and more. Give it a listen! And go read NAPLES 1925!
Last week I posted Episode 625, in which we asked: Can LA private detective Happy Doll live up to the Four Noble Truths and escape the cycle of Samsara? Jonathan Ames returned to the show to help answer that question and celebrate his new novel, KARMA DOLL (Mulholland Books)! We talked about the joy of reading (& writing) page-turners, how his lead character Happy Doll has evolved over three novels (so far!), what it’s like bringing Buddhism into a detective novel, and how his (& Happy’s) LA has changed since he began this series. We got into how writing the Doll novels has affected his understanding of Buddhism, the need to make art and the transitoriness of bliss, and how he’s living up to the lesson he always gave students: write what you love. We also discussed TV writing and how it took him away from prose-writing for a decade or so, how the LA fires left him driving all over the place like he was in a Lew Archer novel, his fave reads & TV shows, how we both played with dolls as kids in the woods of northern NJ, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read KARMA DOLL! (And listen to our 2018 and 2022 conversations!)
Recent episodes: Witold Rybczynski • Matt Madden • Fred Kaplan • Mia Wolff • Damion Searls • 2024 Recap • The Guest List
Astray
As mentioned repeatedly in my Sunday newsletter, my morning practice includes reading a chapter of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (tr. Sophie Wilkins & Burton Pike). Some days it’s only a page or so. Others it’s 6 or 7 pages. (Somehow, it’s going to average out to ~6 pages/chapter.)
Today was a longer one, and an inflection point for the book, I have to think. The narrator unfolds the lead character’s concept of Essayism, and how it fits into his (Ulrich’s) seeming ironic engagement with the world. The chapter’s full of great stuff, but:
“[A]n essay is rather the unique and unalterable form assumed by a man’s inner life in a decisive thought. Nothing is more foreign to it than the irresponsible and half-baked quality of thought known as subjectivism. Terms like true and false, wise and unwise, are equally inapplicable, and yet the essay is subject to laws that are no less strict for appearing to be delicate and ineffable. There have been more than a few such essayists, masters of the inner hovering life, but there would be no point in naming them. Their domain lies between religion and knowledge, between example and doctrine, between amor intellectualis and poetry; they are saints with and without religion, and sometimes they are also simply men on an adventure who have gone astray.”
I didn’t have the head to read that chapter well this morning — lack of sleep, headache likely from sinus infection, the awful cold outside — but I suspect I’ll return to it repeatedly as I progress through the book and my 50s.
Also:
“Nothing is more revealing, by the way, than one’s involuntary experience of learned and sensible efforts to interpret such essayists, to turn their living wisdom into knowledge to live by and thus extract some ‘content’ from the motion of those who were moved: but about as much remains of this as of the delicately opalescent body of a jellyfish when one lifts it out of the water and lays it on the sand.”
So, yeah, ~100 years ago the general reader was looking for life hacks, platitudes and bullet points, too: ‘content.’
There is SO much going on in this chapter and this great shaggy book, resonating with our daily life, with my own experience, and with my readings of & conversations with Phillip Lopate, Brian Dillon, and this week’s show with Martin Mittelmeier (among others, but this very chapter seems to evoke the Adorno/Benjamin notions of constellations & porosity, as well as dead jellyfish).
Again, I don’t have my head on straight just now, but at least I recognize “a drop of indescribable incandescence . . . with a glow that makes the whole earth look different.”
And now, some Birdy:
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Instaxery
I shot a couple of Instax at Monday’s in-person podcast. No idea if this stuff will Turn Into Something, but figured I’d keep up the 2024 practice in the new year.
I also got restarted on writing the text pieces for my GUEST/HOST book, which is built on the 2024 Instax pix I took with that year’s in-person pod-guests & past-guest hangouts. I’d let the winter doldrums, anxiety, etc. stop me from writing those prose segments, but had a really good 3-hour (!) talk with an old friend on Sunday, where we talked about this project in the last half-hour or so, and that got me re-energized. So now I’m looking through the binder of Instax pix, treating them all as prompts. Once there’s something on the page, I can improve it, y’know?
Artistry
Didn’t make any art this past week, just a daily sketch with a rollerball pen in a cheap notebook. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-/meditation-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, maybe some Instax or an outtake.
You come walking into this room / Like you're walking into my arms / And what would I do without you?,