Eminent Americans

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Kevin LaTorre, a poet and writer living with his family in North Carolina. His work has appeared in The Blotter , Echo Literary Magazine , Walter Magazine , Ad Fontes , and the Front Porch Republic . He writes about poetry, Christianity, and literature at A Stylist Submits . I asked Kevin to pick one text, idea, person, encounter that he thought captured...

In his recent essay in Tablet , “ Why the Western Rebellion Against the Jews Produces Bad Art and Bad Politics ,” Blake Smith writes about the Bulgarian-French-American critic and philosopher Julia Kristeva, and in particular her fruitful and fascinating analyses of the viciously anti-Semitic French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline. For Kristeva, Céline is, among many other things, a great example...

Back on the ‘pod this week is Naomi Kanakia, author of the just released novel The Default World . We talk about Vekhi , a 1909 collection of essays from ex- and never-Marxist Russian intellectuals; Thomas Chatterton Williams, the dissident Black liberal writer; internecine battles in the trans woman world; why Naomi and I try (and fail) to stay out of bullshit culture war discussions; why we may...

Two quick opening notes on this episode of the Eminent Americans podcast: * According to some post by some guy that I read somewhere once, most podcasts don’t make it past 20 episodes. This is episode 21, which I take to mean not only that I’m more stubborn and self-absorbed than all those sub-21-ep scrubs—who have appropriately realized by episode 20 that the world doesn’t need another podcaster...

I first encountered Alec Ounsworth back in 2005 or 2006, when I was an arts writer for the Valley Advocate , an alt weekly in western Massachusetts that now, like so many other alt weekles, exists only in zombie form . The National was playing at the Iron Horse , Northampton’s storied small music venue, and I got tickets to go see them. Opening for them was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the band that...

Stella Tsantekidou begins her essay " I too am an unfuckable hate nerd " with the kind of inside-outside two-step that characterizes much of the writing on The Human Carbohydrate, her very compelling Substack newsletter. She's at a party in London talking to another writer. The topic is a recent piece they've both read on the phenomenon of the "unfuckable hate nerd," that very 21st century type wh...

Our text for today’s episode is “ John Thompson, b. 1941 ,” a short eulogy essay by the writer Kiese Laymon in which he reflects on the special affection that not just he but also his “aunts, mother and grandmother” felt for Thompson and his Georgetown basketball team when Laymon was growing up. The coach was more than just a winning coach; he was an avatar of Black America, and a symbol of Black...

Reading List * The Lure of Divorce , by Emily Gould * Goulded Cages, by Phoebe Maltz Bovy * The Sad Young Literary Man Is Now a Middle-Aged Dad , by Elizabeth Weil * Can polyamory save this marriage? by Phoebe Maltz Bovy My guest on today’s episode, which is part of my ongoing double secret probationary special series on the state of the discourse late winter/early spring 2024, is New York born, T...

Reading List: * “When Liberalism Was at Its Best,” Parts 1 (Isaiah Berlin) , 2 (Lionel Trilling ), and 3 (Reinhold Niebuhr) , by Damon Linker. * “Philosophy and the Far Right”— Part 1 and Part 2 * “Conservatism and Skepticism”— Part 1 and Part 2 My guest on the show today is Damon Linker, perhaps the nation's most enthusiastic, unapologetic center leftist (he and Matt Yglesias occasionally punch i...

Reading list: * Windex Ain’t Scared: Here’s Our Statement on Israel/Palestine , by Jeff Maurer * Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell , by The Onion * Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake , by The Onion * American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie , by The Onion My guests on the podcast today are Jeff Maurer, author of “ Windex Ain’t Scared ,” and my brother...

Reading List: * The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms , by Ross Barkan * Notes Toward a New Romanticism , by Ted Gioia * The Invisible College: Modern British Literatur e, by John Pistelli * The Three Segments of American Culture , by Ross Barkan * Major Arcana: Preface , by John Pistelli My guests on the show today are writers Ross Barkan and John Pistelli,...

Reading List: * Oh, Mr Hitchens! by Laura Kipnis * The Journalist and the Editor , by Laura Kipnis * Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe , Laura Kipnis * My Title IX Inquisition , by Laura Kipnis * Christopher Hitchens' last years: Islam, the Iraq war and how a man of the left found his moment by breaking with the left , by Daniel Oppenheimer My guest on the show today is Laura Kipnis . Laura is a cul...

In this episode of the podcast, I talk to Blake Smith and Gary Kornblau about the 30th anniversary edition of Dave Hickey’s seminal 1993 book The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty. Blake is currently a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as the author a great (which is to say, very flattering) review of my 2021 book on Hickey, and he was a stalwart participa...

Reading list: * A personal and stirring guide to the great Dutch painters , by Sebastian Smee * Benjamin Moser on What We Can Learn from Failed Dutch Painters , by Benjamin Moser * How Gayness Changed During My Lifetime , by Benjamin Moser * Enemies of Promise , by Cyril Connolly My guest on the podcast today is Benjamin Moser , who was born in Houston but has lived for the past twenty plus years...

Reading list: * An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him , by Cedric Johnson * The Enduring Solidarity of Whiteness [a reply to Johnson’s open letter], by Ta-Nehisi Coates * The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now , by Cedric Johnson * What Black Life Actually Looks Like , by Cedric Johnson * The Case for Reparations , by Ta-Nehisi Coates * The Coates Chronicles: The White Period ,...

Reading List: * “ Why the Culture of the So-Called Great Books is Hostile to Trans People ,” by Naomi Kanakia * “ Brandon Taylor’s online writing is vibrant, funny, and true. Why is his fiction trying so hard to be something else? ” by Laura Miller * “ A Review of ‘The Late Americans’ is Sending Book Twitter Into A Tailspin ,” by Katherine Esters * “ The New, Weirdly Racist Guide to Writing Fictio...

If you live in Austin as I have for the past 17 years, the phrase “new Austin” is pretty self-explanatory. Over the past few decades, the population of Austin has exploded, going from about 340,000 in 1980 to just shy of a million today, and that's actually a little bit of an understatement. That's just Austin proper rather than the whole metro area. With that growth has come a comparably dramatic...

Reading list: * “ The Last Essay I Need to Write about David Foster Wallace ,” by Mary K. Holland * “ I Really Didn’t Want to Go ,” by Lauren Oyler * “ Lauren Oyler tries a fun thing David Foster Wallace never did again ,” by Sophia Nguyen and Lauren Oyler * “ Where be your jibes now? ” by Patricia Lockwood * “ The Wonder of Wallace-L ,” by Maria Bustillos * “ Reclaiming David Foster Wallace from...

Reading list for episode: * “ John Pistelli ,” by Blake Smith * “ The Souls of Yellow Folk , by Wesley Yang ,” by John Pistelli * “ The Souls of Yellow Folk —A Review ,” by Daniel Oppenheimer * “ Platonic Complex: Why Do the Intellectuals Rage? "“ by John Pistelli * “ The Face of Seung-Hui Cho ,” by Wesley Yang Critic, novelist, and sorta-academic John Pistelli and I have two things on our agenda...

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Timothy Lensmire , professor of Education at the University of Minnesota and the author or editor of, among other works, White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America ; Powerful Writing, Responsible Teaching ; and Whiteness at the Table: Antiracism, Racism, and Identity in Education . He is also a co-founder of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective...

Reading list: * Corey Robin's Facebook Page * Not Yet Falling Apart: Two thinkers on the left offer a guide to navigating the stormy seas of modernity , by moi * Straight Outta Chappaqua: How Westchester-bred lefty prof Corey Robin came to loathe Israel, defend Steven Salaita, and help cats , by Phoebe Maltz Bovy * Online Fracas for a Critic of the Right , by Jennifer Schuessler * Scholar Behind U...

Episode Reading List: * From Queer to Gay to Queer , James Kirchick * How Hannah Arendt’s Zionism Helped Create American Gay Identity , Blake Smith * When the Pope Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That’s Ahmari , James Kirchick * Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Big Fat Nonbinary Mistake , Blake Smith * Are Conservatives the New Queers? , Blake Smith * Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk , John Pistel...

This podcast was recorded about a week before its subject, Andrea Long Chu, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, so it doesn't come up in the conversation with Blake Smith, but it's interesting to keep in mind as he and I analyze Chu and try to understand the particular role she plays in the broader intellectual and journalistic ecosystem. Our story begins in early 2018, when the hip...

It would be very easy to hate Ezra Klein. He’s only 38, and already has been a pioneering political blogger, a pioneering explanatory journalist for the Washington Post , the founder of Vox.com, the author of the best-selling book Why We’re Polarized , and now a marquis podcaster and columnist for the New York Times . The amount of good fortune that’s come his way is staggering. Not just journalis...