Thank you very much! It’s always interesting to me where our intuitions overlap and diverge! Just the other day, I was thinking of reading the Book of Revelations! Now, if I believed in synchronicities…
One of the religion courses I took...jeez, a decade(?) ago covered Revelation and we spent a few weeks on it. The professor had some fairly radical (by suburban Christian college standards) views and did a lot of developing the beast=Rome analogy, and then capped it off by saying "We (the US) are the new Rome." Always stuck with me. (Also, we read Craig Koester as commentary, if you're looking for a helpful guide.)
Thanks for the kind mention, what a nice surprise. The Pisan Cantos are really worth persevering with if you can find a good annotation. Extremely beautiful and moving, or so I find them. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel!
Ah! I was going to review the new one (Ignorance and Bliss), and wrote two different 4000-word pieces about his entire ouevre, Strauss, etc. But it was way overkill for such a mediocre book; first I realized it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else, and finally realized it wasn't even interesting to me.
Yeah I was originally going to use The once and Future Liberal to elaborate on my apprehensions about the future and enumerate my Vicoesque theory of American history, but I eventually decided it was a pretty thin skeleton for that task and discarded it.
Here's my old review of The Reckless Mind and The Reactionary Mind. I probably wouldn't write it in such an aggressively leftist or polemical style now, but I still agree with the basic points. He thought I didn't do full justice to the latter, which in retrospect is probably fair. I kind of wanted to revisit him since I've gotten my hatred of The Reckless Mind out of my system, but yeah - the book was fine, just didn't feel like it had that much to say or anyone was interested in it (all my usual outlets didn't want to review it).
Thanks for the mention -- this a good crowd to walk with!
Funny enough, I'd read the book of Revelation earlier this fall (in tandem with the Gospel of John). Maybe it was the sense of continuation from that gospel, but the final revelations of Christ and His Father felt far more hopeful and celebratory than they ever had before. Of course, that didn't eliminate the palpable terror of apocalypse and un-creation, which are vivid even in the somewhat staid ESV I favor. I'm inadequate to the allegory present in the text, but I can say that the tension of the Good News you name is inescapable: the grace and wrath of God, our new life and eternal death. Centuries of familiarity hasn't done those twin concepts any favors to believers in the West, and speaking to them both as Christ does in the gospels is difficult.
Yes, I read the ESV version before writing this post-the RSV is pretty similar, to the point that I once saw them described as the millennial reformed and boomer liberal versions of each other. Oddly that was partly my experience this time as well-I was at a service last month that quoted about half of Chapter 21, the "he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more" bit stuck out to me much more, whereas when I last read it I was younger and the terror and horror seemed so much more vivid. I always value your perspective on these things!
Glad to comment and hear your comments too. I'm just glad to discuss Revelation in a way that shares its hope of the new Jerusalem and its final union in a non-church setting.
Thank you for the kind words and happy holidays to you and yours! Those Perlstein books are incredible I agree. I wish he could just keep doing them in four year increments forever. But yeah, you can rage at America's predilection for choosing a charming con man over a staid bureaucrat all you want, but it's part of the fabric of the country. I'm reading Tina Brown's diaries rn, who knew more about how to sell to the American people than anyone, and talking about Reagan's reelection campaign she said she it was over the minute he made the "age and inexperience" crack at the 1984 debate. And when she describes photographing him and Nancy dancing to Sinatra in the Oval Office and looking at each other as if there were no one else in the room, and him cracking wise with the photographers and editors, I almost find myself charmed in spite of it all.
Yeah the problem, which is a very slight problem that I have with those books is that one gets the sense that like many left-liberals (very much including the younger me who first read them) Perlstein is slightly exasperated by the American refusal to have a postwar European social democratic attitude, and sees this as a failure to mature as a nation. The understanding I've come to which you rightly point out, is that an America that chose Jimmy Carter (may he rest in peace) over Ronald Reagan in 1980 would be, in some sense, not America.
Thank you very much! It’s always interesting to me where our intuitions overlap and diverge! Just the other day, I was thinking of reading the Book of Revelations! Now, if I believed in synchronicities…
One of the religion courses I took...jeez, a decade(?) ago covered Revelation and we spent a few weeks on it. The professor had some fairly radical (by suburban Christian college standards) views and did a lot of developing the beast=Rome analogy, and then capped it off by saying "We (the US) are the new Rome." Always stuck with me. (Also, we read Craig Koester as commentary, if you're looking for a helpful guide.)
Thanks for the kind mention, what a nice surprise. The Pisan Cantos are really worth persevering with if you can find a good annotation. Extremely beautiful and moving, or so I find them. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel!
I read through them once without annotations, I'll probably return to them with help later on, thank you!
What was the Mark Lilla book you didn’t end up writing about? Is it the same one I didn’t end up writing about?
It was two of them actually, The Reactionary Mind and The Once and Future Liberal
Ah! I was going to review the new one (Ignorance and Bliss), and wrote two different 4000-word pieces about his entire ouevre, Strauss, etc. But it was way overkill for such a mediocre book; first I realized it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else, and finally realized it wasn't even interesting to me.
Yeah I was originally going to use The once and Future Liberal to elaborate on my apprehensions about the future and enumerate my Vicoesque theory of American history, but I eventually decided it was a pretty thin skeleton for that task and discarded it.
Here's my old review of The Reckless Mind and The Reactionary Mind. I probably wouldn't write it in such an aggressively leftist or polemical style now, but I still agree with the basic points. He thought I didn't do full justice to the latter, which in retrospect is probably fair. I kind of wanted to revisit him since I've gotten my hatred of The Reckless Mind out of my system, but yeah - the book was fine, just didn't feel like it had that much to say or anyone was interested in it (all my usual outlets didn't want to review it).
https://jacobin.com/2016/10/mark-lilla-reckless-mind-shipwrecked-philosophy-marxism-badiou-houellebecq
Wow! Thank you for the compliment! I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed reading my intermittent posts. All the best for 2025.
thank you for the mention <3! you and Cameron are like 40% responsible for any future Jung reading I do…
Thanks for the mention. And good post. Pound, American politics, Revelation: what a combination.
Thanks for the mention -- this a good crowd to walk with!
Funny enough, I'd read the book of Revelation earlier this fall (in tandem with the Gospel of John). Maybe it was the sense of continuation from that gospel, but the final revelations of Christ and His Father felt far more hopeful and celebratory than they ever had before. Of course, that didn't eliminate the palpable terror of apocalypse and un-creation, which are vivid even in the somewhat staid ESV I favor. I'm inadequate to the allegory present in the text, but I can say that the tension of the Good News you name is inescapable: the grace and wrath of God, our new life and eternal death. Centuries of familiarity hasn't done those twin concepts any favors to believers in the West, and speaking to them both as Christ does in the gospels is difficult.
Yes, I read the ESV version before writing this post-the RSV is pretty similar, to the point that I once saw them described as the millennial reformed and boomer liberal versions of each other. Oddly that was partly my experience this time as well-I was at a service last month that quoted about half of Chapter 21, the "he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more" bit stuck out to me much more, whereas when I last read it I was younger and the terror and horror seemed so much more vivid. I always value your perspective on these things!
Glad to comment and hear your comments too. I'm just glad to discuss Revelation in a way that shares its hope of the new Jerusalem and its final union in a non-church setting.
Thanks for the shout out! Happy you're posting so much more regularly these days!
Thank you!
Thank you for the kind words and happy holidays to you and yours! Those Perlstein books are incredible I agree. I wish he could just keep doing them in four year increments forever. But yeah, you can rage at America's predilection for choosing a charming con man over a staid bureaucrat all you want, but it's part of the fabric of the country. I'm reading Tina Brown's diaries rn, who knew more about how to sell to the American people than anyone, and talking about Reagan's reelection campaign she said she it was over the minute he made the "age and inexperience" crack at the 1984 debate. And when she describes photographing him and Nancy dancing to Sinatra in the Oval Office and looking at each other as if there were no one else in the room, and him cracking wise with the photographers and editors, I almost find myself charmed in spite of it all.
Yeah the problem, which is a very slight problem that I have with those books is that one gets the sense that like many left-liberals (very much including the younger me who first read them) Perlstein is slightly exasperated by the American refusal to have a postwar European social democratic attitude, and sees this as a failure to mature as a nation. The understanding I've come to which you rightly point out, is that an America that chose Jimmy Carter (may he rest in peace) over Ronald Reagan in 1980 would be, in some sense, not America.
Thank you so much for the shout-out; it has been such a pleasure to find and look forward to your work each week!
Thank you!