Your writing on Nietzsche reminds me of how, in Andrew Wilson’s biography of Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl’s Love Song, he all but places Plath’s “turn into madness,” or whatever at Nietzsche’s feet because he is taken aback by how much Plath becomes beholden to Thus Spake Zarathustra. Reading that Plath bio, I was struck by how Wilson treats Nietzsche as a danger to women prone to big egos, writerly talent, and flights of backwards mora fancy or whatever, Plath being someone he kind of looks down for having all three.
Your comment about our “profoundly Nietzchean” moment is cause for explicit celebration in the work of religious studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal, whose 2022 book The Superhumanities argues that we can save the humanities, in part, by triumphantly reclaiming the human experience of altered and paranormal states of consciousness. He explicitly ties these states to Nietzche’s ubermensch. It’s a fascinating if wildly uneven read (I get the sense Kripal’s earlier work is better; practitioners on the occult scene are quite taken with him and with Nietzche, maybe for obvious reasons!)
Thanks! I’ve never read any of the Plath bios, in part because the cult of personality around her illness and death really gives me the ick. (Kind of a personal hangup though, there was a parental suicide a generation or so back in my family so I’m very familiar with the kind of psychic wreckage a death like hers produces.) That’s very interesting about Kripal, I’ve never read anything of his.
GA sorry to pile on recommendations but you would love the Janet Malcolm book I mentioned in the other comment -- it's not about Plath but about Malcolm's ventures into the Plath industry, the biographers, the Hughes estate etc. It's very penetrating and sharp on the questions of biography and brilliantly written.
“The kind of psychic wreckage a death like hers produces...” yes, oh my god. I feel that, and also avoiding the cult of personality surrounding it. Thanks again for the post and wonderful reflections
Your struggles with Nietzsche make me think you'd get a lot of mileage out of Daniel Tutt's *How to Read Like a Parasite*. Really you should be reading Losurdo's *The Aristocratic Rebel* and Rehmann's *Deconstructing Postmodern Nietzscheanism*, but Tutt's little volume is definitely the easier task there.
I am genuinely torn on the Didion journals. It feels far too soon after her death to be releasing them somehow. Usually my thinking on things like this is once everyone involved is gone it's basically morally fine and her entire immediate family is dead, so idk what a difference ten or twenty years would make. But I agree there is something that feels weirdly shabby about it. Actually some unconscious force set me to re-reading Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman this week and I'm just now realizing it was probably partially the Didion stuff. (I've had the same guilty feeling with Pynchon, being like man I'll be really sad when he dies but that first biography and collected letters are going to hit....)
Since we share similar tastes in boomer rock-- are you a Dylan head like I am? I always feel like attempts to write well about him are defeated somehow, the writer inevitably uses Dylan as a springboard for their own pathologies. Like I thought the recent Leo Robson piece on him was good but full of Robson's own hangups on Brecht.
I recall really liking Alex Ross's writing on Dylan for the New Yorker, which must be almost twenty years old now.
Ross is (less obviously than Robson with Brecht, but if you known Ross's writing it is clear) hung up on the even more improbable predecessor figure of Richard Wagner, who also wrote his own lyrics. But I share Ross's teutonic obsessions, so I like his version of Dylan...
Just started reading this and it send me to James Wolcott moaning about how Dylan is a spent force and needs to retire in 1985!! 2 years after Infidels!! Boomers did not know what they had I s2g.
I sorta get it in the sense that Dylan has one of the roughest 80s of any artist of his stature imo at least, but lol imagine saying that a guy who turned out to have Time out of Mind in him should retire!!!
All respect to Christgau and Marcus, but I really do think that not having been around for the 60s is a almost an advantage when it comes to Dylan appreciation. You really didn't have to be there.
(Btw I realize that the Wagner thing came from a comment Ross wrote when Bob won the Nobel Prize called "Bob Dylan as Richard Wagner." A propos GA's initial post, he's got a great quote from Nietzsche that applies to both: "He belongs elsewhere, not in the history of music; one should not confuse him with the genuine masters of that. . . . He *became* a musician, he *became* a poet because the tyrant within him, his actor’s genius, compelled him.")
Ironic that Nietzsche connects regression and harm for women to higher education. I would argue that this is his domain and being his domain he is actually belittling himself here.
This was great to read, thank you!
Your writing on Nietzsche reminds me of how, in Andrew Wilson’s biography of Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl’s Love Song, he all but places Plath’s “turn into madness,” or whatever at Nietzsche’s feet because he is taken aback by how much Plath becomes beholden to Thus Spake Zarathustra. Reading that Plath bio, I was struck by how Wilson treats Nietzsche as a danger to women prone to big egos, writerly talent, and flights of backwards mora fancy or whatever, Plath being someone he kind of looks down for having all three.
Your comment about our “profoundly Nietzchean” moment is cause for explicit celebration in the work of religious studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal, whose 2022 book The Superhumanities argues that we can save the humanities, in part, by triumphantly reclaiming the human experience of altered and paranormal states of consciousness. He explicitly ties these states to Nietzche’s ubermensch. It’s a fascinating if wildly uneven read (I get the sense Kripal’s earlier work is better; practitioners on the occult scene are quite taken with him and with Nietzche, maybe for obvious reasons!)
Thanks! I’ve never read any of the Plath bios, in part because the cult of personality around her illness and death really gives me the ick. (Kind of a personal hangup though, there was a parental suicide a generation or so back in my family so I’m very familiar with the kind of psychic wreckage a death like hers produces.) That’s very interesting about Kripal, I’ve never read anything of his.
GA sorry to pile on recommendations but you would love the Janet Malcolm book I mentioned in the other comment -- it's not about Plath but about Malcolm's ventures into the Plath industry, the biographers, the Hughes estate etc. It's very penetrating and sharp on the questions of biography and brilliantly written.
“The kind of psychic wreckage a death like hers produces...” yes, oh my god. I feel that, and also avoiding the cult of personality surrounding it. Thanks again for the post and wonderful reflections
Your struggles with Nietzsche make me think you'd get a lot of mileage out of Daniel Tutt's *How to Read Like a Parasite*. Really you should be reading Losurdo's *The Aristocratic Rebel* and Rehmann's *Deconstructing Postmodern Nietzscheanism*, but Tutt's little volume is definitely the easier task there.
Thank you for the recommendations!
I am genuinely torn on the Didion journals. It feels far too soon after her death to be releasing them somehow. Usually my thinking on things like this is once everyone involved is gone it's basically morally fine and her entire immediate family is dead, so idk what a difference ten or twenty years would make. But I agree there is something that feels weirdly shabby about it. Actually some unconscious force set me to re-reading Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman this week and I'm just now realizing it was probably partially the Didion stuff. (I've had the same guilty feeling with Pynchon, being like man I'll be really sad when he dies but that first biography and collected letters are going to hit....)
Since we share similar tastes in boomer rock-- are you a Dylan head like I am? I always feel like attempts to write well about him are defeated somehow, the writer inevitably uses Dylan as a springboard for their own pathologies. Like I thought the recent Leo Robson piece on him was good but full of Robson's own hangups on Brecht.
Yeah it’s a real dilemma, but still it feels wrong. I’m actually going to answer the Dylan question in this Friday’s newsletter!
I recall really liking Alex Ross's writing on Dylan for the New Yorker, which must be almost twenty years old now.
Ross is (less obviously than Robson with Brecht, but if you known Ross's writing it is clear) hung up on the even more improbable predecessor figure of Richard Wagner, who also wrote his own lyrics. But I share Ross's teutonic obsessions, so I like his version of Dylan...
Just started reading this and it send me to James Wolcott moaning about how Dylan is a spent force and needs to retire in 1985!! 2 years after Infidels!! Boomers did not know what they had I s2g.
I sorta get it in the sense that Dylan has one of the roughest 80s of any artist of his stature imo at least, but lol imagine saying that a guy who turned out to have Time out of Mind in him should retire!!!
I mean, this is from 1981 and it Peak Bob as far as I'm concerned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYkLEOiXicA
(Characteristically the album version is bland, so we have to rely on dumpster-diving bootleg collectors to get the good stuff...)
All respect to Christgau and Marcus, but I really do think that not having been around for the 60s is a almost an advantage when it comes to Dylan appreciation. You really didn't have to be there.
(Btw I realize that the Wagner thing came from a comment Ross wrote when Bob won the Nobel Prize called "Bob Dylan as Richard Wagner." A propos GA's initial post, he's got a great quote from Nietzsche that applies to both: "He belongs elsewhere, not in the history of music; one should not confuse him with the genuine masters of that. . . . He *became* a musician, he *became* a poet because the tyrant within him, his actor’s genius, compelled him.")
Ironic that Nietzsche connects regression and harm for women to higher education. I would argue that this is his domain and being his domain he is actually belittling himself here.