Comments on: Glenn on Rieff

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:32:29 +0000

And the “rest of us” extends at least throughout Yoorp, where all these persons are all mainstream.

We deeply regret your individual unimportance, however.

By: MQ

MQ — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:30:09 +0000

The “we” referred to the vague and shadowy collective civilizational mind, not unimportant individuals like you and I, Des.

By: Dave.L

Dave.L — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:20:55 +0000

no fewer than four books, pleeeeeeasssse. and yes I do make this comment while standing in the “eight items or less” queue at the supermarket, I believe that I managed to effect a change of policy at Sainsbury’s.

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:06:34 +0000

Does anyone else here think we’ve lost something in so decisively turning our back on the Marx-Weber-Freud triumverate and the thinkers influenced by them (e.g. Marcuse)?

I, for one, am quite convinced you have. The rest of us are still happily reading The Spectre, Chuckles and Unca Siggy, for sure.

By: MQ

MQ — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:05:49 +0000

Does anyone else here think we’ve lost something in so decisively turning our back on the Marx-Weber-Freud triumverate and the thinkers influenced by them (e.g. Marcuse)? Can anyone look at politics and popular culture over the last couple of decades and not see stuff like class interests and various repressed emotional desires playing a much larger role than oh, say, economic analysis?

By: Henry

Henry — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:09:17 +0000

Ah, thanks. Cosma already pointed out a couple of other howlers in there that I’ve corrected. Not my finest grammatical moment.

By: Qfyfq

Qfyfq — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:46:03 +0000

Once upon a time sociologists and political theorists were able to communicate to a wider audience, because they understood, as “literary types”[?] always have, that they themselves were members of that wider audience.

Reiff sounds like the perfect match for Sontag: American teenagers playing European intellectuals: Virginia woolf meet Oswald Spengler at the prom.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:45:07 +0000

no fewer than four books, pleeeeeeasssse. and yes I do make this comment while standing in the “eight items or less” queue at the supermarket, I believe that I managed to effect a change of policy at Sainsbury’s.

By: Jon Mandle

Jon Mandle — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:44:49 +0000

I signed up for a course with Rieff when I was an undergraduate at Penn – it must have been around 1987. I went to a few classes but got creeped out by the cult-like following that he attracted – especially his graduate TAs. I dropped the class, but kept going for a while even though they insisted that nobody was allowed to audit. Basically, the course consisted in his showing slides or films, and him “reading” them for interdictions and transgressions. He dropped a number of apparently gratuitous comments about abortion that elicited loud groans from the students, but I remember his comments on “Zelig” being very interesting.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:40:44 +0000

I was told decades ago that the best ideas in his first book were Sontag’s. A malicious but fun rumor.