He helped me see what I already knew
October 23, 2022 8:43 AM Subscribe
I worked with his daughter for a little while. She's a pretty cool chick!
posted by panama joe at 10:24 AM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by panama joe at 10:24 AM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by tychotesla at 1:09 PM on October 23, 2022
posted by tychotesla at 1:09 PM on October 23, 2022
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posted by mygothlaundry at 3:38 PM on October 23, 2022
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:38 PM on October 23, 2022
I read an awful lot of his writing in the New Yorker over the years. I disagreed with him a fair bit of it but his thoughtfulness and obvious interest, engagement, and love of what he was doing, and the beautiful prose, made me a committed reader. His essay on his own mortality concerning the cancer diagnosis was something else.
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I liked his essays a lot. His piece Latkes linked to really stuck with me, and I've been dreading this.
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posted by Capybara at 6:39 PM on October 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by Capybara at 6:39 PM on October 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by of strange foe at 7:17 AM on October 24, 2022
posted by of strange foe at 7:17 AM on October 24, 2022
Just read that piece you linked, latkes - glad I did. Thanks for introducing me to his work, falsedmitri.
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“…truth to tell, arrogance—as a placeholder for confidence, of which I had none—enabled me to brave the world when I was young.
The same goes for snobbery, a necessary stage for the insecure until we acquire taste that admits and reflects the variety of experience. To limber your sensibility, stalk the aesthetic everywhere: cracks in a sidewalk, people’s ways of walking. The aesthetic isn’t bounded by art, which merely concentrates it for efficient consumption. If you can’t put a mental frame around, and relish, the accidental aspect of a street or a person, or really of anything, you will respond to art only sluggishly.
I like to say that contemporary art consists of all art works, five thousand years or five minutes old, that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes that there ever are.
I retain, but suspend, my personal taste to deal with the panoply of the art I see. I have a trick for doing justice to an uncongenial work: “What would I like about this if I liked it?” I may come around; I may not. Failing that, I wonder, What must the people who like this be like? Anthropology.”
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:46 AM on October 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
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“…truth to tell, arrogance—as a placeholder for confidence, of which I had none—enabled me to brave the world when I was young.
The same goes for snobbery, a necessary stage for the insecure until we acquire taste that admits and reflects the variety of experience. To limber your sensibility, stalk the aesthetic everywhere: cracks in a sidewalk, people’s ways of walking. The aesthetic isn’t bounded by art, which merely concentrates it for efficient consumption. If you can’t put a mental frame around, and relish, the accidental aspect of a street or a person, or really of anything, you will respond to art only sluggishly.
I like to say that contemporary art consists of all art works, five thousand years or five minutes old, that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes that there ever are.
I retain, but suspend, my personal taste to deal with the panoply of the art I see. I have a trick for doing justice to an uncongenial work: “What would I like about this if I liked it?” I may come around; I may not. Failing that, I wonder, What must the people who like this be like? Anthropology.”
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:46 AM on October 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by latkes at 9:40 AM on October 23, 2022 [3 favorites]