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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"David Brooks: "The Thought Leader""

29 Comments -

1 – 29 of 29
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, but I've never heard of a female ancient Greek philosopheress. So I doubt many ancient Greek little girls ever dreamt of of becoming a philosopher in that notoriously male chauvinist society. If he had written 'pythoness' perhaps he would have a non sexist all-inclusive NYT brownie point.

12/17/13, 1:49 PM

Anonymous bjdubbs said...

Sounds like Brooks (now on the market, ladies) is satirizing himself.

12/17/13, 1:58 PM

Anonymous heartiste said...

"but I still think this idea of writing about one character who lives perpetually in the present but whose perspective changes as he ages is an extremely promising one that other writers should consider exploiting."

One way to do this is to have the main character date younger and younger women throughout his life. ;)

12/17/13, 2:18 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"As a literary format for fictional social satire, Brooks' method where the main character ages but society doesn't has some major advantages for both author and reader."

This used to be the case for most of human history, right? Things changed very slowly, so that the world you were born into was pretty much the world you died in.

But with the rise of modern world, so much changes within a decade or two. There was probably more change from 1900 to 2000 than from 1300 to 1900.

12/17/13, 2:27 PM

Anonymous countenance said...

Does Brooks have a short snarky narrative of the life cycle of psuedo-cons that are employed by and write for the NYT?

Because...old snarkmesiters never really die. They just fade away into obsnarkity.

12/17/13, 2:32 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Sorry, but I've never heard of a female ancient Greek philosopheress."

Hypatia but she came much later after the golden age of Athens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

Btw, Athens was far more male-dominated than, say, Sparta. Athenian women were expected to be wives and take care of the home. Few were allowed to do intellectual stuff.
It was in Sparta where women were more the equal of men. But Spartans were like the ancient SS.

http://youtu.be/hVbDiQdLkxY?t=2m30s

12/17/13, 2:34 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

“I Went to Panama to Teach the Natives About Math but They Ended Up Teaching Me About Life,”

Panama? Is that the new Africa?

12/17/13, 2:42 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

“Kelly Clarkson: Satan or Merely His Spawn?"

Wasn't it Rachel Abrams who called Palestinians 'the devil's spawn'... to the delight of Jennifer Rubin?

I suppose Brooks is not a 'thought leader' but a real thinker. Lol.

12/17/13, 2:46 PM

Anonymous Dahlia said...

Here I was thinking that *this* is the Brooks who wrote The Greatest Story Ever Told, a hilarious and snarkless piece on WFB jr. back in college. And then to hear he's divorcing. So sad.

12/17/13, 2:46 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"As a literary format for fictional social satire, Brooks' method where the main character ages but society doesn't has some major advantages for both author and reader."

Actually, most fiction is like that. Usually when people make movies or write books about the past, the past we get is really just the present with part-artifacts. Take Tom Cruise in THE LAST SAMURAI. His guilt about the Indians is post-60s.
And most science fiction set in the future may have future sets but everyone thinks and acts like they are people of today.

12/17/13, 2:50 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It reads like self-satire.

12/17/13, 2:51 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Only a thought leader could come up with an idea like thought leader.

12/17/13, 2:55 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The arc of Western history. From the age of enlightenment and reason to the age of entitlement and treason.

12/17/13, 2:58 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Diotima of Mantinea was a female philosopher of the Hellenic golden age. She taught Socrates the philosophy of love.

12/17/13, 3:12 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Both the Pythagorean and Platonic schools taught women and had women teachers so I imagine quite a few ancient Greek little girls dreamt of becoming philosophers.

12/17/13, 3:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Anon @ 3:19

As students of Pythagoras and Plato, I should imagine that the young women didn't dream of becoming philosophers but rather of being philosophers.

While Aristotle's feminine students would have dreamt of becoming philosophers.

And finally, as muses serving to inspire young aspiring male philosophers they would have dreamt of being becoming philosophers.

12/17/13, 4:21 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Hair metal bands really aren't that funny anymore"
You've not heard of Steel Panther then Steve? I wasn't born until the late eighties and they're funny.

12/17/13, 4:32 PM

Anonymous Education Realist said...

Okay, I hereby outmyself as stupid: I thought he was talking about someone like Friedman or Gladwell.

12/17/13, 4:57 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Brooks telling these thought leaders seem indistinguishable from the Кomsomol/Communist apparatchiks in the USSR.

12/17/13, 7:31 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

where the main character ages but society doesn't

Thats something that was done in the Omen movie series (probably not intentionally). In The Omen its 1976 and a devil child is born. In The Omen II its 1978 and he is already a kid at school. By the Omen III its 1981 and he is a full grown 34 year old Sam Neill.

12/17/13, 7:47 PM

Anonymous vetr said...

Well there is Waugh on Proust (Waugh tried to be funny and dismissive by stating that Proust could not rationally have meant for his main viewpoint character to be accompanied to the Champs Elysees on one page by his nanny and to be flirting with the womens on the next page). Brooks may also have read James Joyce (Finnegans Wake, a couple thousand years on one long Irish 20th century night, with main character HCE being in early middle age for every moment of it ), bizarre universe Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde, or Snoopy (this last example might be backwards, but the little dude was, in fact, the same age for everything from WWI dogfights to post-Reagan era Bill Maudlin reunions); there is also that Brady Bunch sequence where one of the characters ages, or doesn't age, in the same way that the Brooks character you describe does, or doesn't ...

12/17/13, 9:00 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

The converse is fairly common -- a character stays the same age while everybody else changes. Dracula and lots of other genre characters, Wilde's Dorian Grey, Woolf's Orlando, Waugh's Captain Grimes, Borges wrote several short stories about immortal characters, etc.

But somebody who personally ages dramatically while society remains overtly stuck in the present is a pretty weird idea. This is different from a vaguely described society that doesn't change much because it's semi-mythical or whatever. No this would be a society where the protagonist ages across eight decades while everybody continues to worry whether Facebook is so 2011 and if there will be a Sharknado sequel.

Perhaps it can't be done as a real novel?

12/17/13, 9:10 PM

Anonymous Douglas Knight said...

There is Benjamin Button, but I don't know if used the premise to make social commentary.

12/17/13, 9:25 PM

Anonymous Larry Levy said...

You mean "Rip Van Winkle" except he never goes to sleep.

The studio brass will love it, Steve, it's like "Space Cowboys" Meets "Idiocracy"

12/18/13, 12:23 AM

Anonymous John Mansfield said...

Life of Julia had this quality, the one about the woman who advanced from childhood to old age, assisted at each stage by the Obama administration.

12/18/13, 5:29 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"No this would be a society where the protagonist ages across eight decades while everybody continues to worry whether Facebook is so 2011 and if there will be a Sharknado sequel.

Perhaps it can't be done as a real novel?"

I believe it can. Our protagonist moves on to new adventures while everyone else worries about a future without Paul Walker.

12/18/13, 5:35 AM

Anonymous vetr 1234 said...

Almost all my examples were incorrect, but in the Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 1980 edition, page 270, Waugh states that Proust is "mentally defective" because one of his characters is clearly aging many years in the course of one summer (a page or two). Brooks would also be familiar with the situation comedy MASH, which featured characters who aged ten years over a historical span of three years.

12/18/13, 7:12 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

John Mansfield said...
"Life of Julia had this quality, the one about the woman who advanced from childhood to old age, assisted at each stage by the Obama administration."

Bingo.

Obama is a Brooks fan. Brooks' quasi-novel The Social Animal came out about a year before the Obama campaign's Life of Julia website.

12/18/13, 9:20 PM

Anonymous David said...

Anyone who has the experience of rapidly surpassing his peers - or in the other direction, of going through a life-changing trauma - can imagine the feel of such a novel.

12/20/13, 12:04 PM

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