Episode 11: The Modern Essay and the Decline of Civilization

Park MacDougald joins Phil and Jake to discuss Virginia Woolf’s “The Modern Essay” and VS Naipaul’s “Jacques Soustelle and the Decline of the West.”

Works referenced:

Virginia Woolf, “The Modern Essay” “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-modern-essay-by-virginia-woolf-1690207 (https://www.thoughtco.com/the-modern-essay-by-virginia-woolf-1690207)

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/MrBennettAndMrsBrown.pdf (http://www.columbia.edu/%7Eem36/MrBennettAndMrsBrown.pdf)

Max Beerbohm, “A Relic,” “Laughter”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1956/1956-h/1956-h.htm#link2H_4_0001 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1956/1956-h/1956-h.htm#link2H_4_0001)

Daniel Clowes

http://www.fantagraphics.com/artists/daniel-clowes/#/category/967 (http://www.fantagraphics.com/artists/daniel-clowes/#/category/967)

Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/an-elemental-thing/ (https://www.ndbooks.com/book/an-elemental-thing/)

Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20086/kafka-was-the-rage-by-anatole-broyard/9780679781264/ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20086/kafka-was-the-rage-by-anatole-broyard/9780679781264/)

Hegel, The Phenomenology Of Spirit, Terry Pinkard translation

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel-the-phenomenology-of-spirit/6FEDB42FDEF2E5FF97FEAE0EEEDABE8E (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel-the-phenomenology-of-spirit/6FEDB42FDEF2E5FF97FEAE0EEEDABE8E)

woketoddler

Claas Relotius’ In Eigener Sache

https://magazin.spiegel.de/SP/2017/13/150231550/index.html (https://magazin.spiegel.de/SP/2017/13/150231550/index.html)

(For those interested in Relotius’ lies about Fergus Falls, this is from Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn, residents of the town he fictionalized https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7 (https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7))

Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374508043 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374508043)

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

http://people.duke.edu/~aparks/Spengler.html (http://people.duke.edu/%7Eaparks/Spengler.html)

Naipaul, The Writer and the World (essays mentioned: “Jacques Soustelle and the Decline of the West,” “A Second Visit,” “Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad,” “Heavy Manners in Grenada,” “Our Universal Civilization”)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/119643/the-writer-and-the-world-by-v-s-naipaul-edited-with-an-introduction-by-pankaj-mishra/9780375707308/ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/119643/the-writer-and-the-world-by-v-s-naipaul-edited-with-an-introduction-by-pankaj-mishra/9780375707308/)

Mario Vargas Llosa, “El Odio y El Amor”

https://elpais.com/diario/1991/12/30/opinion/694047611_850215.html (https://elpais.com/diario/1991/12/30/opinion/694047611_850215.html)

Naipaul, A Bend in the River

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/v-s-naipaul/a-bend-in-the-river/9780330522991 (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/v-s-naipaul/a-bend-in-the-river/9780330522991)

Naipaul, Guerrillas

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/v-s-naipaul/guerrillas/9780330522915 (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/v-s-naipaul/guerrillas/9780330522915)

Edward Said, “Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World.”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40547786 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40547786)

Derek Walcott, Nobel Lecture: “The Antilles: Fragments Of Epic Memory”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1992/walcott/lecture/ (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1992/walcott/lecture/)

Pablo Mukherjee, “Doomed to Smallness: Violence, VS Naipaul, and the Global South”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20479287 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20479287)

Anatole Broyard, “What the Cystoscope Said”

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20085/intoxicated-by-my-illness-by-anatole-broyard/9780449908341/ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20085/intoxicated-by-my-illness-by-anatole-broyard/9780449908341/)

Lewis Thomas, “The Lives of a Cell”

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535043/lives-of-a-cell-by-lewis-thomas/9780140047431/ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535043/lives-of-a-cell-by-lewis-thomas/9780140047431/)

Wesley Yang, “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho”

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-6/essays/face-seung-hui-cho/ (https://nplusonemag.com/issue-6/essays/face-seung-hui-cho/)

Audio clips:

Excerpt from Kirsten Wever's Librivox recording of Max Beerbohm's "A Relic"

https://librivox.org/and-even-now-by-max-beerbohm/ (https://librivox.org/and-even-now-by-max-beerbohm/)

Snowpiercer

https://youtu.be/3AIQdfW2Pds (https://youtu.be/3AIQdfW2Pds)

Edward Said - A Critique of Naipaul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcv3DbiIqQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcv3DbiIqQ)