Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Bill Deresiewicz on Eros, Incels, the Not Left, and the Death of the Artist
70 Plays1 month ago
Bill Deresiewicz is a writer and cultural critic. He’s written popular essays such as “Solitude and Leadership,” and books including Excellent Sheep, a critique of elite education; the The Death of the Artist, which explores the precarious lives of creative workers; and The End of Solitude—a collection of Bill’s greatest essays. We discuss…
Subscribe now
- Is Portland still the Portland of Portlandia?
- Is Boston the angriest town in the U.S.?
- Bill’s essay in Salmagundi about the “Not Left.”
- Is Bernie Sanders’s movement over or dormant? Are the woke responsible for knee-capping Sanders’s movement?
- Who’s more prudish—the left or the right?
- Bill’s essay, “Chuck Your Privilege.”
- Ken imagines a “Cambrian Explosion” on the left with hypothetical political species such as Neo-Guildists, “ProPats” (Progressive Patriarchs), and Neo-Hedonists (my enlightened sensuality movement). Perhaps I’ll do a whole post on these ideas someday…
- Is Ezra Klein’s Abundanomics Movement… sexy?
- Ezra Klein’s interview with Democratic rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (my patron saint for the Neo-Guildists)
- Is 2025 TV “mid?”
- Ken’s post about when did prestige TV peak?
- Bill’s essay about incels.
- Bill’s favorite Substack Writers:Blake Smith Sam Kahn’s Republic of Letters Justin Smith-Ruiu’s The Hinternet Eminent Americans Podcast
Bill’s website
Bill’s substack
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bill Derezewicz
00:00:05
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken
00:00:19
Speaker
Bill Derezewicz is a writer and cultural critic. He's written popular essays like Solitude and Leadership, which was also an address to West Point students. and books like Excellent Sheep, a critique of elite education, as well as The Death of the Artist, which explores the precarious lives of creative workers.
00:00:39
Speaker
Bill, I've been reading and admiring your work from afar for almost 15 years now, so it's an absolute honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thanks. the Thanks for for the opportunity. um So I've been going through your work for the past couple weeks, just trying to bone up for this interview. And the the essay I just read an hour ago was, I thought was actually one of your funniest. It was about being Jewish in the Northwest.
00:01:11
Speaker
Do you remember writing that essay? Oh, yes, I do. Oh, it was such a funny essay. um And then you wrote that, it looks like, in 2012, and you lived in Portland, or you still live in Portland?
Living and Observing Portland
00:01:24
Speaker
Amazingly enough, i still I'm not sure why, but ah I still live in Portland. And you write um in 2012, and you write this you make it sound very nice. It's almost like a Portlandia, Portland. Everyone's chill, everyone's nice, the city he looks great.
00:01:41
Speaker
But from what I hear, ah Portland isn't the same Portland. Is that your impression as well? Yeah, unfortunately, that's true. I mean, we first, we, my wife and I first discovered Portland because a friend of ours had moved here.
00:01:56
Speaker
That was like two very early 2000s. And like a lot of people, we fell in love with the place. I was still an academic. We spent the sabbatical there 2000 here, 2004, 2005.
00:02:09
Speaker
And when I left academia, we decided to move here permanently, 2008. And all through that time, and I would say up until 2012-ish, 2013, the city was still... I mean, I'd have to explain to me that Portlandia is much less of a satire than you think it is.
00:02:27
Speaker
um Not just because of all the funny weirdness, but because of how chill it was. um It was kind of like all the working class weirdos and misfits from the Midwest and the mountain West would sort of drift here.
00:02:39
Speaker
And i would say, i used to say that it has the best aspects of both like Midwestern friendliness without Midwestern, like church lady, censoriousness and mountain West libertarianism without mountain West, like crazy, I'm going to shoot you yeah kind of thing.
00:02:56
Speaker
And then the money started to come up from the Bay area. around 2013, right at once we got over the, the trough that followed the financial crisis and you could just see it physically, like whole neighborhoods sprung up that hadn't existed before and it's become much less affordable. And then the pandemic and the, you know, the black lives matter protests, which would have, i mean, like each day, the program would be like evening black lives matter protest, uh, after 11,
00:03:30
Speaker
Antifa riot. That's really what it was. That's what it was. It was like these young white idiots who were, you know, ideologically committed to assaulting the police. And of course the police played their role too.
00:03:45
Speaker
The homelessness that afflicts all the cities on the West coast. So the cities, it's not what it was. It's still beautiful. ah in some ways, I mean, I always, I've cast my gaze back finally to the Northeast where I grew up and spent the first, you know, 44 years of my life for a long time.
00:04:05
Speaker
Maybe we'll move back. Who knows?
Cultural Comparisons and Changes
00:04:09
Speaker
But I am a Jew in the Northwest as the title of that essay says. And I, and I am, um, ah a Buffalonian in, in Scotland and there's aspects of the East coast that I miss as well. Buffalo is ah a funny spot because it's kind of the midway point between kind of punchy New York City attitudes and the Midwest's kind heart.
00:04:32
Speaker
So you get like, there's irony, there's sarcasm, there's that criticalness and self-awareness that you describe as being an East coaster. But there's also just like, come on in and and have a ah pizza or some met macaroni salad as well. Well, it's funny you should say that because my wife grew up in Cleveland.
00:04:51
Speaker
and actually lived in Cleveland through her 20s. And I think that's very, you know, Buffalo and Cleveland aren't that far apart. Maybe Pittsburgh is the same. These are all sort of the first cities you get to in the Midwest before you get to like the main, you know, the real Midwest.
00:05:06
Speaker
And I think they do have that kind of, or at least Cleveland has this exact balance that you said. Like it still has that sort of ethnic kind of Northeast flavor, but it's it's much more generous and open than the status mongering. I'm so happy to be done with an incessant you know status obsession of the Northeast that I grew up with.
00:05:27
Speaker
a You had a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, i don't know that I had it like when I was a kid, but as soon as you you know become an adult, ah first of all, I was you know in the ivy you know Ivy League graduate student, college student professor. so but But in certainly in New York City, and in new york city like you feel it viscerally.
00:05:48
Speaker
in, you know, like literally like you get off the train at Grand Central and you feel it. But then now that I'm thinking about it, like there's a different version in Connecticut, right? It's sort of the more stereotypically Connecticut kind of status thing.
00:06:00
Speaker
And certainly Boston, I mean, Jesus, you know, Boston has got to be the angriest place I've ever been.
The Stagnation of the American Left
00:06:07
Speaker
And my take on that is because it's like this sort of ancient hatred between the Boston Brahmins and like the Irish, the Boston Irish with some, with some, you know,
00:06:18
Speaker
really unreconstructed racism thrown into, you know, for good measure. So yeah, yeah. Buffalo is nothing like that. We just care about the Buffalo Bills and and chicken wings. There's none of this status thing going on there. Yeah, right. yeah but But yeah, i didn't talk to i but I didn't bring you on to talk about Buffalo and chicken wings. um i was really I really loved your story in Salma Gundy about the the not left. And we're going to have to get into what is the the left and and not left. But you write...
00:06:51
Speaker
about the American left's, you call it, spirit has become bureaucratized, its beliefs dogmatic, its gestures rote, its picture of reality unchanged in fundamental ways since then. it's It's badly out of date. And now I'm paraphrasing you.
00:07:09
Speaker
You write that the left is not thinking anymore, taking risks, surprising surprising themselves. It doesn't have ideas. So I have a couple questions. First of all, who are we talking about when we're talking about the left? Are we just talking about like the typical left wing, the scolds, the critical race theorists, the fourth wave feminists? Who is the left that you're talking about?
00:07:35
Speaker
Right. So this is the most recent piece I published. It's in Salma Gundy, which is a small literary quarterly, but it's available online. And I link to it on my website. i have an essays page on my website if you want to check it out.
00:07:47
Speaker
And they just asked me to write about just sort of think about the election, a post-election piece, and they ended up calling it post-election. And I was trying to think through in a different way than the typical kind of analysis about what was going on, what did Harris's defeat represent.
00:08:05
Speaker
um To your question, I mean, the you know, the nomenclature, but also the the phenomenon itself can be sometimes hard to distinguish because there's sort of the establishment center left And there's the kind of woke, skull, progressive farther to the left.
00:08:21
Speaker
um But there's a tremendous amount of overlap there and sort inter-digitation in institutions, in I think people's own individual politics.
00:08:34
Speaker
So for the most part, when I'm talking about the left, I'm talking about the entire left half of the spectrum. Obviously there are exceptions, but it's that, it's this kind of, it's liberalism plus progressivism and they kind of merge into each other and what's the difference anyway? And there are differences, but people don't even, aren't even really aware of what they are.
00:08:56
Speaker
um But the point is, this has become the entrenched, established left or left half, left liberalism, Democratic Party, the universities and the academic disciplines, the mainstream media outlets,
00:09:12
Speaker
the foundations, the think tanks, the nonprofits, the arts, the arts and entertainment, um this giant, what I call progressive blob.
00:09:25
Speaker
at the end And i I mean, this is where my political values are. I mean, i I'm still like a Bernie guy, but it seems clear to me that aside from all the specific tactical even strategic problems that we can talk about.
00:09:44
Speaker
There's an, there's a basic failure of imagination. There's a kind of exhaustion or sclerosis. Um, as I say in the piece, I happen to watch the Bob Dylan movie while I was writing the piece. i So I wrote the piece sort of in the interregnum between the election and the inauguration when like, like the rapist had grabbed us, but he hadn't started actually assaulting us and we were kind of frozen, not knowing what was going to happen.
00:10:09
Speaker
Um, But I watched the Bob Dylan movie and whatever you think of the movie, it's a, I think a good picture from what I know, i was born in 64. So like literally the, one of the years, the movie is set of what that
The Left's Evolution and Critique
00:10:22
Speaker
felt like.
00:10:22
Speaker
And that was like the dawn, that was the wellspring of youth culture, counterculture, the anti-war movement, the rights, of you know, the civil rights, feminist, ultimately gay rights. And there was this tremendous creativity and energy and optimism.
00:10:36
Speaker
um This is sort of where the center of gravity of the culture was and remained at least through the 70s.
00:10:44
Speaker
And then it just became, as you read as you read as you quoted me, it became gradually more and more bureaucratized, institutionalized, you know, kind of rote gestures. We're going to have a protest because that's what you do. You have a protest. You don't think about whether a protest is effective.
00:10:59
Speaker
Sometimes you're not even sure what you're protesting. um And I think really that's the problem. And I look on the right and as much as I hate the right, it seems like it's bubbling with energy and we, and just sort of weirdness and all the fun that used to happen on the left.
00:11:16
Speaker
In a totally sick way. But I mean, still like, I want that on our side. Yeah. So what are we talking about specifically? Are you talking about like visionary ideas and policies or something just a bit more indefinable, like temperament, how we interact with one another, that that general spirit of a movement?
00:11:39
Speaker
Well, I think they all come together, right? They all go together. and i And I do sort of mention them all in the piece um because I think No, I mean, I think politically, both ah in terms of strategy and in terms of policy, I haven't heard very much new from the left, again, which means the Democrats, the whole left, for, I don't know, decades, right? and and And even sort of the the left that's far enough left to critique capitalism, which has become kind of and ah kind of another rote gesture, capitalism bad.
00:12:10
Speaker
Do you even know what you mean by capitalism? Not really, but capitalism is bad. Even that far left, There don't seem to, I mean, even, i mean, leftists will say this, Perry Anderson, the great, you know, Marxist historian said this just a few weeks ago in a piece.
00:12:26
Speaker
there's no i There's no idea about what's going to come next. Like Marx and the Marxists had a specific vision of what they wanted to turn society into. There is nothing like that on the left.
00:12:38
Speaker
So it manifests in sort of political ideas, policy strategy. But I think that itself originates, that lack of imagination originates in a more in a more fundamental, as I think you said, spiritual or sort of cultural malaise.
00:12:56
Speaker
Well, let me quibble with you there. 2016, let's go back to 2011, Occupy Wall Street. 2016, Bernie Sanders runs and he kind of normalizes democratic socialism and comes pretty close to That's...
00:13:09
Speaker
bernie sanders runs and he kind of normalizes democratic socialism and you know comes pretty close to to victory that that's kind of new in terms of generation of democratic politics. I mean, you couldn't use the word socialism in 2000 or 2004 or even 2012. And then you look at 2020, there was a couple interesting democratic candidates. You had like Andrew Yang talking about universal basic income. You had that one lady, what was her name, Marianne Williamson kind of
00:13:47
Speaker
talking about more the spiritual side of politics? Or are you talking about something more deeper and transformative than, you know, some of these variations?
00:14:00
Speaker
No, I mean, i would i would ah I would stipulate to that. I mean, Marianne Williamson was just kind of a guru who wandered onto a debate stage. That's probably i actually, but, you know, 2011, mean, sure.
00:14:12
Speaker
for sure look so I was a senior in high school and Ronald Reagan was elected president. Okay, so my entire adult life has been lived out in the backlash, and which means I've been waiting for years, for decades, for something to happen for a new progressive era to start.
00:14:28
Speaker
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, people said it's the dawn of a new progressive era. I'm like, let's not say that it's the dawn of anything until we're sure that it's gotten an underway, right? We don't know that it's the beginning of anything.
00:14:42
Speaker
And then 2011, Occupy, so start of a new progressive era, people said. um They even said it about um the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York in 2013.
00:14:55
Speaker
ah but Bernie Sanders, 2016. So boom, boom, boom, within the space of eight years. I agree. There was a tremendous upsurge. I think clearly all coming out of the financial collapse. um Occupy was really exciting.
00:15:11
Speaker
Bernie was really exciting in 2016. I was really excited. So then what happened to all of that? Nothing happened to it. um It got absorbed.
00:15:23
Speaker
It petered out. um Ideas were rejected. I mean, the truth, what really happened, and it's it's significant that the last date we're giving is Bernie Sanders 2016, or that I'm giving, is that Bernie got kneecapped by the woke, right? Bernie had to bend the knee.
00:15:42
Speaker
And it kind of cut the kind of cut the spirit out from under that campaign because what was really ascendant was this ideological orthodoxy that had been incubating in the universities for decades.
00:15:57
Speaker
Um, and that's what I would say, like, yes, there were sort of green shoots, but they haven't survived. And I think they haven't survived because of all the sort of bureaucratic, you know, sclerotic, all that stuff.
00:16:12
Speaker
I hope they're just in dormancy and and we'll shoot out again. But to get to the ah spirituality of a movement, um you you have some interesting turns of phrase here. You say, the left has made itself the enemy of the life force, of vitality, of Eros. It fears it and it wants to shackle it.
00:16:36
Speaker
It feels with a deep and instinctive revulsion. that it is incompatible with goodness, with morality. um And ah you use words like vitality and eros, which have you know broader meanings, but also sexual connotations.
00:16:55
Speaker
which Which is interesting to me because it feels like the right used to have the monopoly on Puritanism in America. You know, they were anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-a whole bunch of stuff.
00:17:10
Speaker
But now it feels like the left is just as Puritanical. um, you know, sex should be morally correct. Sex should be symmet symmetrical. Sex should never be asymmetrical. An older man, a younger woman, power differences, that that stuff shouldn't even happen.
00:17:26
Speaker
Consent culture, there's fear around sex. Gen Z is having less sex. Is there like, um, a direct relationship with the the physical, the sensual, the erotic with this kind of stifled political culture?
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And what you just said is is absolutely correct. People have said it before. I should say that, you know, I'm not saying that my argument here is wholly original by any means. People have been saying this for a long time.
00:17:54
Speaker
They used to be the prudes. We used to be the people having fun. And now it's the reverse. It's not that we're prudes and they're prudes. They're not prudes anymore. Right there. i mean, again, it's it's a it's it's ah it's a many ways horrifying spectacle, but it is a spectacle of energy,
00:18:10
Speaker
of risk of, of humor, which also means, uh, it's generative, it's creating possibilities and all these strange, and in some, some of them quite interesting things are happening on the right politically and culturally things that you, you know, you would never have guessed.
00:18:29
Speaker
Nobody had ever imagined. That's the point. Just like things were happening in the sixties on the left that a few years earlier, no one could ever have imagined. And you're,
00:18:41
Speaker
drawing attention to the fact that at the, you know, at the root level, this is sort of bodily. This is about a kind of bodily release that I feel like the left is completely smothered. Um, because it's because with arrows comes chaos arrows.
00:18:59
Speaker
Um, and of course arrows in the broadest sense, but also in the specific sense of sexuality, it tends to overrun morality. It's not, it doesn't care about morality. It's stronger than morality.
00:19:10
Speaker
It creates new moralities. And the left has become just an incredibly moralized environment. And, you know, we see this with, you know, universities, but I think for me, the saddest thing is that we see it in the arts.
00:19:25
Speaker
I mean, I can elaborate. I think people, and people know what I'm talking about. I've written several pieces about that in recent years. So many people have said to me, and I keep reading this stuff, like the experience of doing an MFA program.
00:19:38
Speaker
And it's still just about policing, students policing each other. mean, how do you create art? how do you How do you create fiction in that kind of environment? What a shame.
00:19:50
Speaker
I'm watching the the Disney Plus show Andor right now about you know an empire versus a rebellion. Andor is wonderful. um But yeah, it's the the the empire is filled with sexually repressed, sexually stifled people. The rebellion, they're the ones playing card games and drinking and laughing and...
00:20:11
Speaker
ah shacking up and all that. But yeah, let's get to this. I love this this line you later put into the piece, the Cambrian explosion. That was yes that was wonderful.
Alienation and Inclusivity Issues
00:20:23
Speaker
That was absolutely wonderful. lets Let me get into that.
00:20:26
Speaker
um So you contrast the left with the non-left. And when you say non-left, you're not talking about the right. You're not talking about the MAGA right. You're not talking about Wall Street right. You're not talking about the but Baptist Church right.
00:20:42
Speaker
The not left is is liberals, it's the Bernie bros, even even Marxists. um So, sorry, go ahead. yeah if i could just If I could just be clear, because think people have mised misunderstood this.
00:20:57
Speaker
um I'm trying to, you know, there's the right, and we I think you're about to ask about that, and there's sort of disaffected progressives or liberals like me and a lot of other people. I'm trying...
00:21:08
Speaker
For me, the not left is all of those, right? It's everyone who isn't the established, sclerotic, exhausted, left, liberal, progressive thing. and And that whole universe, to me, is is where interesting things are happening. the not So the not left is the right, but it's also people who used to be on the sort of official accepted left.
00:21:34
Speaker
And yeah, and that means I probably fall in the not left, though I definitely want to have nothing to do with the right. um But yeah. So you describe this Cambrian explosion of a whole bunch of strange new political species that the right is enjoying.
00:21:53
Speaker
Silicon Valley transhumanists, manosphere bros, post-liberal Catholic integralists, anti-corporate conservative policy policy wonks, health freedom libertarians, dime square scenesters, I don't know what that is, maha moms, I definitely know what that is, neo-pagans, alt-rightists, natalists, tradwives, tradcasts,
00:22:18
Speaker
um So, yeah, it's alive, as you say. So are we just talking about the left having an inclusivity problem? Is the left just kind of unaccepting of ideas that don't perfectly align with their own? Or is it something more more deeper than that?
00:22:37
Speaker
Well, it's it's both. I mean, it's absolutely an inclusivity problem. And that's why so many people who used to or in some ways would still identify as progressives or liberals feel alienated because they've been chased out, ah either literally professionally chased out or just sort of mentally chased out if they're not in the business of giving their opinions because of some failure of orthodoxy.
00:23:01
Speaker
Right. and And that's sort of that part of the not left. And I include myself in that. And it sounds like you include yourself in that. um But why is this this rigidity happening in the first place?
00:23:12
Speaker
Like, why why has the left become a place where you have to agree with 100% of the things 100% of the time, or you're ostracized? And to me, i mean, i' not going to say that I explain it fully. I think there's some deep psychological stuff going on, sociological.
00:23:29
Speaker
But, you know, it's this kind of spiritual
00:23:35
Speaker
paralysis, maybe. I don't know. Suffocation. It's what you said. It's what you this' little it's the previous thing you you quoted. you know This sort of fear of the life force, fear of difference.
00:23:49
Speaker
For all the talk of difference, they're actually terrified of difference, of real difference. I've given, um I've had a side career as a as ah public speaker. That's kind of how I've made money for the past five or six years. And I've probably done a hundred high school and college events.
00:24:06
Speaker
And so I've been to a lot of colleges. i don't know if I've been to as many as you have, but I always get the question about my my privilege and it it drives me nuts. i'll give I'll be giving a talk about ah the right to roam or climate change or something like that. and I'll always get the question, have you reflected on your your privileges as a straight white male? And it's, I don't know how much of that is curiosity, but there is a lot of scolding, I think, in that question.
00:24:36
Speaker
and kind of in my brain, I'm just wondering, like, do you want me on this on this team? Like, are you like pushing me away? its just like, it it doesn't seem to enter my enter their mind that like,
00:24:49
Speaker
we need a broad coalition to win elections. You can't just be like shoving people out or villainizing people or or anything like that. Like i've I've never been so far pushed to the, to the right, but I can see why some people, some men have been tempted to.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you tell ah certain group of people that you don't, that they're bad, that you don't like them, if you're, kind they're not going to stick around for that.
00:25:17
Speaker
But, and that's And that's what's happened. And there seems to have been this expectation that they would stick around, like, you know, we're going to scold you. and we um But the other thing that bothers me about your your story, your generic story that keeps repeating itself, is that i I would bet that the kids who were asking you that question, they were they decided to ask that question before you even opened your mouth.
00:25:45
Speaker
right In other words, this is what I mean that the gestures or the ideas are rote. There are five things they know how to say. There are five you know ideas that they've been handed by their intellectually inbred professors.
00:26:01
Speaker
I didn't come up with that phrase. That was Shalom Aslander. Love it. you know You know what I'm saying? like and you'll still appreciate Is that really a spontaneous response to what you were saying? Or is it just Something that they know, is it just something they're parodying? So there's no real thought going on.
00:26:18
Speaker
You'll appreciate this, that it's it's more the more elite college, the more likely I am to get that question. Of course. i think I think a lot of it, and you're the expert at this, so I shouldn't be you know proposing my own theories to you, but I think a lot of it is because you know they come from that culture of ah privilege and affluence, and I think there is a kind of internalized connection guilt and i think they're just kind of i don't know broadcasting that out a little bit does that does that register at all with oh of course oh absolutely i wrote a piece uh that came out a couple of years ago called chuck your privilege because you're always talking about check your privilege and like okay i check my privilege now what do i do i mean it's very convenient to say check your privilege when the privilege in question is
00:27:10
Speaker
demographic, right? In other words, there's nothing you can do about it. You can't not be white or male or straight. The real privilege, and you already just said this, the real privilege that those kids have is money privilege.
00:27:22
Speaker
And you can chuck that privilege. If you really mean it, if you're really sincere, you can say, mom and dad, I'm not going to let you pay for college anymore. I'm not going to take my, term I'm not going to use my trust fund, you know, give it away, take it back, all of that.
00:27:37
Speaker
But of course, they're not going to do it because actually they like their privilege. And there's some, I mean, I think this is a very long standing, this thing of liberal guilt.
00:27:47
Speaker
And I think it sort of poisons so much, but it, yeah you know, it's, it's, it's this, it's this cognitive dissonance between your egalitarian, maybe pseudo Marxist ideals and your actual position in society.
Revitalizing the Left with New Ideas
00:28:09
Speaker
And you don't want to give either of those up. you want You want a comfortable life and you also want to think well of yourself. And I think so much of the pathologies of the left and of left institutions like the academy flow from that basic unresolved cognitive dissonance.
00:28:28
Speaker
my My blood pressure is a little high. Let me try to lighten things up a little bit here. So you talk about this Cambrian explosion on the right, and I completely agree with you. There's just a lot of interesting and weird groups kind of falling under that coalition.
00:28:46
Speaker
And i think we need a Cambrian explosion on the left. And I came up with... a few tongue-in-cheek, a few serious ideas for the sort of species the left could... Oh, lay it on Are you ready? I'm ready.
00:29:02
Speaker
Well, first of all, I'm wondering what you think of kind of the ah Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, the kind of the Abundinomics movement. um do you Do you like what they're doing? Do you like their message?
00:29:15
Speaker
ah Sure. I mean, you know I mean, I've heard them speak about it a lot. um I'm not going to run it down. That's the, that's what I was going to say before you said it. Like the one thing I can think of is abundance. And I mean, it's absolutely good that they, that there is this new idea. I am not trying to knock it down. I just want to point out that as sexy ideas go, it's about as sexless as I can imagine.
00:29:40
Speaker
It's this and intensely technocratic policy wonkish. I mean, as we're just listening to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, And again, good, good, good, good. But it's it is hardly the kind of Cambrian explosion of weirdness and energy and Eros.
00:29:56
Speaker
it's it's ah It's kind of a parody. if that's our Eros, it's like a parody of Eros. I don't think Ezra Klein has ever worn a construction hat. It's hard to imagine Ezra Klein being naked.
00:30:10
Speaker
I really like his podcast, so I'm not going to... No, I like it too, but you know this is not the sort of... You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, here's one that's a little weirder. The Neo-Gildists.
00:30:23
Speaker
um as Ezra actually had a um female politician, I think, from Washington. Oh, yes. She's my neighbor. Is she? Okay, okay. Yes, she's right across the river from Portland. i've actually I actually gave her money.
00:30:38
Speaker
yeah She's you know talking about the right to repair. She talked about like a roof as if she really knew like how a roof is built. So this could be like the neo-guildists, they're doing like investment into beautifying America. Carpenters, masons, artists drawing murals under turnpikes, apprenticeship culture, ah Wendell Berry. So, okay, that's the neo-guildists.
00:31:05
Speaker
Can I respond to that? Yeah, please please respond to all of them. So first of all, she was so cool. I've given her money because she's in the adjacent district, which is a purple district, but I had never heard her speak before.
00:31:18
Speaker
And she was so cool and so like exactly like, like real sort of rural working class knows how to fix things. And like, that's part of her policy portfolio is like, like right to repair.
00:31:30
Speaker
I was also struck by the fact that, um, and if people are interested, they should, they should listen. Like, She sounded different and the conversation sounded different than every other Ezra Klein podcast episode that I've listened to because she did not talk the guild. You said guild, but I mean a guild in a different sense, the sort of elite educated guild language.
00:31:52
Speaker
You're right. She didn't sound like that. Her personality. She sounded ordinary and, and totally unapologetic about it. Like did not try to code switch and sound like Ezra Klein or Bill Derizowitz.
00:32:05
Speaker
Fantastic. people Listen, the Democrats have been talking for years now about how they need to get back to working class, and they do. And I always think of what Mike Huckabee used to say when he was running for president. he's He would say this about himself, that when he went to evangelical audiences, he would say to them, I'm not coming to you, I'm coming from you.
00:32:28
Speaker
So we don't, we don't we Democrats don't need to go to the working class. They need to come from the working class. We need political leaders and even intellectual leaders who actually come from the working class, who are not just trying to like fake it or cosplay or guess.
00:32:46
Speaker
um I mean, even Fetterman. I mean, I like Fetterman in a lot of ways, but i I don't think he's from that class either. So I would love the neo-Gildists, but they have to be, somehow we have to tap back in because I think a lot of the sort of immobility on the left is a class issue, right? In other words, these people are all coming from the same class, from the Ezra Klein, Bildersowitz class, the Ivy League class.
00:33:11
Speaker
like So there's a sociological problem that in some ways is at the root of the of all the other problems we're talking about. So what yeah what's next? The pro-pat movement.
00:33:24
Speaker
These are progressive patriarchs. um I'm happy I got a smirk out of you ah you there, Bill. um So they're not real patriarchs. I mean, I'm not calling for the days when men controlled every institution and even to some extent the the family, but more of just ah a re-embracing of...
00:33:46
Speaker
traditional masculinity, a complete acceptance of psychological masculinity. Let's not, let's not put down stoicism, straight talk, rationalism, this no bullshit. I kind of imagine Ulysses S Grant, who maybe just did a little bit of, of therapy.
00:34:06
Speaker
Um, so I think there needs to be like a male progressive movement. I think you're absolutely right. And it needs to be, I mean, I know I may sound a little retrograde, but i I feel like this is a safe space for me to say this here.
00:34:20
Speaker
There's been an enormous pussification of the left. um This is the, and feminization. And, you know, I am strongly in favor of feminist policy ideas, many of them, and equality across the board and, you know, equality of domestic labor.
00:34:42
Speaker
But, when you try to rewrite the man as a failed woman, it's not good. And this is part of what's driving young men away. And I think it's part of what's sapping the vitality of the left.
00:34:54
Speaker
And I think a lot of this sort of censoriousness is kind of, I call it the shushy mom voice, like, we're just going to explain to you really calmly why you should do everything we tell you.
00:35:07
Speaker
it's It's not good. And I agree. Like, you know, um, yeah, I thought, pro-pat was gonna be progressive patriot. Oh, no, no, no.
00:35:18
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's that's that's a decent one too. That's also important. Yes, the left should be patriotic. um but But let me get back to the pro-pat, the progressive patriarchs. This is my fantasy book that I've wanted to write for a couple years now. it my In my head, it's called The Progressive Man, How the Left Needs to Grow a Pair and Win Again. So we're on the same page, Bill. Yeah. but I'm kind of a Civil War nut, so I've read tons of biographies on Ulysses S. Grant, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, I mean, in my formative years. And they really informed my my progressivism, my my liberalism, and that was a progressivism
00:36:02
Speaker
with muscles and might and yeah a little deadliness at times. um And that does not exist at all it on the left right now.
00:36:17
Speaker
and And I think when we don't allow that to happen, we don't allow this this natural male psychology and with it all of its hormones and natural drives and and instincts to exist there. So where else to go?
00:36:35
Speaker
I think that's absolutely right. And I should say, and but I mean this sincerely, that that kind of spirit can You know, women can have that kind of spirit. And I feel like even women who have that spirit are sort of being driven out of the left. People have said that cancel culture is really girl school culture.
00:36:52
Speaker
It's mean girl culture. So, you know, women who who violate that sort of, who act like men in certain ways, assertive and so forth, they are also they are also shunned.
00:37:03
Speaker
um People have also said, you know, um
00:37:08
Speaker
that the left doesn't have a bias towards action. and you see a bias towards action on the right. And I think that's part of what you're saying, right? Like um the, not, you know, not the, not the violent aggression of masculinity, but the assertiveness of masculinity, the desire, the drive um to build as opposed to, you know, i've built, I mean, I know we're, we're talking very broad stereotypes, but if building, I'm not going to, say well,
00:37:39
Speaker
There's building and then there's regulation, right? There's the the growth outwards and then there's the containment. And there's just too much containment. um You know, if stereotypically like America is masculine and Europe is feminine, I think about the fact that your european the European Union has said, well, we're not going to be like the tech giant, we'll be the regulatory giant.
00:38:00
Speaker
Like e the EU has actually literally said this. The regulatory giant? Like, no. and they They may be the regulatory giant, but they can build a train, a train line or a train station probably much quicker than we can. And this is, it gets back to abundance a little bit because someone like governor Josh Shapiro can with emergency decrees, rebuild the I-95 bridge really quickly, which everybody loved.
00:38:29
Speaker
Everybody loved to see that, that, that, that action and speed and vision. Um, Okay, well, let me let me move on to a couple more ideas here.
00:38:41
Speaker
I've got the neo-hedonists, and we probably need some rebranding on that. um But I kind of envision kind of an enlightened sensuality, and I say enlightened rather than kind of an irresponsible, because you can be you can you know you can have 10 kids with 10 different wives and be very sensual.
00:39:01
Speaker
um But I married a German woman, so I'm a little bit familiar with continental Europe, with with France, with Germany, and it's just a slightly different relationship with the life of the senses there, you know, going out and...
00:39:17
Speaker
sitting under the in nature, really enjoying a meal, smelling the flowers, touch, taste, sex. This doesn't exist in the U.S. We kind of got the button all the way up to the neck in the U.S. s So I kind of imagine,
00:39:36
Speaker
um yeah, the neo-hedonist embracing kind of an enlightened sensuality. Well, that would be nice. I mean, this is America's, you know, Puritanism. right This is not about the left anymore. We've been talking about this for many, for generations.
00:39:53
Speaker
the The continental the Europeans don't have our sex hangups they can have nude beaches and mistresses. and ah But the flip side of America's Puritanism is that when when we do get freaky, it's really freaky and fucked up, right?
00:40:13
Speaker
and So, and it's like Donald Trump or Hugh Hefner, it's like grotesque. Because, you know, because normal, healthy sexuality is repressed. So when it finally escapes, it's, it's just completely, it's psychotic by that point.
00:40:28
Speaker
You're right. Yeah. Like the Dutch, I mean, they're giving their kids sex ed classes very early. It's very normal to kind of play in the nude as a child. Like a 14 year old boy could sleep with his 14 year old girlfriend. Like what, what would make a 14 year old boy more happier than sleeping with his girlfriend, you know, in his own bed.
00:40:50
Speaker
But yet we completely deny and put that off until the last bearable second. Well, That's going to be a harder lift because this is just baked into America. This is part of the pre-Cambrian or the Cambrian explosion here. We're just throwing out wild ideas. It would be great. I'll list some of the other ones on my, my, my, my sub stack and the show notes. Let me, let me move on.
00:41:16
Speaker
Um, so I read the, the disaster artist and it felt like that book was like almost, um, about me.
The Artist's Struggle in the Digital Age
00:41:24
Speaker
Um, The death the artist. The death of the artist. yeah Yeah. My drinking my one beer has already shown itself here.
00:41:30
Speaker
um So the death of the artist, it's about the precarious lives of all sorts of artists um in the US, whether it's visual artists, film artists, writers, ah musicians. you must have You must have interviewed hundreds of people, Bill,
00:41:51
Speaker
you had It was about 140 people. 140 people. I'm wondering what that was was like, talking to all these people who are actually probably pretty dying to get things off their chest. You must have been like a therapist in those conversations.
00:42:06
Speaker
Is that right? That's astute. um Yes. Yes. So it was it was that was the best part of doing the book, I think, was having those conversations.
00:42:17
Speaker
um Not everybody I reached out to agreed to talk with me. because I made it clear that I wanted to have a very frank and specific conversation about their financial lives. And, you know, people are much freer talking about sex than they are about money.
00:42:33
Speaker
But I definitely got the sense from many, maybe most, nearly all the people I talked to, that it was really cathartic to have this conversation. It felt really good to have somebody who cared enough to ask them.
00:42:46
Speaker
I asked people for an hour of their time, And hardly any interview was less than an hour and a quarter. And some of them, like I had to get people off the phone when we passed the two hour mark, because like, I need to have dinner or something for exactly the reason you just said.
00:43:02
Speaker
um And then also a whole bunch of people said to me, it is, it's uncomfortable talking about this, but I'm doing it because I want young artists, the young artists that I was, and they were actually still fairly young, you know, but the young artists I was, you know,
00:43:19
Speaker
10 years ago when I was 20 to know the things that nobody would tell me about you know the realities of making a living as a musician, writer, visual artist, whatever, specifically in the internet age.
00:43:32
Speaker
I mean, that's really what the book is about. How free or near free digital content has just completely upended the financial lives of anyone involved in creativity.
00:43:45
Speaker
And as you point out, it's always been difficult to be an artist, but there are some pressures that make it especially difficult ah nowadays to be one. Part of me wonders what your why why you were driven. like Every book takes a writer two or three years to write. What was it that made you devote those two or three years or however many? Because you were...
00:44:07
Speaker
you know, a Yale professor for 10 or so years, and then you started to write impressive books. it It doesn't seem like you as an artist, it doesn't seem like you were ever dead or dying as an artist. So what was it that kind of motivated you to take this on?
00:44:22
Speaker
Well, I mean, ah partly was my personal experience because I was a professor with a salary and, you know, a health plan until I was 44. And then I left academia and have been a full-time writer since 17 years.
00:44:38
Speaker
um I'm in, for lots of reasons, in a better position than most of those people, partly because I was working at a real job until that point, et cetera, et cetera. and And I had established myself, right? I mean, that's the thing. Like if you, so many of the people who've been successful in the free content age are old enough to have established themselves in the previous age.
00:44:58
Speaker
I was one of them. I was never like a big name, but I already had a career, right? um But I was still dealing, I am still dealing with many of the same issues, how do you piece together a living, so on and so forth.
00:45:12
Speaker
um So that, I mean, that was part of the motivation, but also um I think the main thing was that I just really care about the arts. I was ah an English professor, so a literature professor, I've been a you know a book critic.
00:45:27
Speaker
I was actually a dance critic when I was in my 20s. um The arts have meant everything to me, and it's very clear to me that we're screwing artists badly now. um At the same time, i had been aware of this narrative that had been circulating. I remember having conversations with graduate students, so I was still a professor.
00:45:47
Speaker
They were, you know, maybe aspiring poets as well as graduate students. So this is like the aughts. And they're there they are repeating this line that had been circulating already, which is that the internet means that there's never actually been a better time to be an artist.
00:46:04
Speaker
For all the reasons I don't need to explain to anybody, right? if you You can circumvent the gatekeepers, you can reach the audience directly, you can you don't have to pay agents and anything like that. And it was obvious to me that there was another side to the story, you know which is, okay, so when are you actually going to get paid and how is that going to work?
00:46:24
Speaker
I mean, musicians have been talking about this since Napster, which I think was 99. um So I wrote the book also as an investigation. And it wasn't an investigation into which of those two stories was true, the Silicon Valley propaganda story or the artist you're screwing us story.
00:46:40
Speaker
It was given that I knew that the artist story was true. I genuinely wanted to know but the answer to the subtitle of the book, how, you know, artists are surviving in an age of billionaires and big tech, right?
00:46:55
Speaker
That's what I want to know. And that's what the book is about. Like, so what does it look like? to piece together a living from 10 or 20 different sources, et cetera, et cetera. Can I share my emotional reactions to the book?
00:47:09
Speaker
Please. Okay. um The first- You're gonna say scream and then you're gonna sob. First you're gonna sob and then you're to scream. I think the first is more of like a sigh of relief. So it kind of boils down to to three. The first, as I kind of talked about, there's like a therapeutic quality to it. Like if it feels like I was seen, there's other people suffering through this. You know, I started,
00:47:31
Speaker
writing professionally around 2012, 2013. So yeah, I'm getting close 15 years as a creative.
00:47:43
Speaker
And it's been a big struggle. you know the The most I've made was, I'm just going to be perfectly frank. The most I made was $46,000 year. I've made as low as like $13,000 a year. year, I'm 41 now.
00:47:54
Speaker
thirteen thousand dollars a year last year i'm i'm forty one now Last year, I made $15,000. And um and i when I started, you know I was living in people's basements or living in my van or whatever. But now I have a mortgage and a house and a five-year-old child. So it's it's affecting me.
00:48:15
Speaker
And that's kind of why i went on this midlife career pivot where i want to be a therapist slash writer. So that was the first reaction. The second reaction was ah kind of a resignation.
00:48:25
Speaker
It was like... why don't Why don't I just give up? Because it doesn't look like it's probably gonna get any better. you know I'm not the cream of the crop. I'm not a David Sedaris. I'm not a Bill Derezewicz. I'm not a ah Bill Bryson. I'm okay, but I'm not great. I have, you know two thousand after 15 years of writing, I have 2000 followers on Substack.
00:48:49
Speaker
why Why am I keep doing this? Other than that, I just can't help myself and that I just feel like I need to write. And the final reaction was, it was kind of a it was a kind of an anticlimacticness because I think I was hoping for you to figure out the problem and be like, here's the solution to it.
00:49:11
Speaker
But there wasn't there wasn't a solution. It was that there's not a big enough middle class with discretionary income to support the arts. um it's that there's there's not There's not enough arts funding, but this is something that we as individual artists can't do anything about.
00:49:26
Speaker
Right,
Platforms and Artist Revenue Challenges
00:49:27
Speaker
right. And sorry to interrupt, but um it's true, the middle class and the arts funding, but those aren't really the problem the main problems. The main problems are that um ah this free art that people like you and I make, I mean, I don't consider myself an artist, now it's just called content, actually generates an enormous amount of money for the platforms, tens of billions of dollars.
00:49:53
Speaker
So it's not that it's not generating money. It's just the money isn't going to the artists. That's the real problem. And the real solution would be for the government to intervene into this broken market, which governments do for various reasons, and force you know the money flows to go in ah in ah better in a more productive, du in a better direction. you know Force the platforms to share more of what artists generate for them with the artists.
00:50:22
Speaker
Needless to say, that's not going to happen. which is why there's no happy ending to the book. Um, but to respond, to react to your reactions, I mean, first of all, it was a big motive of the book.
00:50:35
Speaker
Certainly as I was writing it, I was thinking, I want to help artists realize that it's not their fault that they're struggling financially. I want them to see that they're not alone.
00:50:49
Speaker
We're all going through this. Um, And again, with artists just starting out, I want to give them a reality check, not to discourage them, but so they first of all are prepared psychologically and second of all can prepare practically to make it better because, you know, there's making $30,000 a year and there's making no a year or $3,000 a year.
00:51:12
Speaker
And that can make a difference, maybe not enough of it difference. ah you know i've I've published three books. I wish there was just, you know this is just the ideal, some deal I could make with the government or something. I want $40,000 year, and for the next 30 years, I'm going to pump out five good books.
00:51:33
Speaker
like that That's just what I want. I don't even i don't want the a million dollars, I don't want $80,000, I want $40,000, because I know how to live lightly. Is Substack kind of a solution to this?
00:51:45
Speaker
Because we're finally learning how to monetize writing for a lot of different writers. I think Substack is great. um So much of my reading now is on Substack, and most of my favorite writers are on Substack, not The New Yorker or The Atlantic.
00:52:03
Speaker
um
00:52:06
Speaker
I don't think Substack is a solution. First of all, you're going to have the same problem that every online platform has, which is this sort of power log distribution where a few people make a ton of money, a larger but still small number of people make a decent amount of money, and most people on the platform are going to make little or nothing.
00:52:27
Speaker
um
00:52:31
Speaker
But... again, I've touched on this a couple of times, but I really want to emphasize it because it's a big kind of lesson from the book, is that ah creative people always piece a living together from multiple sources.
00:52:45
Speaker
So if you can make some money on Substack and some money some other way, maybe a way that has nothing to do with your writing, that could be a way to do it. I mean, when you talk about yourself, what you make me realize even more than I did when I was writing the book is that creativity is going to be, um
00:53:06
Speaker
It's going to be a voluntary endeavor more and more. People are going to do it because they're impelled to do it and maybe because they have an audience. I mean, you have 2,000 followers. That's a thing. That's a real audience um that may may make it feel like, you know, people are listening to me and it's worth continuing to do this. um but But you have to do it completely in the framework of a gift economy.
00:53:31
Speaker
Right. No one's, you know, you're going to have to find some other way to make a living as you are doing. I mean, that's a classic thing that creative people do. They just find like an actual profession. And I think more and more, this is going to be the way that it goes.
00:53:45
Speaker
I just wish it wasn't the case. I'm actually looking forward to my psychotherapy career. I'm genuinely looking forward to that beginning once I finish my master's degree. But I think about publishing every single day of my life, whether it's a post or a book I'm working on in the background. um And I wish that could just be my my full-time job, but it's just it's just not in the cards.
00:54:10
Speaker
And i listen, I think it's a huge loss for all of us when we're Okay, so you said before, and and of course I knew this would this would be a reaction people added, it's always hard been hard to be an artist. Like, okay, genius.
00:54:24
Speaker
Yes, but that's not the end of the story. And it's it's ah it's a significant, actually remarkable feature of our cultural history that roughly after World War II, we created, and along with, as a consequence of the rising and exploding middle class, ah we created an infrastructure that enabled a significant number of artists to have a middle class existence, which means that they could create art full time.
00:54:55
Speaker
So they may never have been most artists, but it was like, if you were serious, if you were talented, if you had the recognition of your peers, if you had an audience, you could do this full time.
00:55:08
Speaker
You could put out an album every year. You could put out a novel every three years. You could be, know, all these All the bands that I grew up listening to in the 70s, like Queen or Elton John, they put out an album every year.
00:55:24
Speaker
you know Philip Roth was writing major novels every three years. um and And we could multiply examples. That's what we've lost.
00:55:35
Speaker
So you could have you could have talent and hard work and a unique voice and an audience and the recognition of your peers and accolades today. And you still can't make a living at it.
00:55:48
Speaker
That's fucked up. That is fucked up. People say another thing people would say to me, I had this really, you don't know Steve Albini was, do you? It doesn't matter. I had a very contentious argument interview with him.
00:56:01
Speaker
He said, people don't deserve to get paid for doing what they love. And I said, yeah, but they do deserve to get paid for doing things that other people love. Right. That's how a healthy market works. I give you value.
00:56:15
Speaker
and you give me value back in the form of money so that I could keep doing the thing. That's the cycle that's been broken.
00:56:26
Speaker
And art has become a bit boring as you've written about a few times in some of your your pieces. um I don't know what the film, it's not in a state of renaissance music. I don't know what the state of the the visual arts are, but um TV is different.
The State of Art and Culture Today
00:56:46
Speaker
Though I did hear you describe in one of your recent podcasts as TV is as mid, ah to to borrow a generation yeah Z term. Yeah.
00:56:55
Speaker
um I might quibble with you there. I'd say 2025 is actually a pretty darn good year for TV. Are you watching anything these days? Yeah. um I haven't seen the one that you mentioned earlier. What's it called? Andor.
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, I'd heard of it before. Hey folks, thanks for listening. There's still 20, 30 minutes left in this podcast available to paid subscribers. If you'd like to become a paid subscriber, go to my Substack page, Out of the Wild with Ken Ilgunis, and you'll have access to all my essays, movie lists, movie reviews, all that stuff.
00:57:33
Speaker
Thanks again for listening.
00:57:50
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis. Original music by Duncan Barrett.