Talking about taste
My appearance on the Colin McEnroe show
I enjoyed this discussion with Colin McEnroe (a very good host: he quotes Shakespeare off the cuff as well as the Rocky movies) and becca rothfeld very much. Becca is an excellent critic and the whole thing was very enjoyable for me. We talked about what good taste is, whether everyone can cultivate taste, if it’s just a way for high class people to make other people feel bad, and so on. We also discussed the philistinism of the literary establishment, why some classics flopped on first publication, whether the American suspicion of aesthetics has its roots in the Puritans, how modernism fits with that idea, and my suggestion that AI will have its own taste. My thanks to Colin, Lily Tyson, and the team for having me on. Who knew Connecticut public radio was so good! (Quite a lot of you, I guess.) Oh, and I also made sure to say that Henry James, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost simply couldn’t have been great writers without coming to England…
I've been doing this kind of thing for a long time. At this point, I don't have many "I can't keep up" days, but Henry and becca were so smart and and supple and funny that I felt like a donkey at Churchill Downs. (Ascot to you, Henry.) The episode is available on all known podcast platforms including one specifically serving the heptapod community from "Arrival."
I am a long-time listener to the Colin McEnroe Show, starting from when I lived up in Connecticut but continuing on in Pennsylvania, where we now live, on my iPad podcasts app. I am likely biased, but the CMS is the gold standard for podcasts, particularly for wide-ranging discussions of topics one may not have known one was interested in prior to listening.