Debate Topic II
Resolved: that most writers for The American Scene would rather be Alan Tate than Milton Friedman, while for most readers of The American Scene it’s the other way around.
Discuss.
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Resolved: that most writers for The American Scene would rather be Alan Tate than Milton Friedman, while for most readers of The American Scene it’s the other way around.
Discuss.
Commenting is closed for this article.
I’d rather be Alan King than Milton Berle.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 04:43 PM · #
Well, I must say it has never occurred to me to want to be Alan Tate. Robinson Jeffers, maybe, Wallace Stevens, definitely. But Alan Tate?
— Jim · Sep 25, 04:57 PM · #
Jim, preface with “If given the choice…”
Noah, are there any TAS writers who have produced any culturally significant creative artifacts, ie novels, collections of poetry, records, movies, not critiques or histories? Reihan’s raps and iPhone doodles aside, I am unaware of anything other than commentary. And you know how that goes; Bono wants his political commentary taken seriously; Billy Bob Thorton gets cheesed if you mention his acting career while he’s trying to be a bluegrass musician…
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 05:14 PM · #
Is Alan Tate still alive? If so, put me down for “would rather be Alan Tate than Milton Friedman”.
— Jaybird · Sep 25, 05:24 PM · #
Alan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tate_%28footballer%29
or Allen?
http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/poets/s_z/tate/tate.htm
— David · Sep 25, 05:48 PM · #
“Resolved: that most writers for The American Scene would rather be Alan Tate than Milton Friedman, while for most readers of The American Scene it’s the other way around.”
I don’t know if this is pretentious, offensive, or both.
— mike farmer · Sep 25, 06:16 PM · #
“I don’t know if this is pretentious, offensive, or both.”
My first blush read of Noah’s premise was, “TAS writers and readers are unfulfilled, aspirational assholes, but of two converse types.”
But that’s not a very nice thing to say to your friends and fellows, so I’m pretty sure Noah meant something else.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 06:25 PM · #
It’s also not something you can really debate, so much as survey…I mean it either is or is not true.
— pc · Sep 25, 06:25 PM · #
Assuming you mean the poet, and not the footballer, I don’t think it’s very shocking that writers would rather be writers than economists.
— Sunny · Sep 25, 06:40 PM · #
I guess I can safely say I don’t want to be either. I wish we had better choices.
— mike farmer · Sep 25, 06:41 PM · #
Yeah, seriously, which Alan Tate? The English football defender? The late ’80’s award-winning Australian journalist? The American poet whose name is spelt differently?
As to Tony’s comment, I know that I’m an unfulfilled, aspirational asshole, but I don’t care to speak for any other readers. And for all you know, one or more of the Alan Tates actually is a TAS reader!
— Ethan C. · Sep 25, 06:46 PM · #
Personally I’d rather be Alan Friedman
— Jaldhar · Sep 25, 07:10 PM · #
Tony,
I’ve written a number of short and medium-length plays, a few of which I even like. Of course, none have ever been published. And James has recorded a fair bit of really amazing music — though little of it has had wide exposure or distribution. But the closest thing I’m aware of from any frequent contributor is Reihan’s co-authorship of Grand New Party, a book not only of political and policy analysis, but of proposed solutions. It’s still founded in commentary, but it’s more than simple criticism.
— Peter Suderman · Sep 25, 08:25 PM · #
I don’t want to be Milton Friedman. I would like to be the kind of person who knows who Alan Tate is, but obviously I’m not.
— william randolph · Sep 25, 08:34 PM · #
And that’s sort of my point. It’s inevitable, perhaps even natural, that when someone achieves a certain level of success at one thing, they want recognition for another, ie “Yeah, I know I’ve made some movies, but did you know I’m an astute observer of the human condition? I’ll be lecturing at USC film school next month. Why don’t you come by, I can get you on the list…”
TAS writers are, by and large, of above average accomplishment for whatever place they are in their lives. So naturally they all want to be poets. (Or playwrites, or rock stars, or painters.) Could it be any other way?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 08:39 PM · #
Also, what the hell happened to JP’s mutton chops? Next thing you’ll tell me is Tom Wolfe isn’t wearing white suits anymore
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 08:44 PM · #
Could it be any other way? Maybe: the reverse
— James · Sep 25, 08:47 PM · #
Branching out into Punctation now, James?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 08:50 PM · #
If Alan Tate: Michael Torke as Milton Friedman: I don’t know, Michael Barone; then I would rather be Alan Tate.
— Blar · Sep 25, 09:14 PM · #
Tony, Maybe. But I’m not sure you’ve got your timeline or causality right. I wanted to be a playwright/screenwriter long before I wanted to be a journalist. But I could never see a path to actually doing that. So instead, I get to chronicle (and participate in) the real-life absurdities and problems of national politics, which, I think, play a lot like a dumber, more outrageous mix of Brecht and Beckett.
— Peter Suderman · Sep 25, 09:19 PM · #
I wanted to be Rock Star long before I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I never wanted to be an historian or commentator, yet here I am. I’ll see your Brecht and Brecht, and raise you a Jean-Paul Sartre.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 09:31 PM · #
I was actually a poet before I started commenting on politics. I never tried to publish, although the Buffalo Beat, a very small and insignificant publication in Buffalo, NY, saw my work and published a couple of my poems, and also a couple of poetry e-zines published some of work.
I haven’t written any poetry in 3 years now — I aspired to be a cross between John Ashbery and Wallace Stevens. I plan on making a Stevens comeback later in life. I always liked Tate, but most of the snooty poets in our online workshop thought he was more of a prose writer with line breaks. They thought the same thing about Ashbery — everywhere I go, I pick the wrong sides. I even have problems with Friedman because he was too much of a statist — I’m hopeless.
— mike farmer · Sep 25, 10:12 PM · #
What Peter said. The number of youthful politics/policy/journo professionals in DC who long to write or do something else is large enough to give one pause, for a variety of reasons.
— James · Sep 25, 10:20 PM · #
I just want to eat the perfect burrito.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 10:30 PM · #
@Peter. I am suggesting a timeline. Get back to me in 10-15 and see if you don’t agree. As to causality; no, I’m cautious about causality. Coincidence, maybe.
@JP Hmmm. When I was “youthful” I thought I was tremendously lucky to be doing what I was doing (I was apprenticed to a regional jack of all trades commercial photographer who was also a generous teacher and mentor.)
I will say that for a long time, back to adolescence at least, I have longed (and there’s no immodest way to say this,) to have my own unique wonderfulness recognized, acknowledged and celebrated. That longing had as much to do with my learning to play guitar as all of the genuine admiration I had for the musicians I admired; and is certainly as much a part of what drives me to make my movies as is my sincere belief that making and distributing my movies puts something of value into the world.
In that way perhaps I’m not so different from Glen Beck, except that maybe, just maybe I have a tad more self-awareness than he does. In Bill & Desiree Desiree talks about being “seen and heard” in a way that she’d never experienced until she met Bill, and that resonated with me. I know from my work as an interviewer that many (most?) people are not “seen and heard” nearly as much as they’d like to be, or even as much as they need to be.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 10:41 PM · #
“I just want to eat the perfect burrito.”
Yes, you are to ambition as Van Jones is to subtlety.
— mike farmer · Sep 25, 10:59 PM · #
So, um, does Noah mean that he thinks most of our readers would rather be Friedman than Tate, or that most readers wish the Scene writers preferred being Friedman to Tate? Because clearing that up would get us right back on track, I’m sure.
— Matt Frost · Sep 26, 01:39 AM · #
Peter:
I consider myself reasonably aware of writers and artists, etc. I will admit I don’t know Alan Tate or why you would want to be him.
After reading the comments I gather that he is a journalist extraordinaire, maybe something like John McPhee or Tom Wolfe. Or maybe he’s a great poet. After all, don’t all writers aspire to be poets?
And now I wholeheartedly agree with the point of your post. I would add that some of the writers at The American Scene not only want to be Alan Tate, they want to be “accepted as an equal” by someone like him, or Andrew Sullivan, or Chris Hitchens, etc…
I also think that given the Solomon’s choice between being a great writer and being wise, they’d choose—and in some cases have already chosen—being a great writer.
— jd · Sep 26, 01:40 AM · #
Actually, I was thinking of James Tate.
— mike farmer · Sep 26, 01:53 AM · #
“I also think that given the Solomon’s choice between being a great writer and being wise, they’d choose—and in some cases have already chosen—being a great writer.”
I’m not quite getting this. To me “Solomon’s choice” implies choosing between two things that are mutually exclusive. I’m having a hard time seeing “being wise” and “being a great writer” as being mutually exclusive; unless you’re saying some TASers have chosen a reckless path in service of being a great writer.
Can we do Rich or Famous? next, Noah?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 26, 02:13 AM · #
Allen Tate, the Southern Agrarian and New Critic?
I was assigned I’ll Take My Stand in a college course. The introduction is posted online here. I didn’t read Tate’s chapter (or, um, much of the other assigned reading…) but I think the introduction gives a good idea of what the Agrarians stood for. Given the reality of the Jim Crow South, I can’t muster much sympathy for their position.
I’m not much for New Criticism either, but then I’ve never really understood literary analysis. As for Tate’s poetry, I confess near-complete ignorance. We read Ode to the Confederate Dead in the course.
Yeah, out of my depth. Maybe he’s saying that taking up the cause of the dead Confederate soldiers, setting them front and center in one’s life, acting so that they will not have died in vain, is a fool’s errand; it is a denial of mortality itself, and so must fail.
— dj · Sep 26, 04:49 AM · #
To Noah’s question, both Tate and Friedman were political figures. Tate aspired, I would say, to capture reality with well-chosen words. His politics flowed from an aesthetic sense of the way things are and should be. From a purely logical point of view, his statements may have been little more than bare assertion; if they were persuasive, it was because they resonated with intuition and experience.
Friedman, by contrast, aimed to justify his politics with theory and argument. From my liberal point of view, it’s quite possible to accept his economic insights without accepting his political positions. His libertarianism carries for me a strong dose of Tate-style aesthetic justification. Still, it was clearly his project to build a sound logical basis for his convictions using the language of economics.
Someone who combined Friedman’s substantive views with Tate’s philosophical approach, loosely speaking, is Ayn Rand.
I would put most of the TAS writers on the side of Tate, with the big exception of Jim Manzi. He’s Friedman all the way. Harder to say with the commenters. Tony C. is with Tate. Freddie too, I think. Rortybomb, despite the Rorty, is with Friedman. Sanjay, I got no clue. I don’t comment much, but I would go with Friedman. If Tate seems to get the short end of the stick in my dichotomy, that’s why.
Any inaccuracies in my gloss on Tate and Friedman are due to the fact that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
— dj · Sep 26, 05:59 AM · #
I wanna be Larry Tate.
— Kate Marie · Sep 26, 08:00 AM · #
“Any inaccuracies in my gloss on Tate and Friedman are due to the fact that I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Luckily for you, accuracy and knowing what you are talking about have been dropped from modern commentary, as long as you make your points authoritatively.
— mike farmer · Sep 26, 10:42 AM · #
Luckily for you, accuracy and knowing what you are talking about have been dropped from modern commentary, as long as you make your points authoritatively.
You said that with great authority.
— Freddie · Sep 26, 02:37 PM · #
“You said that with great authority.”
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
— mike farmer · Sep 26, 03:11 PM · #
I’d rather be Roman Polanski than Sharon Tate.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 26, 04:24 PM · #
That’s the choice I’m getting at.
Perhaps the confusion is that the Solomon’s choice I’m referring to is not the one you’re thinking of. Sorry if I misled. Way before Solomon was king, when he was a very young man or maybe even a boy, he was given a chance to choose anything he wanted. He could have taken riches, power, being a great writer…anything. He chose wisdom. He received all the rest in more abundance than any king before or since (relative to the times).
So I think some of the writers here value a well-written sentence, paragraph, article, or book, more than wisdom.
It occurs to me that there’s some irony in the fact that Eric Hoffer, who is quoted at TAS most reverently, put writing a good sentence as the Holy Grail. I always thought that was kind of strange.
— jd · Sep 26, 05:05 PM · #
“It occurs to me that there’s some irony in the fact that Eric Hoffer, who is quoted at TAS most reverently, put writing a good sentence as the Holy Grail. I always thought that was kind of strange.”
This week has me thinking about Todd Skinner and Paul Piana’s first free ascent of the Salathe Wall in Yosemite. Sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 26, 06:25 PM · #
Tony, if I’m following you, given that two people are saying the same thing, then the one who says it most clearly, with the most brevity (or wit), is the one to admire and emulate. I agree with you. That person will probably become famous and rich.
All the rest will depend on Obama to make it fair.
— jd · Sep 26, 10:09 PM · #
I thought I was thinking about (reckless) devotion to a personal vision, not a desire for fame and/or fortune. (BTW: Most famous people are not rich; most rich people are not famous.)
But I can’t really tell anymore. I guess that’s why I was thinking about Todd and Paul.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 26, 10:29 PM · #
So 40 comments, and we’re still not even sure which Alan Tate we’re talking about? Some debate topic.
— Ethan C. · Sep 26, 10:29 PM · #
Noah sure knows how to moderate a fiery debate. They may be going to the policy of places like The New Majority where the writers don’t mix with the hoi polloi commenters.
— mike farmer · Sep 26, 10:40 PM · #
I hadn’t heard of Allen Tate before this post so, my case this certainly holds.
— Karl Smith · Sep 27, 02:29 AM · #