Recommends Sexual Personae.

Transcript context

…Is there anyone left writing serious books? I’m trying to think who has written a serious book I’m interested in right now. Listen, there’s no one I would say, “Oh, so-and-so’s book is coming.” What? They’re dead. The people who I admire are long dead. Unfortunately, it’s a terrible destruction. My work looks very strange and idiosyncratic because I’m alone. I’m alone and all the people who should have been writing interesting, quirky books, as I do, are dead or their brains were destroyed by LSD. It’s one or the other. I knew so many, to me, brilliant minds in graduate school and early in my teaching career at Bennington College, really brilliant minds. I had great hopes for them and for what they would do. Then they couldn’t get anything done. For whatever reason, they couldn’t. They didn’t have the — I don’t know what. They didn’t have the resilience to continue against obstacles. When their work would get rejected, they would become discouraged and would stop. Rejection simply infuriates me. I’ll say, “Well, I’ll have my revenge on you in the afterlife.” I’ll be around, and you’ll be dead. I don’t know, it’s an Italian thing. What can I say? [laughter] This is Sexual Personae, your best known book, which I recommend to everyone, if you haven’t already read it. It took 20 years.…

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