Eminent Americans

Damon Linker is back on the pod to talk about another former guest, the notorious R.O.D., Ray Oliver Dreher Jr. — i.e. Rod Dreher, one of the more fascinating, tragic, and infuriating writers of the Christian right over the last few decades.Linker and Dreher first met back when Linker, who is now a man of the solid center-left, was a conservative and an editor at the Catholic conservative magazine First Things. They bonded over their shared horror at the Catholic priest abuse scandal, a lot of details of which were unfolding at the time, and also over their shared frustration with various figures on the Catholic right, including some important people at First Things, who seemed to be in some kind of denial about the severity of the scandal, or if not in denial about the severity of it then intent on shifting as much blame as possible away from the Catholic Church and onto other folks or forces.The two remained friends over the next decade and a half, even as both of them went through various evolutions and migrations. Linker migrated towards the left, although not too far to the left, and Dreher went through a series of shifts, or perhaps repetitions, ever in search of some kind of structure or vessel or institution to contain or pacify his various aspirations, contradictions, and demons.A few years ago they broke, as Dreher has broken with many former friends and comrades over the decades, over what Linker would characterize as Dreher’s extremism, though they’ve been in touch a bit more recently in the aftermath of Dreher’s public denunciations of the right’s tolerance of anti-Semites within its ranks.In a recent essay, Linker writes of Dreher:I’ve written enough posts about Rod Dreher down through the years that I could almost dedicate a stand-alone section of this newsletter to him. (That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Here is the most recent post, from just a few months ago, in which he plays an important part.) When I write something on him, my most engaged readers usually respond in comments that they used to admire Dreher and read him fruitfully but that at some point he became a reactionary and racist crank they could no longer abide. I’ve had periods when I’ve felt like that. But I keep coming back to him, even as he’s drifted further and further away from the (perhaps idiosyncratic) skeptical and pessimistic liberalism I affirm in my work.One reason why I keep coming back to Rod is that I know him personally, we developed a friendship nearly a quarter century ago, and I don’t believe in dropping friends for political reasons. There are limits to that, of course. (A friend who began telling me Adolf Hitler made a lot of good points in Mein Kampf would no longer get invited over to dinner.) But I try as best I can to exemplify the ancient virtue of liberality in my dealings with people. That means demonstrating generosity and openness to difference.But it wouldn’t be entirely honest to suggest I remain drawn to Rod purely out of a principled commitment to tolerate a longstanding friend who holds views with which I sharply disagree. The truth is that I feel like I “get” him on a deep, spiritual level.I don’t feel like I get Dreher on a spiritual level, but I do feel like I perceive him insightfully, from the outside, on a psychological level, and though my perceptions and Linker’s don’t perfectly align, they end up proving (as you’ll appreciate it you listen to our conversation) quite complementary.For both of us, Dreher is such a compellingly open wound of a person. He’s endlessly vulnerable, incredibly affable in one-on-one interactions (as I learned when I did my interview with him), reliably hysterical and apocalyptic when he’s dealing with the broad sweep of things, and also very principled in his idiosyncratic way, unable to gloss over the sins of his own side, in the name of unity, when they conflict with deeply held values of his. This all is, in other words, primo Eminent Americans content, and it was a pleasure to have Linker back on for it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

On this special Christmas episode of the podcast, my 9-year-old son Gideon interviews me for a school assignment about my writing, my day job, and my theories on why I’m an interesting person. He’s hoping there will be comments, so if you have any thoughts please share them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This is part two of my two-part episode on Terry Gross. In part one, which was a paid episode, I talked to Sarah Hepola, Jason Thurlkill, and Meghan Daum about Terry Gross, what makes her great, and who should replace her whenever she chooses to retire. On this episode, which is a freebie, I talk to Mark Oppenheimer, Mike Pesca, and Jesse Adams/The Ivy Exile.Aside from being my brother, Mark Oppenheimer is host of his own podcast, the Arc podcast, or Arc with Mark, which is the flagship podcast of the magazine he edits. He is also the author of Judy Blume: A Life, the forthcoming biography of Judy Blume, which drops in March of next year. Mike Pesca is the host of The Gist, the longest running daily news podcast in history, and its affiliated Substack, The Gist List. He has two other, non-daily podcasts: Funny You Should Mention, in which he talks to stand up comedians, and Not Even Mad, which is dedicated to “joyful disagreement.” He is the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History, which came out in 2018. Jesse Adams is the author of The Ivy Exile Substack, and a writer for, among other publications, the Washington Examiner and the New York Post. Thanks to all my guests, and listeners, for joining me in this endeavor. I have no immediate plans to do another special episode, but this felt like a success to me, so I’m sure at some point I’ll do it again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

The text for today’s episode is Conversations with Kiese Laymon, which is a new anthology of interviews with Laymon. My guests are Laymon himself, , a previous guest on the podcast and one of the best nonfiction writers of my generation, and the editor of the book, Constance Bailey.Laymon’s memoir Heavy, which came out in 2018, was #60 on the New York Times list of the best hundred books of the 21st Century, and that really understates its brilliance. It’s a pretty amazing book, which you should read. He is also the author of the novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He has a new children’s book out this year, City Summer, Country Summer, and is scheduled to have another memoir out next year, which is provisionally titled Good God. Constance Bailey is an assistant professor of African American literature and folklore at Georgia State University and, like Laymon, a native of Mississippi, though neither of them lives there now. Bailey’s in Atlanta and Laymon, who did go back home for a number of years to teach at Old Miss, is now in Houston, where he has an endowed chair of English and creative writing at Rice University.We talk about the origins of the book, both in terms of how Bailey sold it, as a new installment in part of the University of Mississippi Press’s storied “Literary Conversation” series, and why it was so appealing for Laymon to sign on (the series, as we learn in the conversation, was a meaningful influence on his development and self-conception as a young writer).We talk a lot about Mississippi itself and how it’s affected both of their lives and writing. We talk about race, money, writing, speaking, and what it means to perform for white dollars. It’s a good conversation—such a good conversation, in fact, that if anyone ever plans to do another collection of interviews with Kiese, they should let me know and I will send them the transcript of this conversation and give them permission to include it in their collection. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

I invited Alex Perez and Ross Barkan to join me for this episode of the podcast because I’d seen both of them write essays or posts recently reflecting on their days as baseball players.Ross, as you’ll hear, topped out as a decent high school player. Alex was recruited to play for a top college team, and for a while had not implausible dreams of playing professionally.Both have experienced an intimate relationship between baseball and their lives and identities as writers.We talk about that. We also talk about the locker room culture and camaraderie of sports teams in general, its complicated set of pros and cons. We talk about the rival cultures of sports and literature, and how class status and mores play out in these two domains.One of my old friends who listens to the show said to me once that it’s all really just about men and masculinity. I don’t think that’s quite true, but it’s not totally untrue either. I could easily assemble a playlist of episodes of the podcast that deal either explicitly or heavily implicitly with the topic, and this one would certainly be on it.Ross is a writer and author who writes most often for New York magazine and also frequently for the New York Times Magazine. He is the founder and co-editor of the Substack native publication The Metropolitan Review, and his latest books are a novel, Glass Century, and a nonfiction work, Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics. He’s working on a book about presumptive New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.Alex is an associate editor at Panamerica Books, which is the new publishing imprint of County Highway. He’s also an editor for Real Clear Books, and has written for Tablet, County Highway, Compact, and other places. My opening anointment of him as an eminent America “by the power vested in me by the white women of publishing,” is a reference to a notorious interview he did with the Hobart Review (which I would link to except that it’s been taken down from their site) that featured a great deal of his unvarnished thoughts on issues of race, gender, and class in publishing. It led to a total meltdown of that journal as well as the creation of a general aura around Alex as a kind of barbarian of the literary scene.It’s a fun conversation. Hope you enjoy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.comOne of the essays in my private canon of great essays that no one else seems to have read is philosopher Nancy Bauer’s essay “Pornutopia,” which first ran in the winter 2007 issue of N+1 and then was included in Bauer’s 2015 book How to Do Things With Pornography.I don’t talk much about my enthusiasm for this essay because it’s embarrassing. You can’t r…

My guest on the show today is Brady Dale, crypto reporter for Axios and author of the 2023 biography of Sam Bankman-Fried, SBF: How The FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy.Our topic, as you may have guessed, is crypto. And more broadly: what are the ideologies and ideas swirling around the technology of cryptocurrency. I just re-listened to the conversation, and I think it ended up being a really good, smart but not too technical primer on crypto in general.I used Brady, in a sense, to answer all my questions about what crypto is, who some of the key players are, what the utopian aspirations around it were, and whether any of them survive to the present. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

My guest on the show today is John Pistelli, proprietor of the Grand Hotel Abyss Substack newsletter and its affiliated lecture course, The Invisible College. John is also the author of the novel Major Arcana, which was originally serialized on Substack. It was then picked up and republished by Belt Publishing, an indie press (now under the auspices of Arcadia, a larger indie press) founded to promote voices from the Rust Belt. We talk a lot of about John’s novel, which I enjoyed immensely, but we talk more about what the novel represents, and has led to, in terms of the arc of John's career and his public reputation. In a very modest way, he's blown up over the last year or two. He's one of the presiding sages of Substack. He's been mentioned, mostly favorably, in the New Yorker. He's been criticized respectfully in the Wall Street Journal and somewhat derisively in Compact magazine. I ask him: What has that felt like? Is there discomfort in being the center of some attention when his sense of himself as a literary figure was forged as someone on the margins. Is he enjoying the attention? What does he make of the criticism he’s received? What was it like to travel to New York to launch the book? Was it as romantic as he made it sound? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe