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Home » Lessons of intellectual life from a career in publishing
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Lessons of intellectual life from a career in publishing

Paul E.By Paul E.October 17, 2024No Comments7 Mins Read
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Steve Wasserman is the publisher of Heyday. He was previously deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial page and opinion section, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, editorial director of New Republic Books, and Hill & Co., Farrar, Strauss & – Served as publisher and editorial director of One. Mr. Giroux is a reporter for Noonday Press, editorial director of Times Books at Random House, and editor-in-chief of Yale University Press. He was also a partner at the literary agency Neerim & Williams, where he represented writers such as Christopher Hitchens, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Scheer, and David Thomson.

What is the big idea?

Steve Wasserman, publisher of Heyday and a leading cultural essayist and social commentator, explains how his travels through the world of books, ideas, and activities have led to an empathetic I will talk about how it led to an awakening of my sensibilities. Over the decades, he has befriended and met many great people, including Orson Welles, Barbra Streisand, Jackie Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Christopher Hitchens. In his personal reflections on such intellectual intersections, his deft maneuvering within the rapidly changing publishing industry, and the breadth of his passions, Wasserman brings vital light to a vivid mind. I’m exploring.

Below, Steve shares five key insights from his new book, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie: A Memoir in Essays. Listen to the audio version read by Steve himself on the Next Big Idea app.

https://cdn.nextbigideaclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/16181027/BB_SteveWasserman_Mix.mp3

1. Live to the fullest: It would be a mistake not to.

The people I most admired and learned from all seemed to share one quality. They were hungry for adventure, endlessly curious, and knew that the best way to be smart was to surround yourself with people smarter than you. They were omnivorous about politics and literature, and knew in their bones that they had to keep an open mind, but not so open that their brains would fall out.

When I think of the many people I have had the good fortune to meet and work with, I think of their lust for life, their pursuit of aesthetic bliss, their aversion to snobbery, their love of learning, their ethical and aesthetic shallowness. I remember the opposition to. , an obsession with being an adult, and an aversion to suffering and death.

2. Stay young by rejecting cynicism.

I spent the summer of 1974 living in Susan Sontag’s Manhattan penthouse, Jasper Johns’ former studio. Her walls were lined with 8,000 books, which she called her “personal search system.” I had just graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and was hired to study the effects of what we now call “globalism,” but which many of us at the time denounced as “imperialism.” I worked with a writer in New York.

“Her walls were lined with 8,000 books, which she called her ‘personal search system.'”

As I read in Susan’s apartment, my neck almost hurt, and I realized that my real education was about to begin. For some completely strange reason, I found myself drawn to the four blue-backed volumes of the diary of the famous French writer Andre Gide. I had never read his book. These, like the other books in Susan’s library, were filled in with her light pencil underlining. I came across words that I will never forget. “When I wake up, I will be in old age and will no longer be filled with anger at the status quo.”

3. Stay within your lane.

We live in a world that increasingly seeks to stifle ambition, deny imagination, and deny possibility. Thinking in blood, remaining hostage to superstition and theocratic models of governance, defending rigid ideas of identity politics all deny the essential American dream of self-invention. It seems to me.

I’ve always been a fan of people who break down class bonds and try to make race and gender feel less stifling. I agree with the late Christopher Hitchens, who always affirmed and sought to reaffirm the ideas of secularism, reason, liberalism, internationalism and solidarity.

4. Don’t be afraid of challenges.

When did “hardness” become suspect in American culture, widely ridiculed as anti-democratic, and contemptuously dismissed as evidence of so-called elitism? When a work of art, book, or film is not in some way immediately “understood” or “accessible” to many people, it is often derided as esoteric, esoteric, or even somehow un-American. A culture full of smooth, familiar consumption creates rigid mental habits and immature concepts in people. They are irritated by difficulties and have become accustomed to so much pabulum provided by pandering, invertebrate media that they experience difficulties not just as “difficult” but as insults. .

The exercise of cultural authority and artistic, literary, and aesthetic discrimination is seen as evidence of snobbery, entitlement, and privilege being lorded over ordinary people. Perverse populism is increasingly transforming our culture, consigning some works of art to a realm that is somehow rarer and less accessible to the wider public. In this way, choice is limited and the tyranny that appeals to the masses in the name of democracy is deepened.

“A culture full of smooth, familiar consumption creates rigid mental habits and immature concepts in people.”

The ideal of serious enjoyment of something that is not immediately understandable is rare in American life. constantly under siege. He is the subject of scorn from both the left and the right. The enjoyment of critical thinking should not be seen as belonging to the domain of the elite. These are the birthrights of all citizens. Because such enjoyment is at the heart of literacy, and without it democracy itself is stunted. Now more than ever, we need to protect the eros of hardship.

5. Cultivate the sublimity of contradiction.

Oscar Wilde once said that he doesn’t trust anyone who doesn’t have the word “utopia” in their dictionary. As he grew older, he realized that if by utopia he meant a republic where, on the surface, all is well, all needs are met, all people are happy and satisfied, and all social contradictions are resolved. If so, I have come to believe that it is wrong. Such a place has never existed. And as a great philosopher once said, as long as our species is composed of the broken wood of humanity, it will never exist.

We engage in disagreements, disagreements, debates, and intense intellectual battles with the confidence that our ideas become sharper and come into sharper relief when we receive opposition and counterargument. Even if there is violence, we should strive to welcome it in a way that is not violent. I therefore especially admire critics and crusaders like Susan Sontag and Christopher Hitchens.

It didn’t really matter whether I agreed with this or that opinion. Most importantly, I sensed it in the impressions of their writing and the development of their arguments, that I, like all my lucky readers, was being pushed to think more rigorously, seriously, and intensely. That was it. There seemed to be no distinction between intellect and heart in their work. Their example encouraged me to live a life filled with curiosity, cynicism, debunking, and controversy. Their joy was unparalleled.

To hear the audio version read by author Steve Wasserman, download the Next Big Idea app now.



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