[Marxism] David Brooks' comeradely defense of Tom Wolfe's latest offering

["Charlie Parks" <jcparks5550@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A brief note for those of you who live outside the States and are blissfully
unfamiliar with the politics of our atrocious "newspaper of record," the New
York Times (redeemed marginally by the presence of Frank Rich and Bob
Herbert on its staff): the Times picked up MacNeil-Lehrer mainstay David
Brooks as a columnist a few months back, presumably as a more "moderate"
rightwing columnist to fill what they no doubt saw to be the yawning gap in
the peculiar ideological continuum of the Times's Op/Ed page, between the
center-right "liberal" Thomas Friedman and the uber-right "libertarian
conservative" Bill Safire, the latter of whom likes to use scare-quotes
whenever he refers to the Israeli "settlers."

In his opinion latest piece, Brooks attempts to defend his rightwing comrade
Tom Wolfe's latest novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons." I leave it to you,
Marxmail comrades, to decide whether Brook's defense actually serves to
dissuade you even further from checking out this novel (as it did me).
Brooks celebrates the novel for its critique of the current state of the
university. Okay, I can see a number of things about the current state of
the university that a good social realist novel could tackle, such as the
full-throttle corporate invasion of it in the last two decades, not to
mention the modern research university's all-too-cosy relationship with the
DoD and other private defense contractors, just to name a few. But
noooo....It seems that Brooks and Wolfe have entirely different "problems"
on their minds. Among other things, Brooks applauds the way 'Wolfe sprinkles
his book with observations about how [....] sophisticated people now reject
the idea of absolute evil, about a hypermaterialistic neuroscience professor
who can use the word "soul" only when it is in quotation marks.' Yes,
and?--CP

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/opinion/16brooks.html



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