A leftist's guide to the conservative movement, one podcast episode at a time, with co-hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy">Patreon</a> to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam gab about "The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V8Yg4aPOZc">new PBS documentary</a> on William F. Buckley Jr., which features Matt Sitman (!) as a talking head — along with a rogue's gallery of KYE friends and former guests: Perlstein, Tanenhaus, Tait, Gage, Burns, the whole gang... What do we make of the doc? Is it a whitewash? Is it too credulous about the conservative movement? Does it "get" Buckley, the man? (Does anyone?) And what does Buckley have to do with Donald Trump? This was a lot of fun. Good ol' KYE classico.Sources Cited:Barak Goodman, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V8Yg4aPOZc">The Incomparable Mr. Buckley</a>," PBS (2024)Rick Perlstein, "<a href="https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-17-an-implausible-mr-buckley/">An Implausible Mr. Buckley</a>," American Prospect, April 17, 2024.Alexander Chee, "<a href="https://longreads.com/2015/06/18/mr-and-mrs-b/">Mr. and Mrs. B</a>," Apology Magazine, Jan 1, 2014.Ross Douthat, "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/02/-were-on-our-way-home-now-duckie/306726/">'We're On Our Way Home Now, Duckie!'</a>" Atlantic, Feb 2008Nicholas Buccola, "<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181547/the-fire-is-upon-us">The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America</a>," Princeton U Press, Oct 2019.Sam Adler-Bell, "<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/165580/scoundrel-book-review-buckley-edgar-smith-conservative-murderer">The Conservative and the Murderer</a>," New Republic, March 7, 2022Previously on KYE:<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/buckley-vs-vidal-38683992?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link">Buckley vs. Vidal </a>(2020)<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/buckley-for-w-55250678?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link">Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus) </a>(2021)<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/conservative-and-66207484?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link">The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman)</a> (2022)<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/in-search-of-90911738?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link">In Search of Anti-Semitism (w/ John Ganz)</a> (2023)

Know Your Enemy

The Inconclusive Mr. Buckley [Teaser]

This conversation is a little different. We wanted to take a break from the election-year political jousting to talk to the poet Christian Wiman about Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, one of the most singular books published in recent memory—part memoir, part commonplace book, part poetry collection. As with his previous My Bright Abyss, Wiman, more than any other contemporary Christian writer, manages to shake off our culture's desiccated religious tropes to write and talk about matters of ultimate concern in ways that are bracing, even exhilarating. How does poetry tap into reality, or, even better, what does poetry reveal about it? How does he think about the relationship between "life and art"? Why does he resist "Saul on the Road to Damascus"-style accounts of religious conversation? Why did he almost not write about his cancer diagnosis in My Bright Abyss? Why might postmodernism be good for religion, actually? How does the love of another person connect to the love of God? And how does any of this matter for how we live? We take up these questions and more.Sources:Christian Wiman, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374603458/zeroatthebone">Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair</a> (2023)— <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374534370/mybrightabyss">My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer</a> (2013)— <a href="https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/ambition-and-survival-by-christian-wiman/">Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet</a> (2004)— <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466878228/everyriventhing">Every Riven Thing: Poems</a> (2014)— "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57864/the-preacher-addresses-the-seminarians">The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians</a>" in <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374535704/onceinthewest">Once in the West</a> (2014)Matthew Sitman, "<a href="https://dish.andrewsullivan.com/deepdish/longform/finding-the-words-for-faith/">Finding the Words for Faith: Meet America's Most Important Christian Writer</a>," The Dish, Sept 3, 2014Casey Cep, "<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/a-poets-faith">How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith</a>," New Yorker, Dec 4, 2023Andre Dubus, "<a href="https://abctheology.pbworks.com/f/FathersStory.pdf">A Father's Story</a>," in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/43366/selected-stories-of-andre-dubus-by-andre-dubus/">Selected Stories of Andre Dubus</a> (1996)Simone Weil, <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9780803298002">Gravity and Grace</a> (1947)Robert Bringhurst, "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48730/these-poems-she-said">These Poems, She Said</a>,"  from The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-1982. Copper Canyon Press (1982)...and don't forget to subscribe to <a href="https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy">Know Your Enemy</a> for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Against Despair (w/ Christian Wiman)

Historian Ronnie Grinberg's new book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193090/write-like-a-man">Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals</a> couldn't be better "Know Your Enemy" fodder. (Main characters include: Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, Diana and Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and Mary McCarthy!) These writers, Grinberg shows, built and sustained a novel, secular, Jewish, and masculine concept of the intellectual life, an ideology that would profoundly affected the development of  Cold War liberalism, neo-conservativism, Zionism, and right-wing reaction against feminism, gay rights, and black power. As we discovered in this conversation, it's impossible to make sense of the creative and scholarly contributions of the New York Intellectuals — good and bad — without gender as an essential lens. Moreover, Grinberg shows how scholars can easily misapprehend the deeper motivations for neoconservative reaction (among those such as Podhoretz and Decter) if they are not attentive to the centrality of gender, sexuality, and patriarchy in these thinkers' work.  Further Reading:Ronnie Grinberg, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193090/write-like-a-man">Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals</a> (Mar 2024)Sam Adler-Bell, "<a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-new-york-intellectuals-were-a-boys-club?sra=true">The New York Intellectuals Were a Boys' Club</a>," Chronicle of Higher Education, Apr 10, 2024Matthew Sitman, "<a href="https://sitman.substack.com/p/midge-decter-to-howard-meyer-april?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2">Midge Decter to Howard Meyer, April 15, 1987</a>," Friends and Enemies, Apr 8, 2024B.D. McClay, "<a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/course-they-hated-her">Of Course They Hated Her: The Uncomfortable Honesty of Mary McCarthy</a>," Commonweal, Dec 18, 2017William Barrett, <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Truants-Adventures-Among-Intellectuals-William-Barrett/30388251857/bd">The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals</a> (1982)Mary McCarthy, <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30615873310&dest=usa&ref_=ps_ggl_18382194370&cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade0to10-_-product_id=COM9780156372084USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjwoPOwBhAeEiwAJuXRh6GkgaJl6I13S1Rb1vqnvG5fvR2hs20tUzb__cO1MvxyVFxasolbAhoCVmAQAvD_BwE">The Group</a> (1963)Tess Slesinger, <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-unpossessed">The Unpossessed</a> (1934)Norman Podhoretz, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Breaking_Ranks.html?id=adKwAAAAIAAJ">Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir</a> (1979)Irving Howe, <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/world-of-our-fathers-the-journey-of-the-east-european-jews-to-america-and-the-life-they-found-and-made_irving-howe/400006/item/515050/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=high_vol_midlist_standard_shopping_retention&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=666159745081&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwoPOwBhAeEiwAJuXRh539272T_0bdnmgiFbZitRGwBP_oSB2DIG4V84yX67XRWRE994j_NhoCxtAQAvD_BwE#idiq=515050&edition=404355">World of Our Fathers</a> (1976)Further Viewing:D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus,"<a href="https://www.criterionchannel.com/town-bloody-hall">Town Bloody Hall</a>" (1979)Further Listening:KYE, "<a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-midge-decter-anti-feminist-cold-warrior/">Midge Decter, Anti-Feminist Cold Warrior (w/ Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub</a>," Jul 28, 2023KYE, "<a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-13-what-happened-to-norman-with-david-klion/">What Happened to Norman (w/ David Klion)</a>," Jan 16, 2020

"Write Like a Man" (w/ Ronnie Grinberg)

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy">Patreon</a> to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy It was inevitable that Know Your Enemy would eventually discuss Arguing the World, the 1998 documentary about four Jewish intellectuals who emerged from the alcoves and arguments of City College in the 1930s and influenced American politics and letters for much of the rest of the twentieth century, and beyond: Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer.Why now? Most of all, it's the kind of documentary we love—the personal rivalries, the gossip, the self-conscious intellectuality, and the, well, arguments. But we'll also be publishing an episode next week with historian Ronnie Grinberg about her new book, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193090/write-like-a-man">Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals</a>, and while the overlap in subject matter is not perfect, this documentary would make for a great primer for listeners (since we know you're the kind of listeners who do not despise homework). It's also an excellent chance to revisit the history of the left, old and new, and their fraught relationship with each other; to consider the place of intellectuals and thinking in a time of urgent action; and, as ever, to talk about the ways the subjects of Arguing the World might fit into America's right turn and "how we got here."Watch:Arguing the World, dir. Joseph Dorman (1998); <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBKQD_xWchU&pp=ygURYXJndWluZyB0aGUgd29ybGQ%3D">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/arguing/">PBS</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129758/">IMDB</a>Read:Irving Howe, "<a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/irving-howe-voice-still-heard-this-age-of-conformity/">This Age of Conformity</a>," Partisan Review, Jan-Feb 1954Irving Howe, "<a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/socialism-and-liberalism-articles-of-conciliation/">Socialism and Liberalism: Articles of Conciliation?</a>" Dissent, Winter 1977Irving Kristol, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/23/archives/memoirs-of-a-trotskyist-memoirs.html">Memoirs of a Trotskyist</a>,” NYTimes, Jan 23, 1977

Matthew Sitman

Know Your Enemy by Matthew Sitman

Episodes