Ken, I finally started his book. Have read about the first 60 pages. I tend to read stuff in chunks. He starts with an introductory broad sweep of who he is as a kind of brainy psychological type and as a Jew, and how as both he fits into big movements in America occurring during his growing up and then early adult years.
I found his self preoccupation and self inflation striking but only mildly irritating.
His autobiographical sketching of his Jewish childhood was not uninteresting.
But then when he traces his time at Brandeis and then at Harvard, which is where I left off for today, it reads mostly like a long series of name checking/dropping. It’s probably a little interesting to people familiar with the names in the way a gossip column might be. But to the lay reader I can’t see what interest it would have.
Plus, he writes that someone said he’s a skimmer not a plumber. IE he skims the main points but doesn’t dive in.
Well, so far I’d maybe give him a gentleman’s C- for skimming.
He pays the ideas of the people he mentions only brief lip service, when he pays any attention to their ideas at all.
True, he gives Marcuse some intellectual time of day, noting his attempt to synthesize Marxism and Freud. But it’s incredibly superficial. I’ve just read an absorbing although short account of Marcuse’s ideas and as MC Hammer said, Peretz “can’t touch this.”
Peretz much more typically is interested in giving us biographical factoids about the names he checks/drops.
I’ll keep reading.
I’ll keep reading.
Hey, I like gossip as much as the next guy.
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