Imaginary interviews #1
Great question, Ezra
AMY POEHLER: So you turn in your paper for English 123, and you know—let me get this right—you cite the wrong source for your point about chiasmus in Robert Alter’s translation of Genesis? I would die!
ME: I did! I literally did. Keeled over right there in the classroom.
AMY POEHLER: The professor was like—she like—
ME: “Is there a doctor in the house?”
AMY POEHLER: “Oh wait a minute, I have my Ph.D!”
[Laughter]
AMY POEHLER: Then you died immediately.
ME: Of course. What, the prof is gonna revive me by explicating Milton??
DAX SHEPARD: So you wrote book reviews when you were only 27? That’s amazing, dude.
ME: Thank you. Yeah, it’s just the sort of thing I was into. Didn’t think much of it.
DAX SHEPARD: When I was 27, I couldn’t even view books, let alone re-view them. That’s how much I was struggling.
ME: Addiction’s a beast, man.
DAX SHEPARD: Oh, it wasn’t about substances. It was my glasses! I couldn’t find them, because of the—well, yes, because of the substances, yes.
ME: Jeez.
ME: So why are we here at this junkyard?
EZRA KLEIN: I wanted to show you this 1987 Datsun. Looks rusted, huh? Unusable. Well, what do you say if we . . .
ME: Oh man, you’re gonna say it!
EZRA KLEIN: STEELMAN IT!
ME: OOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
ME: So the disenchantment that Taylor speaks of is unspeakable of prior to 1848, but—and this is the important part—it is not quite unthinkable.
STAVROS HALKIAS: Well hold on just a fuckin’ minute right there. You’re saying Taylor makes a distinction between the unspeakable and the unthinkable. But Wittgenstein’s whole point is that the unspeakable is the unthinkable! Like, come on!
ME: You’re right. You’re right!
STAVROS HALKIAS: And you know what else Wittgenstein would say? “Let’s get day drunk on some Twisted Tea!” That’s right, when it’s time to pass over that of which you cannot speak—KEEP IT TWISTED!
ROSS DOUTHAT: Bro, hit this. It’s the bomb.
ME: [vapes]
ROSS DOUTHAT: You see?
ME: Oh man, yeah! Yes!
ROSS DOUTHAT: That’ll make you want to immanentize the eschaton!