Is Solitude Over? Is Thinking Dead? A Conversation with William Deresiewicz

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Almost two years ago, author William Deresiewicz visited The Unspeakable to talk about his book The Death Of The Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. It was an insightful and moving conversation about the near-impossibility of surviving as a working artist in a "creator economy." Many listeners wrote to Meghan to express their gratitude as well as their sorrow over the hard truths Bill laid out. Now Bill is back to talk about his new book, a collection of essays entitled The Death Of Solitude. The essays span more than a decade and cover everything from education to technology to friendship. Bill talks about why he wrote them as well as what it was like to revisit the work when the culture has changed so radically in such a short time. He also reflects on the intellectual shifts he's experienced in the last few years as he discovered the world of heterodox podcasts and dissident journalists. A longtime contributor to outlets like The Chronicle of Higher Education and Harper's, he's now begun writing for outlets like Quillette and Unherd. How did that happen? (Meghan may be partly to blame.)

Guest Bio:

William Deresiewicz taught at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008. He is the author of the best-selling book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. He spoke with Meghan about his previous book The Death of the Artist on the November 9, 2020 edition of this podcast. His new book The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society, was just published by Henry Holt.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If anything, writers have more of an obligation to not be political, in the sense, to be
0:10.5	counter political or trans-political, meaning to remind us that there's something else than
0:17.6	this fucking politics that we're all being asphyxiated by.
0:22.6	And this idea that, like, you shouldn't write about the personal at a time like this.
0:27.8	It's like, it's always the time to make art.
0:31.8	And it's always the time to protest against injustice.
0:35.0	And one thing doesn't negate the other.
0:43.2	Yeah. to protest against injustice. And one thing doesn't negate the other. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. Season three, we are back from summer break.
0:52.2	I was going to wait until Labor Day, but I decided to come back a week
0:55.1	early because I just couldn't stay away. I hope you have all enjoyed your summers. I have been
1:01.4	cooking up a lot of new projects that I want to tell you about. The voice you just heard is that of
1:07.5	William Derezowitz, who is this week's guest. He's a returning guest. And this is a kind of wild
1:13.5	interview. But before we get to that, I want to explain a couple of things that are changing about the show.
1:20.3	Actually, not really about the show, but about the way you can support it. As you probably know,
1:26.0	we've built over the last few years a really healthy
1:28.9	support on Patreon. At the risk of ruining that health, I have decided to move the locus
1:36.9	of that support over to Substack, to the Substack platform. I think it'll be a better forum for
1:43.4	comments and for communication with me and
1:45.9	just community building in general. If you have been a Patreon supporter, you've probably
1:51.6	already been notified about this change. I'm making it as painless as possible for you. And
1:58.7	needless to say, I'm really grateful to you for coming along with me.
2:04.7	So you can find this new stuff. You can find everything at meagendowm.com. And if you can't
	...

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