Notes on “Camp” (1964)
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Notes on “Camp” (1964)
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Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#2Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb
"I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “studies randomness” and came to engage me. When she discovered that I was a trader, she blurted out that she was “against the market system” and turned her back to me as I was in mid-sentence, just to humiliate me (note here that courtesy is an application of the Silver rule), while her female assistant gave me the look, as if I had been convicted of child killing. I sort of justified her behavior in order to forget the incident, imagining that she lived in some rural commune, grew her own vegetables, wrote on pencil and paper, engaged in barter transactions, that type of stuff.
No, she did not grow her own vegetables, it turned out. Two years later, I accidentally found her obituary (I waited a decade and a half before writing about the incident to avoid speaking ill of the departed). People in publishing were complaining about her rapacity; she had to squeeze her publisher, Farrar Strauss and Giroud of what would be several million dollars today for a book advance. She shared, with a girlfriend, a mansion in New York City, one that was later sold for $28 million dollars. Sontag probably felt that insulting people with money inducted her into some unimpeachable sainthood, exempting her from having skin in the game."[0]
[0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-merchandising-of-virtue-b5487...
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#3Having trouble linking to something with more detail, but it should be noted that this essay is considered by many familiar with camp to be a... less than well-executed assessment of camp.
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#4Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
Wow, that was some interesting reading (I read the linked post as well.)
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#5Sontag's journals are a fun read. They are like a twitter stream of her random thoughts, from the 60s and 70s. Weird, fevered, genius stuff.
e.g. She predicted the iPhone:
> A novel about the future. Machines. Each man has his own machine (memory bank, codified decision maker, etc.) You "play" the machine. Instant everything [1965]
Another:
> What if everything were the same, but no one talked.
It goes on... they're great..
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#6Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
This anecdote really changes my perception of her. It seems like one of the cases where you have to divorce the author from the author to appreciate the creation.
I was going to leave some comments about her other interesting works, but I don't this I can after reading this.
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#7Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
The only thing odd I see here is an expectation that the ideal matches the reality. Doesn’t everyone have values they hope to live UP to?
Regardless, if I hated market economics, I would also try and bilk my publishers for all they’re worth.
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#8Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
The only thing odd I see here is an expectation that the ideal matches the reality. Doesn’t everyone have values they hope to live UP to? Regardless, if I hated market economics, I would also try and bilk my publishers for all they’re worth.
>Doesn’t everyone have values they hope to live UP to?
If they don't actively "live UP" to them, and in fact live against them, but have the hypocrisy/arrogance/rudeness to call out people merely for also living against them, then their behavior should be condemned.
What's odd about that?
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#9Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
This anecdote really changes my perception of her. It seems like one of the cases where you have to divorce the author from the author to appreciate the creation. I was going to leave some comments about her other interesting works, but I don't this I can after reading this.
The author's character doesn't really matter if what they say is interesting [1]
If a serial killer had discovered Relativity, written the Goldberg Variations, or created a fundamental algorithm like FFT, would they have been any less good and usable?
People with all kinds of faults, way worse than the hypocrisy/rudeness described above by Sontag have created all kinds of great things...
[1] Motives, on the other hand do matter, as they can influence what they say, or what they want to achieve with saying it
Re: Notes on “Camp” (1964)
#10Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with N.N. Taleb "I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by the idea of a fellow who “s…
This was an interesting anecdote but ultimately just a bitter memory of an unpleasant encounter expanded into an unjustified character assessment of an important cultural critic; and seemingly extrapolated rather absurdly to anybody who doesn't have Taleb's ideological take on the world.