Ronald Reagan and Reading Proust

July 28, 2015 10:40 AM

"Maybe the story is the difference between the writers on the panels and the writers in the audience. That story is the creation of a celebrity class. That story is the fine line between jealousy and envy: I want everything you have versus I want everything I can have. Or is the story simply vanity?" Choire Sicha of the Awl reports on (and attempts to schmooze through) the two-day New Yorker literary festival
posted by The Whelk (4 comments total)

The last section about the Wolfowitz talk gave me nervous twitches.

After a little bit of banter with Goldberg, Wolfie says ‘I’m glad that the Iraqis are free so that they can speak the way we do,’ and that sets off two more screaming people. They get led off to wherever. I am so tense I may never crap again.

Goldberg begins again: ‘You’re considered the intellectual architect of the war on Iraq,’ he says, and then a man in the audience charges the stage shouting, ‘Bush should be tried for treason, you fucking Nazi!’ The Young Zionist in the yarmulke next to me hides his head in his hands.

Wolfowitz takes up the Nazi theme. ‘This is what the Nazis did,’ he says, referring to shouting down dissenters. We all look at each other in puzzlement. Uh, no it’s not, not in the slightest.

posted by spamandkimchi at 11:04 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait. My tickets to this event were free, but even so, when I realized it was 12 years old I started to feel a little ripped-off. I probably read this when it was new! That's okay, tho. It was worth it for lines like "He announces that he is drinking cranberry juice and Grand Marnier. It’s like he’s trying to simultaneously cure and inflict a urinary tract infection."
posted by octobersurprise at 11:59 AM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

It bubbled back up on Twitter today and I realized it was nearly as old as Metafilter itself.
posted by The Whelk at 12:00 PM on July 28, 2015

I am puzzled about the title, Ronald Reagan and Reading Proust. Neither Reagan nor Proust show up anywhere in the story.

The title appears to be a reference to this classic New Yorker "casual" (can't find a full-text link), by the late Veronica Geng -- who is curiously also not mentioned in the story ("In perhaps her most famous essay, ... she crammed the words 'Mr. Reagan' and 'read Proust' into every single sentence").

Is it, like, a shibboleth? Is it just a cute stunt? Am I ruining it by talking about it? What's it got to do with anything?
posted by grobstein at 3:22 PM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]