How do you make it "from Novelist to Marxist Public Intellectual"? David Wallace-Wells' profile of Benjamin Kunkel in New York magazine shares several secrets for this epic journey, and reveals several things about this contemporary mode of "Marxist Public Intellectual." Let's read closely, and see what we can learn about achieving that particular moniker.
A good way to routinely bum yourself out is to set "Google News" as your Internet home page. But last night, something magical happened on that usual grid of gloom: The top stories were good news: Pope Francis and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the elderly men recently chosen to lead their respective communities, had again made headlines for words of kindness and reconciliation.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters — who the New York Times and other such venues had told me were too vague, too in need of glitzy PowerPoint presentations with concrete goals, too poorly dressed, too busy playing drums, too hypocritical because they used "computers" and other modern products, too middle-class, and in general too gross to sustain any interest for more than a few days, therefore making it not worth doing — have persevered long enough to convince veteran reinforcements to join them next week. Interesting!
