What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[rotting bones]

1. I don't know this particular skeptic, but I always wonder what this line of argument is supposed to prove. If Jesus didn't exist, does Christianity suddenly disappear? Why does this even matter?

A constructive benefit of Carrier's work is that serious alternative history is a source of ideas for storytelling and conworlding. A destructive benefit is that Carrier may serve as a ladder in my ultimate quest to prove that all humans have been wrong about all things in every way.

2. Raphael's point is good: you can't interrogate ancient records like a police report. Jesus' life is not well documented, but it's way, way more documented and earlier documented than nine tenths of antiquity. Our records of the Buddha are far far worse. Our records of David are far worse. Or Confucius, or Laozi. Or Sargon. Or Narmer. Or Ben Zakkai. Or Zoroaster.

If you looked at every ancient text with the same nothing-can-be-proven skepticism, then we know nothing about ancient history. It's just as huge an error as deciding that the texts we have are dictated by God.

Note that even for so important a figure as the Persian emperors Cyrus and Darius, we don't know where the hell they came from. We have stories from multiple sources, all contradictory. We can't prove that Darius was an Achaemenid at all. For that matter we can't prove that there was an Achaemenes. When even emperors can't be closely documented, it's foolish to get tied up in knots over how much we know about some prophet.

There are serious scholarly reasons to think that the Buddha was a mythical being. For example, his story sounds identical to the one for Mahavira. Perhaps there was only one world-renouncing prince, and rumors about him were co-opted by multiple movements. Or maybe "world-renouncing prince" just sounds archetypal to people, and a story became a myth.

We have inscriptions from early cults in the Roman Empire, philosophical schools and even private citizens, but not Christians before the Jewish War. Weirdly, the Talmud thinks Jesus lived in 70 AD. It's not easy to interpret what that means, but Carrier thinks that if Jesus existed, he was uniquely unremarkable, and that Christianity was, for many decades, one of the weakest movements in all of antiquity.

Even Jesus from Outer Space, a layman's introduction, has long chapters on the relative likelihoods of empirical evidence originating from various sources. I can't think of a neat way to summarize this. There's a chapter where he goes through the evidence for a number of non-Jesus figures one by one. For example, Persian emperors put up inscriptions, are mentioned by historians and so on. None of this is true for early Christianity.

4. There is no need to invent prophets out of nothing, because they're a dime a dozen. There's a bunch of them in every country, in every decade. Religions don't arise out of the quantum foam, they're started by someone.

But the Jewish Messiah really is an invented prophet-like figure. Same with Maitreya Buddha. In Chinese revolutionary movements, many leaders claimed to be Maitreya, a figure who is entirely mythical.

No one doubts that someone really started Christianity. The question is whether he was a Jesus-like figure or a Paul-like figure.

6. Almost everyone in the Middle East had theophoric names; it wasn't just a Hebrew tradition.

No one is making a big deal over or complaining about a theophoric name. The argument is that Jesus's name is not remarkable if he didn't exist.

7. I understand you're paraphrasing Carrier's theory and not responsible for it. But the chronology just doesn't fit, because "cosmic Jesus" was a fairly late phenomenon. I suggest reading Bart Ehrlich's Lost Christianities, which fills in what we're generally not taught: all the versions of Christianity that lost out to orthodoxy. There was not just one group sitting there inventing the Jesus of later Catholicism. There were multiple groups with dizzyingly varied ideas about Jesus, and the basics of orthodoxy weren't agreed on till centuries later. Some of those groups rejected Paul, BTW.

The bulk of early Christian writings come from Paul, who talks exclusively about Cosmic Jesus if you accept Carrier's interpretation of the Greek original. The only real sticking point is that Carrier interprets one passage where Paul meets a "brother of the Lord" to refer to an oridinary Christian. Carrier says this is how Paul uses the phrase elsewhere.

8. I mostly agree with Ryusenshi's comments about the oddity of what details survive in the gospels Mythmakers don't invent details that contradict the myth they're trying to build; it's much more likely that they're incorporated because they're widely known and have to be accepted. (You can believe that Elvis is still alive, but you're unlikely to believe that rather than being a musician he was a chartered accountant.)

Why do you think God makes a bet with Satan, then?

10. Romulus ?? Does he give any evidence that Roman civic mythology was of any interest in Greece, much less the Middle East? The NT writers were obsessed with linking (and liberally reinterpreting) Old Testament stuff, but I don't see that they, or any other Jews, gave a crap for even Greek mythology.

I think Carrier will say that the Romulus myth is recounted in Plutarch. The writer of the Gospel of Mark was writing outside Israel, and he was highly educated, even though he made conscious efforts to hide his level of classical education. Carrier may have had more evidence about Romulus, but I can't recall anything offhand. His scholarly works are available on pdfdrive: https://www.pdfdrive.com/on-the-histori ... 92150.html

11. It's common to doubt that Jesus claimed divinity, especially when the motive is to turn him into a staid, careful prophet. (Much as Islam does!) But messiahhood was a pretty common idea, gods and men-becoming-gods and things-in-between-men-and-gods were common ideas. It's interesting that Luke actually shores up his nativity story with an appeal to Zoroastrianism (the magii). If Jesus didn't claim anything besides wisdom, why didn't he just end up as a rabbi, or at most a Zealot?

There are mainstream scholars who think Jesus was a zealot. Only his non-existence is a fringe theory.

[zompist]

There are serious scholarly reasons to think that the Buddha was a mythical being. For example, his story sounds identical to the one for Mahavira. Perhaps there was only one world-renouncing prince, and rumors about him were co-opted by multiple movements. Or maybe "world-renouncing prince" just sounds archetypal to people, and a story became a myth.

It's not impossible that they were the same person, and there is even less to be trusted about Buddha stories than Jesus stories. But again, prophets are a dime a dozen; there is no need to invent them from nothing.

We have inscriptions from early cults in the Roman Empire, philosophical schools and even private citizens, but not Christians before the Jewish War. Weirdly, the Talmud thinks Jesus lived in 70 AD.

The Talmud was written centuries later— in this period even the Mishnah hadn't been written.

It's not easy to interpret what that means, but Carrier thinks that if Jesus existed, he was uniquely unremarkable, and that Christianity was, for many decades, one of the weakest movements in all of antiquity.

I don't think even orthodox Christians would doubt that!

For example, Persian emperors put up inscriptions, are mentioned by historians and so on. None of this is true for early Christianity.

Of course, but as I said, basic information about the Persian emperors (like, who their fathers were) is debated. Our info on Persia is terrible, and yet it was the most powerful nation on earth in its time. Expecting direct, unimpeachable info on a minor religious movement is failing to understand how history works.

But the Jewish Messiah really is an invented prophet-like figure. Same with Maitreya Buddha. In Chinese revolutionary movements, many leaders claimed to be Maitreya, a figure who is entirely mythical.

Sure, but these were predictions. Or, if you like, a recurring historical role. And what of it? It doesn't make the existence of a Jesus-like figure less likely; it's only a reason why such a figure will get assigned that category.

No one doubts that someone really started Christianity. The question is whether he was a Jesus-like figure or a Paul-like figure.

I don't know what the scholarly consensus on dating Paul is— Wikipedia says 48 for Galatians. That's far earlier than the Judean war, and it's only 15 years after the purported date of the crucifixion. You're missing the point about Buddha etc: our sources on Buddha are at least 400 years afterward. That Paul simply made up events that would be in living memory to his audience (diaspora Jews) is hard to credit.

The argument is that Jesus's name is not remarkable if he didn't exist.

Nor is it remarkable if he did exist. The point is, you couldn't fling a rock in the Middle East without hitting someone with a theophoric name. Neither atheists nor Christians can score any points by worrying about its etymology.

7. I understand you're paraphrasing Carrier's theory and not responsible for it. But the chronology just doesn't fit, because "cosmic Jesus" was a fairly late phenomenon. I suggest reading Bart Ehrlich's Lost Christianities, which fills in what we're generally not taught: all the versions of Christianity that lost out to orthodoxy. There was not just one group sitting there inventing the Jesus of later Catholicism. There were multiple groups with dizzyingly varied ideas about Jesus, and the basics of orthodoxy weren't agreed on till centuries later. Some of those groups rejected Paul, BTW.

The bulk of early Christian writings come from Paul, who talks exclusively about Cosmic Jesus if you accept Carrier's interpretation of the Greek original.

Again, you may be interested in Ehrlich's book. I don't have a copy, so I can't look things up. You have to be really careful about attestation bias here. Paul's faction won out, so there was a premium on preserving his letters and not preserving other people's. Paul himself refers to conflict with other factions! Note that some scholars date the Gospel of Thomas to 60, though others put it in the 3rd century.

Why do you think God makes a bet with Satan, then?

I don't see the relevance, but it's an interesting question. Job is a pretty weird book, as it directly questions Jewish ideas about God, and hardly provides a satisfying answer. A short answer, though, is that the Tanakh was edited and partially written by a traumatized, exiled people, whose kings had failed them. Everyone had Job's questions: why did God allow this to happen? I think the compilers recognized that it was a brilliant work, even if it was theologically troublesome. I'd also note that works questioning divine justice were found in Egyptian and Akkadian literature too.

[xxx]

apart from the few people I have lived with for a long time,
all the others are known to me only by hearsay,
so I might as well say that they are fictional characters for me...
only the words that name them have a reality for me, like that of all words,
like ideas that go through me and leave a mark, sometimes a scar, in me...
if Jesus exists, it is only as a word,
isn't that what we call him, the logos...

[Jonlang]

My long suffering better half and I have been (re-)watching the revived Doctor Who from the beginning in anticipation of David Tennant's return later this year. I have also just finished Stephen Fry's Heroes and have just started Troy. If you want accessible versions of the Greek myths, I highly recommend.

[rotting bones]

apart from the few people I have lived with for a long time,
all the others are known to me only by hearsay,
so I might as well say that they are fictional characters for me...
only the words that name them have a reality for me, like that of all words,
like ideas that go through me and leave a mark, sometimes a scar, in me...
if Jesus exists, it is only as a word,
isn't that what we call him, the logos...

Moving Spotlight theory of time? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#MoviSpotTheo

In the context of theology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryUSycAM2Ss

[rotting bones]

My long suffering better half and I have been (re-)watching the revived Doctor Who from the beginning in anticipation of David Tennant's return later this year. I have also just finished Stephen Fry's Heroes and have just started Troy. If you want accessible versions of the Greek myths, I highly recommend.

The few episodes of HBO Rome I watched looked good. I stopped watching it when I ran out of time, and forgot about it afterwards.

[rotting bones]

IIRC the guy interviewing Carrier in the video I posted has a PhD in a folklore-related field. Carrier himself has a PhD in ancient history or something. If credentialed academics had to assume the academic consensus in their work, then knowledge would never progress.

It's not impossible that they were the same person, and there is even less to be trusted about Buddha stories than Jesus stories. But again, prophets are a dime a dozen; there is no need to invent them from nothing.

But not world-renouncing princes. I feel like this story underestimates Indian entrepreneurship. If it became known that an unarmed prince is living in the forest outside the boundaries of strategically located ashrams, wouldn't robbers kidnap him and hold him for ransom?

Furthermore, Jainism is considered to be slightly older than Buddhism, so I'm inclined to think that if anyone was ripped off, it was probably Jainism. Subsequently, the Buddha also became a Christian saint in medieval times.

The Talmud was written centuries later— in this period even the Mishnah hadn't been written.

Carrier says he's forced to grasp at straws since the life of historical Jesus is an informational black hole. The Talmud is one of the only mentions of Jesus from a non-orthodox source to survive the ideological purge. Carrier's argument is that the Talmud draws on Nestorian Christianity, which he says believed that Jesus lived in 70 AD. He's trying to say that different Christian traditions disagreed on when Jesus lived because there was no factual basis to any of these claims.

Personally, the "Nestorian Christianity" part sounds like wild speculation to me. I've read the Talmud, and citing its contents is like citing this thread as a source of historical facts in a research paper. Then again, Carrier is the one with a PhD in history. Maybe he knows how to extract information from the Talmud.

It's not easy to interpret what that means, but Carrier thinks that if Jesus existed, he was uniquely unremarkable, and that Christianity was, for many decades, one of the weakest movements in all of antiquity.

I don't think even orthodox Christians would doubt that!

I think this is intended to support Carrier's timeline: Christianity remains marginal until the Temple is destroyed. The Gospel of Mark is written to explain that. This work portrays Jesus as a historical person. This historicizing helps Christianity take off in popularity.

(But I should really check the exact dates of the various pieces of evidence. I have to make sure there's no epigraphic evidence before the war, not no epigraphic evidence before Paul.)

Of course, but as I said, basic information about the Persian emperors (like, who their fathers were) is debated. Our info on Persia is terrible, and yet it was the most powerful nation on earth in its time. Expecting direct, unimpeachable info on a minor religious movement is failing to understand how history works.

But this is not the case in Rome, a place that yields detailed historical and epigraphic records. The only mention of Jesus in Josephus is a later forgery.

Far from having any detailed information, Jesus didn't make enough of a splash for anyone to have left behind a single line of graffiti for lifetimes following his supposed death. The kind of evidence being asked for does exist for many other entities in antiquity including other cults and characters mentioned in the gospels like Pontius Pilate.

Point is, there is zero evidence for a Jesus who doesn't already appear as a Cosmic myth.

Sure, but these were predictions. Or, if you like, a recurring historical role. And what of it? It doesn't make the existence of a Jesus-like figure less likely; it's only a reason why such a figure will get assigned that category.

There are extensive narratives about Maitreya Buddha that are unrelated to any of the people who tried to become him. Para-cosmic language is even more clearly applicable to Maitreya than the Messiah.

I don't know what the scholarly consensus on dating Paul is— Wikipedia says 48 for Galatians. That's far earlier than the Judean war, and it's only 15 years after the purported date of the crucifixion. You're missing the point about Buddha etc: our sources on Buddha are at least 400 years afterward. That Paul simply made up events that would be in living memory to his audience (diaspora Jews) is hard to credit.

But Paul never mentions a historical Jesus. Mainstream scholars can't even agree on whether Jesus was a pacifist or a zealot. At some point, you have to ask why it makes sense to strongly insist that such a person most definitely existed. Carrier thinks it's not crazy to doubt the existence of a Jesus-like founder when the religion could have been started by a priest devoted to a Cosmic Messiah instead, especially when there is no reliable evidence of the former.

Nor is it remarkable if he did exist. The point is, you couldn't fling a rock in the Middle East without hitting someone with a theophoric name. Neither atheists nor Christians can score any points by worrying about its etymology.

That's the point I was trying to make.

Again, you may be interested in Ehrlich's book.

Ehrman, right? I'm not even checking my own arguments right now. I'll read it eventually.

Paul's faction won out, so there was a premium on preserving his letters and not preserving other people's. Paul himself refers to conflict with other factions! Note that some scholars date the Gospel of Thomas to 60, though others put it in the 3rd century.

Nevertheless, wasn't the earliest systematic Christian theology Valentinian Gnosticism? The idea that Cosmic Jesus is a later invention just sounds wrong to me.

I don't see the relevance, but it's an interesting question. Job is a pretty weird book, as it directly questions Jewish ideas about God, and hardly provides a satisfying answer. A short answer, though, is that the Tanakh was edited and partially written by a traumatized, exiled people, whose kings had failed them. Everyone had Job's questions: why did God allow this to happen? I think the compilers recognized that it was a brilliant work, even if it was theologically troublesome. I'd also note that works questioning divine justice were found in Egyptian and Akkadian literature too.

This would seem to undermine the argument that mythmakers strip everything from their work that doesn't read like unqualified glorification. The writers of the gospels would have been wrestling with the destruction of the Temple.

[zompist]

I feel like this story underestimates Indian entrepreneurship. If it became known that an unarmed prince is living in the forest outside the boundaries of strategically located ashrams, wouldn't robbers kidnap him and hold him for ransom?

I don't know, but maybe it's informative to look at the story of Xuanzang, one of the Chinese monks who gathered scriptures in India for 16 years, and inspired the much later novel Journey to the West. We know quite a bit about his journey, and what struck me was that it was actually only dangerous for about two weeks: the very first stage of his journey. As soon as he reached the first stop, he found kingly protection, and various authorities helped him for his entire journey. And even in Buddha's story, the sangha pretty soon had the protection of rich men and kings.

(Which isn't to say holy men were never attacked! Maybe it was dangerous. Plus, rakshasas could eat you.)

Carrier says he's forced to grasp at straws since the life of historical Jesus is an informational black hole.

But it's not, that's my point. Historians would give a body part (well, someone's body part) to have as much info on most ancient figures as we have on Jesus. Attestations 15 years after his death are a remarkable luxury.

Unfortunately, skeptics and Christians get into a trap of looking at the Bible as if it were the only thing in the world. Christians try to buttress the Bible with, well, Biblical quotations. Skeptics are often so used to the Bible themselves that they try to buttress their unbelief with Bible quotations, or get into a habit of denying anything in the Bible as if it were radioactive. Both parties can completely forget that other sources exist (and must be used to put the Bible into context), and come up with standards of evidence that they apply only to Biblical matters.

(But I should really check the exact dates of the various pieces of evidence. I have to make sure there's no epigraphic evidence before the war, not no epigraphic evidence before Paul.)

Again, this is a wrongheaded approach to ancient history. If you only accept evidence within 15 years of a historical event, most of history did not happen. To make up rules about history that only apply to stories of Jesus is special pleading.

Paul's letters are evidence of Jesus before 70. Another is Tacitus, who wrote that Nero blamed Christians for the fire in Rome in 66; this is confirmed by Suetonius. These attestations are later, of course (around 120), but again, if you want to throw these mentions out because they're later, you are throwing out most of our evidence on the Augustinian dynasty.

(Opinions are divided on the Josephus quote. I think most of it is a later imposition too. But I've read at least one scholar who thinks at least part of it is authentic.)

Far from having any detailed information, Jesus didn't make enough of a splash for anyone to have left behind a single line of graffiti for lifetimes following his supposed death.

There's evidence from 15 years after his death that he was of interest in Greece, about 1300 km from where he was born. I mean, if your point is that if we throw out all the evidence then there is no evidence, I have to agree. If you make your criteria Jesus-proof, then Jesus poofs.

BTW, you might consider the story of Alexander the prophet, as retold by Lucian; I summarized it here. In particular: did Alexander exist? There are a few coins with the name of his god, Glycon; there is apparently one inscription which mentions Alexander, though not under the name he's usually given. That's sparse; but if Lucian was correct he was pretty popular as a prophet. This is the sort of thing you have to compare the evidence for Jesus to.

Ehrman, right? I'm not even checking my own arguments right now. I'll read it eventually.

Oops, yeah. My brain decided to remember the population guy instead.

There were a bunch of theories of Jesus, most of which are known only from later orthodox writers condemning them. Basically your 15-year rule will limit the "evidence" you accept to 3rd century Christian orthodoxy, because those guys won and that means their texts survive and others don't.

Text survival in ancient times is often just random. The Dead Sea Scrolls rewrote our ideas of when many texts go back to, and gave us an entirely new Jewish sect, but were only discovered by dumb luck in 1946. The Nag Hammadi scrolls, which give us a lot of info on the Gnostics, were found at about the same time.

This would seem to undermine the argument that mythmakers strip everything from their work that doesn't read like unqualified glorification.

Or that the compilers weren't following the criteria you think they were, or reading the texts the way you think they should be read.

(Not intended as snark: interpreting millennia-old texts is tricky. Sometimes people have argued for most of that time what they mean; sometimes too much of the original context has been lost.)

[hwhatting]

The few episodes of HBO Rome I watched looked good. I stopped watching it when I ran out of time, and forgot about it afterwards.

That reminds me that I still haven't watched the Rome DVDs my brother lent me over a year ago... with all what's on offer on streaming services, putting on a DVD seems so much effort...
Currently watching Yellowstone - well made and great drama, but a very troubling worldview.

[Raphael]

Oh, the way I've set up things on my computer, properly logging in to a streaming service might well cost me more hand movements than inserting a DVD into the tray.

[hwhatting]

Oh, the way I've set up things on my computer, properly logging in to a streaming service might well cost me more hand movements than inserting a DVD into the tray.

I prefer to watch movies on the big screen of my TV set. My work notebook doesn't even have a CD drive anymore, and on my old private notebook it stopped working.

[Ares Land]

Pretty funny coincidence; I picked up The Sopranos on DVD recently. (I wanted to re-watch the show, they had it at the library and it's not available on streaming.)

My long suffering better half and I have been (re-)watching the revived Doctor Who from the beginning in anticipation of David Tennant's return later this year.

Nice! I didn't know he was coming back; I haven't watched Doctor Who for quite some time but David Tennant was my favorite doctor.

The few episodes of HBO Rome I watched looked good. I stopped watching it when I ran out of time, and forgot about it afterwards.

Rome was a really good show, if a little over the top at times.

[Jonlang]

Pretty funny coincidence; I picked up The Sopranos on DVD recently. (I wanted to re-watch the show, they had it at the library and it's not available on streaming.)

My long suffering better half and I have been (re-)watching the revived Doctor Who from the beginning in anticipation of David Tennant's return later this year.

Nice! I didn't know he was coming back; I haven't watched Doctor Who for quite some time but David Tennant was my favorite doctor.

He's coming back for three specials in November as part of the 60th anniversary. The most popular theory is that the villain of the specials is 'the Celestial Toy Maker' who has, somehow, interfered with the Doctor's regeneration and brought back Tennant's appearance. He will then hand over to Ncuti Gatwa in the final episode. Russel T. Davies has also returned as showrunner and head writer from the Ecclestone/Tennant era.

[MacAnDàil]

Pretty funny coincidence; I picked up The Sopranos on DVD recently. (I wanted to re-watch the show, they had it at the library and it's not available on streaming.)

And I have getting Heroes out the library (Tim Kring, not Stephen Fry).

My long suffering better half and I have been (re-)watching the revived Doctor Who from the beginning in anticipation of David Tennant's return later this year.

Nice! I didn't know he was coming back; I haven't watched Doctor Who for quite some time but David Tennant was my favorite doctor.

I haven't watched much Dr Who since he left. His real name is McDonald, like me.

[alynnidalar]

I don't know what the scholarly consensus on dating Paul is— Wikipedia says 48 for Galatians. That's far earlier than the Judean war, and it's only 15 years after the purported date of the crucifixion. You're missing the point about Buddha etc: our sources on Buddha are at least 400 years afterward. That Paul simply made up events that would be in living memory to his audience (diaspora Jews) is hard to credit.

But Paul never mentions a historical Jesus. Mainstream scholars can't even agree on whether Jesus was a pacifist or a zealot. At some point, you have to ask why it makes sense to strongly insist that such a person most definitely existed. Carrier thinks it's not crazy to doubt the existence of a Jesus-like founder when the religion could have been started by a priest devoted to a Cosmic Messiah instead, especially when there is no reliable evidence of the former.

What do you mean by mentions of a historical Jesus? Paul absolutely spoke about Jesus as an actual person who lived on Earth. Probably the most obvious example is in Galatians 1:19 where he asserts he met Jesus' brother: "But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother" (NET). In context this is definitely not a metaphor but rather clearly intended to mean an actual sibling (and this is not the only place James is referred to as a sibling of Jesus).

Incidentally, on the subject of Josephus, there are two passages in Josephus that mention Jesus. The main one that you're thinking of, the Testimonium Flavianum, where Josephus allegedly asserted Jesus was the Christ, is indeed widely considered to be partly, if not entirely, a forgery. The second mention is about James being stoned to death: "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". To my knowledge, this passage is widely considered to not be a forgery.

[xxx]

Moving Spotlight theory of time? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#MoviSpotTheo

interesting, in conlang I tend to use a calendar where
the present is the year 0 the month 0 the week 0 the day 0
and where the past is counted in negative days and the future in positive days,
the more the date is distant the more the counting of days is imprecise ....

[Raphael]

I just bought James Poniewozik's Audience of One after reading the free ebook sample. A book about Donald Trump written by a professional TV critic? Why didn't I hear about it before? And so far, it seems to be quite good - in the parts I've read, it's almost as if there's an interesting insight on every other page!

[Raphael]

I just finished The Fall of the House of Paisley, by David Gordon, about how Ian Paisley's political career effectively ended roughly a year after his greatest triumph. The events in the book are an interesting combination of various aspects of a long-running sectarian conflict that often made headlines around the world and the more mundane kinds of local politics shenanigans that will sound familiar to people from many different countries if they're used to paying attention to their local affairs.

The book's title was premature, though, given that Ian Paisley jnr. is still an MP.

[Raphael]

I just bought James Poniewozik's Audience of One after reading the free ebook sample. A book about Donald Trump written by a professional TV critic? Why didn't I hear about it before? And so far, it seems to be quite good - in the parts I've read, it's almost as if there's an interesting insight on every other page!

Ok, I've now finished it, in the middle of the night. Best book on Trump I've read so far. Not just great insights, but also some pretty good turns of phrase.

It also somewhat improved my opinion of postmodernism. I still think postmodernism is complete bullshit, and potentially very harmful bullshit at that, when applied to the real world (and unlike postmodernists, I think that there is a real world); but now I also think that it can sometimes lead to interesting insights into pop culture, entertainment, and fiction in general.

[bradrn]

I just bought James Poniewozik's Audience of One after reading the free ebook sample. A book about Donald Trump written by a professional TV critic? Why didn't I hear about it before? And so far, it seems to be quite good - in the parts I've read, it's almost as if there's an interesting insight on every other page!

Ok, I've now finished it, in the middle of the night. Best book on Trump I've read so far. Not just great insights, but also some pretty good turns of phrase.

It also somewhat improved my opinion of postmodernism. I still think postmodernism is complete bullshit, and potentially very harmful bullshit at that, when applied to the real world (and unlike postmodernists, I think that there is a real world); but now I also think that it can sometimes lead to interesting insights into pop culture, entertainment, and fiction in general.

Could you explain what insights the book has given you? (On both Trump and postmodernism!)