The Zen Playboy: The Life and Times of Stewart Brand

I watched a pretty good docu in German which follows Ted Kaczynski's targets and they connect them to the edge foundation (some were members, like David Gelernter and John Brockman). They act like they're just asking rote interview questions, then they drop the ted k connection on the interviewees which is hilarious cause they get pretty mad a most of the time that they would draw such a thread. Stuart Brand is included as an interviewee. Isn't it interesting how the edge foundation kind of ended up in a real pickle because of Jeffrey Epstein hanging on?

The docu was entitled Das Netz: Lutz Dammbeck und der Unabomber

Agree. The tone is ridiculous and disrespectful. Horrible thing to do to someone in their 80s who has never courted controversy.

> It could well be that Brand is a jerk

This is something I have wondered about having listened to a lot of the Long Now Talks. If you listen to Brand in these talks, he has the aura of an elder statesman. This book review raises far more questions than it answers, and doesn’t really show an understanding of the history that has occurred.

Tom Wolfe and John Markoff both portrayed Brand as a likable figure in their earlier works. Both Wolfe and Brand are contemporaries from the Silent Generation. Markoff was the boomer. There wasn’t much distance between the three. Now enter Malcolm Harris.

Harris gives us a new review with an altogether different viewpoint than his predecessors. Harris, a Millennial who was born in 1988 and who came into his own during the turbulent 2000s, sees the world that the boomers built and perceives its failures upon class lines—and he’s not wrong.

The problem with this well-written book review is that it fails to take into account the world Brand came from in 1938. Harris glosses over this historical dichotomy in favor of his own much more recent account. It’s something every generation tends to do to the ones before them, not realizing that someone will eventually do it to them in their later years. And so, the tradition continues.

Agreed. I enjoy Harris’ take, but it’s narrow and full of tunnel vision, and fails to engage in the slightest bit of charitable coverage. It’s more of a cartoonish depiction of Brand as a one-dimensional villain, rather than a fair appraisal of a human being with all the idiosyncratic fallibilities we’ve come to expect. Surely, he could find at least one good thing to say about Brand? Harris comes off as slightly tone deaf with this piece, as it lacks nuance and attention to historical dynamics.

The Nation is a reasonably venerable publication with a small staff. I used to subscribe back in the Arthur C. Danto (art criticism) days.

When I look at it now, it’s no longer for me, and as annoying as their paywall might be, in this case they may be more than “these websites” would suggest.