He hasn't written a column since the infamous "3 Defeats." He is supposed to write every Tuesday and Friday so he has now missed two scheduled. Hasn't tweeted anything since then, either. I was beginning to think there was something serious going on, he took a lot of (deserved) heat for that column, but he appeared on PBS on Friday the 14th. So, he didn't get fired or resign or get kidnapped or have a breakdown or go on vacation. No explanation for missing two columns, though.
So, I started googling, "david brooks' crisis," "david brooks identity," variations. There is something going on with this guy. The "perfectly creased pant leg," the uber-Jewishness, son serves in IDF, the Jewish hysteria evident in "3 defeats," his wife's conversion to Judaism, changing her last name, then her given name, to Sarah, that's a first for me, never heard of that before! He erased his wife's prior identity. The divorce from said wife. Is he having an identity crisis? Gay, bi, or straight? A mid-life crisis? Did he cheat on his wife? A crisis of faith? He recently wrote a book, The Road to Character. He was interviewed by the Washington Post, the headline for the article on the interview was "David Brooks on sin, Augustine and the state of his soul." Okay? This is the first question and answer:
Can you talk about the state of your faith?
I’m still not talking about it. I do think it is personal. The book has some self revelatory things. But I try to keep a limit on all aspects of my life. I only go so deep with no specifics because the book is a defense of privacy and reticence. I want to talk in general about my life but not in detail. Some things are so delicate in everybody’s lives, they should only be shared with people who you trust. You do some violence to private emotion and private thought when you reduce it to simplicities of public conversation. I was asked on NPR, and I said everything is so green and fresh, it’s particularly unsettled and particularly fragile.
Mother-fucker just wrote a book, heavy on faith and refuses to talk about it in an interview on the book! That is weird, man.
Weirder: Brooks opens up quite a bit about his soul in this interview, it is a long enough interview that it had to be "edited for length"!, the final, exhausted question is "Is there anything else you want to add?" (He does). But, Brooks never answers "the state of his faith" question.
You said that you wrote this book to “save my soul.” What does that mean?
I didn’t mean I was having some midlife crisis or that my life was falling apart.
Why on earth would anyone think that just because you wrote the book to "save your soul?"
But I do think that the state of your soul, whether expressed religiously or secularly, is the primary concern in life. I had become not terrible but not the person I wanted to be.
"Not terrible," great! Today, ladies and gentlemen, we will be talking with the not terrible human being, David Brooks.
I’m not hurting anybody, I must be okay...
PAUSE
UNPAUSE
FUCK.
...but I wasn’t generating the inner light I’ve encountered in people I really admire. There’s a guy named Father Ray, a Catholic minister at a church called St. Theresa. I got to know him through these luncheons I do with [PBS analyst] Mark Shields. [Ray] is just joyful in the extreme.
Brooks is not joyful in the moderate.
I heard about somebody who led a life that wasn’t famous, but when she died, 1,500 people came to
her funeral. I don’t think my funeral would generate 1,500...
Excuse moi, is this an interview of David Brooks or Woody Allen? "When I thin out (pointing to skeleton) I'd like to be well-thought of" ("Manhattan").
...unless they thought they could get a column in The New York Times. I think we all have a responsibility to be better, to improve ourselves.
...
You articulate central themes in Christianity — you mention sin 70 times in the book, humility, a need for something bigger than ourselves (maybe a savior). In some ways, your book feels more Christian than many Christian books I come across. Your book isn’t in the religion category, but how is faith incorporated in the larger theme of character?
There’s a moral wisdom in the Bible that stands in contrast to the conventional culture of today. I wouldn’t say it’s only Christian. I do think it’s Judaism, too, with Moses...the Bible gives us of images of virtue that relies on meekness that is based on love rather than courage. It’s based on not doing good, heroic deeds, which was the classical value system, but the state internally of your soul. The book is a secular attempt to reintroduce this basic approach to life, which is based on humility.
Your book has several stories of important Christian authors, including Augustine and Dorothy Day. Were they new to you?
I was familiar with Augustine, but I had never really read in depth or read about him. I now consider Augustine the smartest human being I’ve ever encountered in any form.
"Smartest." Not best or most moral or most ethical, "smartest."
His observations about human psychology and memory are astounding, especially given the time. What’s even more amazing is he combines it with emotional storms. He’s at once intellectually unparalleled and emotionally so rich a character. I portray him as sort of an Ivy League grad.
"I portray him as sort of an Ivy League grad:" Is that not bizarre? We're talking Augustine here, Augustine of Hippo, SAINT Augustine. Harvard, class of 375 A.D.?
He portrays himself in “The Confessions” as this sexual libertine, but he wasn’t really that.
Who ELSE was a sexual libertine, who really wasn't that? Huh?
He was just an ambitious and successful rhetorician and teacher who found that being a successful rhetorician was too shallow for him.
"An ambitious and successful rhetorician and teacher" (Brooks teaches at Yale) who found that life "too shallow."
He felt famished inside.
He felt famished inside.
I think his confession is a very brave renunciation of ambition. With him what I found so attractive, and this is more a Christian concept, is the concept of grace, the concept of undeserved love.
So, I started googling, "david brooks' crisis," "david brooks identity," variations. There is something going on with this guy. The "perfectly creased pant leg," the uber-Jewishness, son serves in IDF, the Jewish hysteria evident in "3 defeats," his wife's conversion to Judaism, changing her last name, then her given name, to Sarah, that's a first for me, never heard of that before! He erased his wife's prior identity. The divorce from said wife. Is he having an identity crisis? Gay, bi, or straight? A mid-life crisis? Did he cheat on his wife? A crisis of faith? He recently wrote a book, The Road to Character. He was interviewed by the Washington Post, the headline for the article on the interview was "David Brooks on sin, Augustine and the state of his soul." Okay? This is the first question and answer:
Can you talk about the state of your faith?
I’m still not talking about it. I do think it is personal. The book has some self revelatory things. But I try to keep a limit on all aspects of my life. I only go so deep with no specifics because the book is a defense of privacy and reticence. I want to talk in general about my life but not in detail. Some things are so delicate in everybody’s lives, they should only be shared with people who you trust. You do some violence to private emotion and private thought when you reduce it to simplicities of public conversation. I was asked on NPR, and I said everything is so green and fresh, it’s particularly unsettled and particularly fragile.
Mother-fucker just wrote a book, heavy on faith and refuses to talk about it in an interview on the book! That is weird, man.
Weirder: Brooks opens up quite a bit about his soul in this interview, it is a long enough interview that it had to be "edited for length"!, the final, exhausted question is "Is there anything else you want to add?" (He does). But, Brooks never answers "the state of his faith" question.
You said that you wrote this book to “save my soul.” What does that mean?
I didn’t mean I was having some midlife crisis or that my life was falling apart.
Why on earth would anyone think that just because you wrote the book to "save your soul?"
But I do think that the state of your soul, whether expressed religiously or secularly, is the primary concern in life. I had become not terrible but not the person I wanted to be.
"Not terrible," great! Today, ladies and gentlemen, we will be talking with the not terrible human being, David Brooks.
I’m not hurting anybody, I must be okay...
PAUSE
UNPAUSE
FUCK.
...but I wasn’t generating the inner light I’ve encountered in people I really admire. There’s a guy named Father Ray, a Catholic minister at a church called St. Theresa. I got to know him through these luncheons I do with [PBS analyst] Mark Shields. [Ray] is just joyful in the extreme.
Brooks is not joyful in the moderate.
I heard about somebody who led a life that wasn’t famous, but when she died, 1,500 people came to
her funeral. I don’t think my funeral would generate 1,500...
Excuse moi, is this an interview of David Brooks or Woody Allen? "When I thin out (pointing to skeleton) I'd like to be well-thought of" ("Manhattan").
...unless they thought they could get a column in The New York Times. I think we all have a responsibility to be better, to improve ourselves.
...
You articulate central themes in Christianity — you mention sin 70 times in the book, humility, a need for something bigger than ourselves (maybe a savior). In some ways, your book feels more Christian than many Christian books I come across. Your book isn’t in the religion category, but how is faith incorporated in the larger theme of character?
There’s a moral wisdom in the Bible that stands in contrast to the conventional culture of today. I wouldn’t say it’s only Christian. I do think it’s Judaism, too, with Moses...the Bible gives us of images of virtue that relies on meekness that is based on love rather than courage. It’s based on not doing good, heroic deeds, which was the classical value system, but the state internally of your soul. The book is a secular attempt to reintroduce this basic approach to life, which is based on humility.
Your book has several stories of important Christian authors, including Augustine and Dorothy Day. Were they new to you?
I was familiar with Augustine, but I had never really read in depth or read about him. I now consider Augustine the smartest human being I’ve ever encountered in any form.
"Smartest." Not best or most moral or most ethical, "smartest."
His observations about human psychology and memory are astounding, especially given the time. What’s even more amazing is he combines it with emotional storms. He’s at once intellectually unparalleled and emotionally so rich a character. I portray him as sort of an Ivy League grad.
"I portray him as sort of an Ivy League grad:" Is that not bizarre? We're talking Augustine here, Augustine of Hippo, SAINT Augustine. Harvard, class of 375 A.D.?
He portrays himself in “The Confessions” as this sexual libertine, but he wasn’t really that.
Who ELSE was a sexual libertine, who really wasn't that? Huh?
He was just an ambitious and successful rhetorician and teacher who found that being a successful rhetorician was too shallow for him.
"An ambitious and successful rhetorician and teacher" (Brooks teaches at Yale) who found that life "too shallow."
He felt famished inside.
He felt famished inside.
I think his confession is a very brave renunciation of ambition. With him what I found so attractive, and this is more a Christian concept, is the concept of grace, the concept of undeserved love.
"Grace:" Yes, Christianity does that, gives love that is "undeserved." That is the literal, official Catholic definition. Underserved because we are human and therefore sinners and our Father is God and therefore perfect and not a sinner. He loves us unconditionally as David Brooks, the father, loves his own son. However, "unconditional" love is not identical with "undeserved" love and it is in the former sense that Christian, including Catholic, grace is practiced today. Love the homosexual sinner, not the sin. Pope Francis goes further: "Who am I to judge?" That is unconditional love. The Christian God loves regardless of whether we have "earned," that love, the operative word in the Protestant definition of grace. That is a more "positive," love, it leaves open the question of whether we have earned it. Some of us may have! One has a more positive notion of one's deservedness with Protestant grace. You know that whatever a shit you are you still have a Father who loves you. Catholic preaching on the meaning of Christian grace is negative, it is an a priori condition that man does not deserve God's love who nonetheless grants it us out of his benevolence. Pope Francis preaches the more Protestant version of grace and, if I understand correctly, it is the product of this grace that David Brooks seeks, the "inner light," the "joyfulness in the extreme" that David has seen in others. David does not feel that he deserves love, which is close to feeling oneself unlovable.UGH.
...
Do you have particular vices you’re trying to work on to build better character?
I think they’re a moving target. My vice is a tendency toward shallowness.
That is very endearing. I don't think that is false modesty, it is false, he is certainly NOT SHALLOW, but I don't think it's false modesty...How could he think that of himself, though? Maybe it is false modesty. It's either that or he lacks insight and intelligence and I think those are more unlikely. Brooks does have an avuncular personality, that is clearly a facade for these deeper thoughts. So if that is a facade maybe claiming his vice is a tendency toward shallowness is false modesty.
I think I’m a little better at that. There’s still a tendency to want to be loved universally...
Ooh. That's a wince. He feels unloved. Or loved undeservedly. Either, or. Both. 1,500 people won't come to his funeral. I don't like to hear that. My heart really goes out to people who feel unloved, not to Muslims, but to other people. I'm going to be less hard on him, have I been hard on him? "I am not Charlie" pissed me off. "3 Defeats" pissed me off. Fucking WAY harder on Thomas L. Friedman, hoo-doggie, but had that mysterious visitation by Affection not too long ago. Brooks has NEVER been fingernails-on-chalkboard annoying like Friedman. Brooks is an elitist, that really burns me, but he truly is a "humble" elitist, a contradiction in terms, I realize--I think--maybe not. I guess you can be a humble elitist: Marcus Aurelius. My first experience with David Brooks was "A Humble Hawk" and I have mostly admired and respected him ever since. I like David Brooks and like is a form of love. I will even pledge right now to go to his funeral.
...And then there are sins we all share, the normal selfishness and self-centeredness.
...
...I do think identifying your core sin, keeping a journal of how it manifests itself in your life, what behavior it leads to.
Oh my gosh, I used to do that in trial work, and in life work at the end of the night when I prayed. It did help me become a better trial lawyer. In my life's work: didn't work. I do think that taking some note, either by physically writing or mentally, of your day, just reviewing your day briefly in some form is a good thing to do, it is certainly a humble thing to do, but it does concentrate your mind on your failures, "sins," or whatever. Doesn't make for a peppy person! Aside: The New York Times does not seem to be a very happy place to work, does it? Brooks, Cohen, Krugman, Krugman, Aah!, Friedman is less pessimistic it seems to me, and then for laughs you have Maureen Dowd, the instantiation of silliness. Her example is not going to make these Four Horsemen lighten up.
I’ve also been a believer in keeping pictures of dead people around you.
What?
...
Do you have particular vices you’re trying to work on to build better character?
I think they’re a moving target. My vice is a tendency toward shallowness.
That is very endearing. I don't think that is false modesty, it is false, he is certainly NOT SHALLOW, but I don't think it's false modesty...How could he think that of himself, though? Maybe it is false modesty. It's either that or he lacks insight and intelligence and I think those are more unlikely. Brooks does have an avuncular personality, that is clearly a facade for these deeper thoughts. So if that is a facade maybe claiming his vice is a tendency toward shallowness is false modesty.
I think I’m a little better at that. There’s still a tendency to want to be loved universally...
Ooh. That's a wince. He feels unloved. Or loved undeservedly. Either, or. Both. 1,500 people won't come to his funeral. I don't like to hear that. My heart really goes out to people who feel unloved, not to Muslims, but to other people. I'm going to be less hard on him, have I been hard on him? "I am not Charlie" pissed me off. "3 Defeats" pissed me off. Fucking WAY harder on Thomas L. Friedman, hoo-doggie, but had that mysterious visitation by Affection not too long ago. Brooks has NEVER been fingernails-on-chalkboard annoying like Friedman. Brooks is an elitist, that really burns me, but he truly is a "humble" elitist, a contradiction in terms, I realize--I think--maybe not. I guess you can be a humble elitist: Marcus Aurelius. My first experience with David Brooks was "A Humble Hawk" and I have mostly admired and respected him ever since. I like David Brooks and like is a form of love. I will even pledge right now to go to his funeral.
...And then there are sins we all share, the normal selfishness and self-centeredness.
...
...I do think identifying your core sin, keeping a journal of how it manifests itself in your life, what behavior it leads to.
Oh my gosh, I used to do that in trial work, and in life work at the end of the night when I prayed. It did help me become a better trial lawyer. In my life's work: didn't work. I do think that taking some note, either by physically writing or mentally, of your day, just reviewing your day briefly in some form is a good thing to do, it is certainly a humble thing to do, but it does concentrate your mind on your failures, "sins," or whatever. Doesn't make for a peppy person! Aside: The New York Times does not seem to be a very happy place to work, does it? Brooks, Cohen, Krugman, Krugman, Aah!, Friedman is less pessimistic it seems to me, and then for laughs you have Maureen Dowd, the instantiation of silliness. Her example is not going to make these Four Horsemen lighten up.
I’ve also been a believer in keeping pictures of dead people around you.
What?
It’s nice to have inspiring dead people in your life. I have pictures of them at home. I was at Monticello, and Thomas Jefferson did this.
Dave, how 'bout some of T.J.'s Epicureanism in your life, huh? Paging Doctor Greenblatt, paging Doctor Greenblatt, call David Brooks, STAT.
As he walked around his house, he had great philosophers, great scientists, great statesman. As he was doing something really rotten, he had John Locke looking down on him.
Who do you have dead looking down on you, Dave?
I’m a believer in Bible study groups...I think it’s worth getting together with friends regularly, and having a discussion on how can you turn suffering into honesty, how can you make sure love is a moral occasion for you. You talk about how do you deal with pain or failure.
David Brooks is in some pain. There is something going on with him. I truly wish him contentment in his life and with his life. God bless him.
Dave, how 'bout some of T.J.'s Epicureanism in your life, huh? Paging Doctor Greenblatt, paging Doctor Greenblatt, call David Brooks, STAT.
As he walked around his house, he had great philosophers, great scientists, great statesman. As he was doing something really rotten, he had John Locke looking down on him.
Who do you have dead looking down on you, Dave?
I’m a believer in Bible study groups...I think it’s worth getting together with friends regularly, and having a discussion on how can you turn suffering into honesty, how can you make sure love is a moral occasion for you. You talk about how do you deal with pain or failure.
David Brooks is in some pain. There is something going on with him. I truly wish him contentment in his life and with his life. God bless him.
