Greetings from the Far Left Coast where it is August already and the fall term where I come to life again after summer doldrums cannot be far behind!
I finally finished Mark Polizzotti’s doorstop biography of André Breton (Revolution of the Mind) after setting it aside from time to time (it weighs in at 560 pp., not counting extensive endnotes, bibliography, and index). I became familiar with the Surrealist movement in my early twenties and have returned to it periodically in the years since, taking what I could use while putting aside and disregarding without much thought a good deal that was not of relevance or interest. Revolution of the Mind led me to rethink some of what was put aside and disregarded.
Polizzotti is an enthusiast for Breton and the movement. His book is by no means a hatchet job, but he does not shy away from accounts that to put it charitably do not reflect well on Breton and his fellow Surrealists. They were given to jejune proclamations about literary, artistic, and political issues, full of bombast and venom toward those deemed to be adversaries, not least former Surrealists with whom Breton had broken, and he broke with pretty much everyone sooner or later. These poets and artists had a penchant for brawling at art exhibitions, disrupting theater performances and literary affairs, and physically assaulting critics with whom they took exception. The brawls did not always end well for the Surrealists. It was not unusual for them to get beaten up by the audience at an event they disrupted, then carried away by police who administered a second beating.
Discussing an early rift between Breton and Antonin Artaud, Polizzotti writes that Artaud spoke to his lover, the actress Génica Athanasiou, of “a series of misadventures and disappointments owing to my dear Surrealists, who on the whole have shown themselves, Breton and Aragon excepted, to be the biggest bunch of assholes the earth ever spawned.” With due consideration of the source, Artaud, I am inclined after reading Polizzotti to disagree only with the exception made for Breton and Aragon and to add a minor quibble, not the biggest.
There are other sides to Breton and his comrades. Breton was a complex person, “a man of violent enthusiasms…Frequently caught between a native ardor and a bedrock of pessimism.” It is not for nothing that he was known as the Pope of Surrealism, a sobriquet he was said to find profoundly irritating. Breton excommunicated people from the group right and left, though many would be later welcomed back into the fold. Nonetheless, Jacques Prevért could say the Surrealists “loved Breton like a woman,” and historian Maurice Nadeau that “those who enjoyed the moments of his unforgettable friendship…were ready to sacrifice everything to him: wives, mistresses, friends.”
For half a century Breton was a prominent French cultural figure, often enough a center of controversy, but respected, someone to be reckoned with. Among his friends outside the immediate Surrealist circle in Paris were Picasso, Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, poet Aimé Césaire, cofounder of the Négritude movement in Francophone colonies, later mayor of Fort-de-France and representative from Martinique in the French National Assembly, Césaire’s wife, Suzanne, a writer, scholar, anti-colonialist, and feminist, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, who met him in 1941 as a little-known, thirty-three-year-old anthropologist aboard a ship carrying exiles in flight from occupied France. Later in New York they frequented an antiques shop that specialized in primitive art objects, Native American kachina dolls, Eskimo masks, and sculptures from the Pacific Northwest, that Breton valued above products of Europe’s Greco-Roman intellectual and cultural heritage. Lévi-Strauss wrote that “Breton had an instinct about objects he loved, and he sometimes made me appreciate things I wouldn’t otherwise have seen or appreciated.”
So what do I find in surrealism at its best? A sense of the marvelous and what Breton expressed as “the exceptional intensity of man before the spectacle of life” (quoted by Anna Balakian in Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute).
I briefly discussed initial impressions as I began reading Revolution of the Mind in the June 1 newsletter.
Memo from the Cinema Desk. L'art d'être heureux (2024). Dir. Stefan Liberski. With Benoît Poelvoorde as Jean-Yves Machond, Camille Cottin as Cécile Fouasse-Demaupré. The title used for English-speaking audiences is The Art of Nothing, not completely off the mark but I would have gone with literal translation from the French. Trailer.
L'art d'être heureux is an irreverent farce judiciously flavored with pathos and traces of tenderness. Jean-Yves Machond is a blocked conceptual artist who jabbers incessantly to himself and anyone else who happens to be present. It seems he is now largely forgotten after once having something of a reputation in the art world. Alone, troubled by the loss of the daughter he has not seen since she was four when his wife met a Chinese man and took her with them to China, mocked by the blank canvas standing defiant before him, Machond quits his job as an art teacher, sells his house, and moves to a small town on the coast in Normandy in search of inspiration. There he finds a small community of painters who overlook his many quirks and take him in as a fellow artist whether he wishes to be taken in or not. Among them are a mysterious young woman who paints eccentric designs on small stones she picks up on the beach and a flirtatious, manipulative gallery owner, Cécile, who puts the tease in prick tease. Machond does not know if he is coming or going, his fantasies complicated by the presence of Cécile’s husband, Pilou, a foul-tempered Belgian brute who suspects his wife is having an affair and gives Machond a graphic demonstration of what he intends to do to the villain when he learns his identity.
L'art d'être heureux is the latest in a succession of nice little films I have chanced on while browsing the offerings at Kanopy that bring welcome diversion and respite from affairs of the day.
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.
With the regime’s campaign against the universities much on my mind, I was drawn to an article at The Atlantic where Tyler Austin Harper reviews eight books that examine the state of American universities (Eight Books That Explain the University Crisis). These books predate the Trump era, so do not take up the regime’s unprecedented attacks, and include Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a “thinly veiled 2000 roman à clef about his friendship with the star academic Allan Bloom—the philosopher who wrote the best-selling jeremiad The Closing of the American Mind.”
In Harper’s estimation The University in Ruins by Bill Readings is “one of the most insightful books about the contemporary American university” although written in the 1990s by a British professor and not focused solely on the American university.
Historically, he [Readings] writes, colleges and universities aimed to imprint capital-C Culture—especially a familiarity with a nation’s great texts and intellectual traditions—on young people. Today, however, students more often are seen and see themselves as consumers who are buying diplomas in order to signal their employability.
The book Harper concludes,
is first and foremost a work of scholarship…but it is also a book of uncommon prescience that saw clearly that the rarefied ivory tower, with its idea of academia as a realm detached from the coarse affairs of the material world, was transforming into a credentialing bureaucracy.
I found a copy of The University in Ruins yesterday at Powell’s and added it to a book stack that is getting out of control.
Historian Ellen Schrecker’s No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism & the Universities (1986) is another that caught my eye. I found a copy at Multnomah County Library and am presently knee deep in it. The book is dry, no page turner, but rich in context and background relevant to the present-day assault on academic freedom. Schrecker traces a tradition dating back to the end of the nineteenth century when college teachers who expressed support for labor unions and social reform could find themselves in the crosshairs, under attack, their careers threatened.
While at it I checked out Schrecker’s The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (2010) and placed a hold on her new book The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom (2024). This is shaping up as a study project for the fall term.
Paramount Global with the collaborator Shari Redstone at the helm made Trump in effect editor in chief at CBS News in a lawsuit settlement that opened the way for FCC approval of its $8 billion merger with Skydance in a 2–1 vote. The dissenting commissioner, Anna Gomez, discussed the vote and implications of the deal between Paramount/Skydance and the regime with Geoff Bennett on the PBS News Hour earlier this week. In what Bennett described as a “blistering statement,” Gomez had called the deal an act of “cowardly capitulation that could set a dangerous precedent, reshaping the future of entertainment, while eroding the freedom of the press.”
“Here’s what we know,” she told Bennett.
The president pressured Paramount over the “60 Minutes” segment [in a Kamala Harris interview during last year’s campaign, the subject of a Trump lawsuit]. The FCC pressured CBS over the “60 Minutes” segment. And it wasn't until we saw both the settlement of the president's lawsuit and also the concessions that you mentioned to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and to install a medium monitor that will basically self-censor CBS’ content, that this deal was approved…
And that concession of the media monitor is really serious, because what they're saying is that they are going to self-censor basically for ideological purity according to what this administration likes and to report only in the way this administration likes. Apparently, bias is anything this administration doesn't like. And that is what they're promising not to show anymore to their consumers.
Geoff Bennett, Trump’s ‘censorship and control’ campaign threatens press freedom, FCC commissioner says, PBS News Hour, July 29, 2025
FCC chairman Brendan Carr, of whom Gomez says they work well together, defended the commission’s decision in a News Hour interview yesterday.
Geoff Bennett, FCC chairman says network oversight offers a needed ‘course correction’, PBS News Hour, July 31, 2025
Assaults on the press, literally, as they say.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, lists more than 50 assaults on the press that took place in June…What’s happening, evidently, is that a troubling number of law enforcement officers view press coverage of public protests as a threat, rather than a protected legal and constitutional right. Emboldened by Trump’s nonstop slander of the Fourth Estate, they feel justified in treating the press as enemies of the people. (Bill Leuders, Cops Join Trump’s War on the Press, The Bulwark, July 21, 2025)
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker [launched 2017], a nonpartisan news website and database, provides reliable and contextualized information on the number of press freedom violations in the United States — from journalists facing charges to reporters assaulted or stopped at the U.S. border and asked to hand over their electronics. As a centralized repository for research, the data we gather informs advocacy, journalism and legal action. (U.S. Press Freedom Tracker FAQ)
Videographer struck with projectiles by federal officers at Oregon ICE protest, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, July 4, 2025
Trump grabbed Republican senators by the integrity again when they confirmed Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge. Bove you may recall was Trump’s personal lawyer before moving on to the Department of Justice, where he accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those criminal cases. Whistleblowers charge that Bove suggested in quite colorful language that the regime may need to ignore judicial rulings.
Mary Clare Jalonik, Eric Tucker, Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove for appeals court, pushing past whistleblower claims, AP, July 29, 2025
Jubilee is a Jubilee Media channel that claims to “provoke understanding & create human connection.” The claim seems open to question in light of Tim Miller’s reporting at The Bulwark on an episode where Oxford grad, progressive journalist, and political commentator Mehdi Hasan “takes on 20 far-right conservatives in a brutal, revealing debate. From open fascist admissions to jaw-dropping constitutional takes, Tim and JVL [Jonathan V. Last] break down what this says about the next generation of conservatives” (Tim and JVL Watch Mehdi Hasan Humiliate 20 Far-Right Clowns, July 21, 2025).
Two days later Miller interviewed Hasan about the experience (Mehdi Hasan: Jubilee “Debate” Left Me Speechless). Both of Miller’s podcasts include video clips from the debate, a term I use loosely here. I had never heard of Jubilee prior to this and know nothing about it beyond Miller’s reporting and a cursory look at the blaring, glitzy, and singularly uninformative Jubilee Media website. I have not dug deeply enough to learn how the far-right conservatives who took turns sitting across the table from Hasan were chosen. They are not an impressive lot. A key takeaway from Miller’s conversation with Hasan:
Hasan: Max Boot, I think, wrote a piece for The Washington Post a while back, and he had a phrase that stuck with me. He said, there was a time when the Republican Party was a mainstream Republican Party with a white nationalist fringe. It is now a white nationalist party with a Republican fringe.
Miller: What is a legit, like, what is a realistic effort for de-radicalizing? Like, it probably isn't you, to be honest, right? Like a brown immigrant, like, yeah, like debating them in Oxford style.
Hasan: Brown, Muslim, immigrant journalist. I tick all the boxes.
Ewan Palmer, Self-Described Fascist Begs for Donations After Claiming Viral Debate Got Him Fired, The Daily Beast, July 22, 2025
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers continue to fire warning shots into crowds of starving Palestinians with predictable consequences. The Israeli military and government say Hamas makes them do it. Netanyahu says there is no starvation or policy of starvation in Gaza.
Yaroslava Antipina reports on Bluesky that “Mourning silence has covered Kyiv. No music in public places, no entertainment events.” The death toll from yesterday’s Russian attack has risen to thirty-one, including five children. Today she drinks warcoffee and bears witness to the war while writing about Ukraine’s history and culture.
This and that around the web that may be of interest:
Ryan Goodman, Understanding DHS’s and ICE’s New Powers in Comparative Perspective, Just Security, July 21, 2025
Quinta Jurecic, The FBI’s Leaders ‘Have No Idea What They’re Doing’, The Atlantic, July 29, 2025
Gregory Svirnovskiy, Republicans want to rename Kennedy Center’s opera house after Melania Trump, Politico, July 22, 2025
Keep the faith. Hold the line. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt