Alexander Theroux - Email interview, 08/07/25.

Source:
https://x.com/Hermitixpodcast/status/1942619175584743650

>>24532184 (OP)
why does Max Lawton hate Alexander Theroux so much?

>>24532184 (OP)
>
Unbearable within two fucking sentences, I didn't read any more of that shit. If you can't show basic civility towards an interviewer, why would you even bother replying? Just hang up.
Being that much of an ass tells me you either see your own position as unassailable (and thus you don't learn) or you just don't care about other people (and aren't worth speaking with outside of pure utility).

>>24532184 (OP)
Sounds like a fun guy to be around.

Who is this faggot?
Nevermind, I don't care.

Based

>>24532239
Melancholy Burton or Arabian Nights maximum perversity Burton?

kek

>>24532184 (OP)
He used LLMs to help him with some of the answers.

>>24532184 (OP)
Based

>>24532726
Secret antisemitic manuscript suppressed by Jews Burton

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jun/03/books.humanities

>'The sale is a real blunder,' he told The Observer. 'I was horrified to hear of this and, although I don't want to impede genuine scholarship, I believe something like this should not be in the public domain.'

>Christie's has given the book a reserve price of £200,000 and describes it anodynely as 'one of a few substantial autograph manuscripts by Sir Richard Burton remaining in private hands'.

>'I am appalled and gobsmacked by what the board are doing,' said Geoffrey Alderman, an academic who has seen the original document. 'Nearly 100 years ago, the board went to a lot of trouble to get this work to suppress it. The decision to sell it now amounts to a betrayal of world Jewry.'

>[Nagler] added: 'Only a handful of people have seen it, but most agree it is an important document for those interested in Burton.'

>Nagler confirmed the work was bought up in 1909 to prevent its publication, but he argues that its value as a negative tool for anti-Semites has lessened over the years. Alderman, however, remembers the manuscript as potent and bigoted. 'It was terrible to see these things written in English, especially by an intelligent man such as Burton,' he said.

>'When I first tried to read it for research, an enormous number of obstacles were put in my way by the board. I was subject to a great deal of abuse and was told details of its contents must never be released.

>'If the board has to do this now to survive, then perhaps it would be better if it went out of existence,' added Alderman.

>Burton's 1877 work gives a lurid account of the arrest and acquittal of 13 Jews accused of the ritual murder of a Capuchin friar in 1840, an event that became known as the Damascus Blood Libel.

>>24532224
And yet your response to the interview is not dissimilar to AT's response to the interviewee. The only real difference is that AT was able to endure a series of particularly bad questions, whereas you're a liar
>tells me that
On the basis of (having read) only two sentences? Kek. Who's the insufferable know-it-all?

>>24533158
I have just about had enough of the Jews, I think.

>>24532726
Robert, obviously (the elder, 'melancholy' Burton)

>>24532184 (OP)
Someone should give the interviewer constructive criticism. The first question is not good. You shouldn't begin a conversation by asking someone to define themselves. Also, the question has the awkward implication that not many people might know who the guy is. The second question ("As writing is your calling"): maybe don't rely on overly clichéd phrases (and notions) when trying to talk to a writer who takes language seriously. The rest of the question feels like a forced attempt at some kind of profundity that falls flat. Etc. Generally, the questions feel a little too arbitrary, unfocused.

>who you are
not who are you?

>>24532184 (OP)
Hearty jej. I had to look up "split infinitive" btw.

Artists tend to be unpleasant. They put everything into the objects they create, so they have little left for the cultivation of virtues. What they do (creating things) seems to have the side-effect of strengthening the ego (by channeling egoic energies into their creations, reinforcing ego-attachements). There are exceptions (Houellebecq seems fairly egoless), but they tend to be rare.

>>24535882
Houellebecq is just evil.

>>24532184 (OP)
lol
Darconville’s Cat is a beautiful (and beautifully pretentious) book by the way. Hardly discussed here, from what I see. I think Theroux is maybe more than a little snubbed by the literary establishment, for elements of his personality (as revealed in this interview) and somewhat of a politically incorrect anti-feminist bent, at least from what I picked up in Darconville’s Cat. There’s also a pretty harsh satire of the modern academic world in the West, and not just some lighthearted jabs either: He’s very catty. He’s openly elitist in his approach to literature; against at least from what I see in D.’s Cat. He’s a man out of his time -- you’re not going to find him hamfistedly throwing in modern hot-button social and political topics in the works to show his progressive political credentials.

Burton (of “The Anatomy of Melancholy”), Rabelais, Sterne whom he brings up here >>24532239: are obvious big influences on him and the work. He has the maximalistic bent, the love of language and wordplay, great erudition and allusiveness, preference for great long sentences and also great long detailed lists as a device, and great digressions.

It’s odd he’s not brought up here more,he’s sort of in line with other authors like Joyce, Nabokov, Gaddis, Gass and the like who get brought up a lot, as part of the bent towards long great dense allusive books with an especially focus on the beauty of the language.