Episode 11: Daniel Oppenheimer

Episode 11 - Daniel Oppenheimer

(see also, episode 53)

I met Dan Oppenheimer soon after I moved to this here Pioneer Valley in 2005. We ended up writing a blog together, Masculinity and Its Discontents (M.A.I.D.) for several years while I was in grad school and he was the arts writer and anonymous advice-giver, as Dear Dexter, for our region's alternative weekly, the Valley Advocate.

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I met Dan Oppenheimer soon after I moved to this here Pioneer Valley in 2005. We ended up writing a blog together, Masculinity and Its Discontents (M.A.I.D.) for several years while I was in grad school and he was the arts writer and anonymous advice-giver, as Dear Dexter, for our region’s alternative weekly, the Valley Advocate.

This year, his long awaited and much longer toiled-over book, Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century was published by Simon and Schuster to the kind of fanfare authors of such books dream of, with reviews and features everywhere from the Atlantic to the New Republic, the New Yorker, Time Magazine and the New York Times Book Review.

Exit Right explores the lives and careers of six major 20th Century figures - Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens - who moved from the political right to the political left, often quite suddenly. It’s a really fascinating read, which I mention especially because you might want to go check it out, seeing as Dan and I talked about jealousy and fame and ambition and podcasting and filmmaking and Morris Dickstein and a bunch of other stuff, but hardly at all about the book.

We talked on the phone for the first time in a long time, in June.

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Also, as mentioned, here's my essay "Peep Show," which Dan mentioned. (warning adult content blah blah blah)

"See"  you next time!