Mr. Harmon Returns from One Place to Another
Punditry
March 01, 2010
Here's a discussion I had on Facebook with Andy a few months ago, after he became a fan of Amiri Baraka.
I'm thinking about the idea of a "shift to punditry" and where and when and why it happens. Part of the problem, I think, is that innovative writers might not always be so good at articulating the political implications of their works to people who don't already have a certain level of understanding of the political boundaries of this kind of writing - the unconverted, as it were. I'll hesitantly say that I find Baraka's writing to be more interesting than his politics, but what I really mean is that I find the politics of his writing to be more interesting than his politics, as it's displayed in the public eye.
