Working Through My Rieff

It seems the time to be “Rieff-stricken,” as Margaret Soltan puts it at University Diaries. Over the past week, I’ve written two pieces on the late Philip Rieff – one for The Boston Globe and the other for Inside Higher Ed. And each one only scratches the surface.

It seems too soon yet to say very much about his last book, My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority. I’m still trying to figure out if this ultimate phase of his thinking actually marks an advance on his early work or not. In Deathworks, Rieff speaks of three culture or “worlds” that correspond to different historical periods, very loosely defined. A good overview by an enthusiast is available here.

So far I’m kind of dubious. The book feels to me like Ortega y Gassett’s The Revolt of the Masses translated into Rieffese, an exotic idiom distantly related to English. Then again, it can take time for his insights to settle in, so that may be premature. (There are at least three forthcoming posthumous books by Rieff, so this may take a while.)

My friend David Glenn published a fine profile of Rieff late last year. See also this affectionate if slightly terrifying recollection by Gordon Marino, who describes himself in a note to me as “a longtime - forever student of Rieff’s.”

Clearly the man was an incredibly powerful teacher. One hopes that there are recordings available of him in the classroom. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it turned out he strictly forbade anything of the sort.