"Salmagundi" Magazine: A Discussion with Bob Boyers

New Books in Literature

Robert Boyers founded the quarterly Salmagundi in 1965 and has been its editor in chief ever since. He’s the author of 12 books, including most recently Maestros Monsters: Days & Nights with Sontag and Steiner and before that The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, The Academy and the Hunt for Political Heresies. Besides teaching at Skidmore College, he directs the New York State Summer Writers Institute.

Salmagundi rightly prides itself on hosting wide-ranging, inquisitive discussions of major topics involving race, gender, literature, psychology and so much more. This discussion goes in depth on four entries from the magazine. First up: “Talking Race Matters: A Conversation with John McWhorter & Thomas Chatterton Williams” explores the limits of racial essentialism as well as total assimilation that risks denying what is unique about the Black perspective and experience. A second piece is Elizabeth Benedict’s essay, “What’s the Matter with Sex?” It tackles how far the influence of pornography has gone (astray) as a training ground that leads young men into often degrading behavior to the women they are intimate with, including the use of choking as a form of eroticism. “The Failure of Censorship” by Adam Phillips looks at how our desires endanger us and yet at the same time to deny them denies aspects of ourselves. When is and isn’t self-censorship fruitful? Finally, Salmagundi hosted a symposium called “Can the American Meritocracy Get Religion?” Five writers are responding to an editorial by Ross Douthat in the New York Times. All found Doughat’s views too narrow or incoherent to be persuasive.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site.

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