Create Dangerously by Albert Camus

Create Dangerously

Live dangerously, think dangerously, create dangerously. This can be a wonderful way to sum up the life – and writings – of Albert Camus. One of my favorite writers, his works have profoundly touched me in my own writing, in my own way of thinking, and my life in general. One of my biggest inspirations for writing, alongside Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, Spinoza, Antonie de Saint Exupery, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick, Nietzsche, and a host of others. Creating dangerously is something that gets to the core of writing, and gets to the core of what writers SHOULD do. It doesn’t mean “no fear or no worries” but it does mean to take risks, to write what needs to be written, to create what needs to be created. Art for art’s sake. To hell with the dictator, to hell with the public, to hell with who might cause you trouble for the creation. Create dangerously. Think dangerously. Live dangerously.

Albert Camus

Portrait of Albert Camus from New York World-Telegram and Sun Photograph Collection, 1957 (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Albert Camus was a famous writer, an existentialist writer that helped herald in the existentialist movement alongside Sartre and others. His “brand” of Existentialism was “Absurdism”, insofar as that life has no inherent meaning and it is up to us to find meaning, or to find purpose, or to just live, in an absurd world.

The following comes from his biography on Wikipedia:

Albert Camus (/kæmˈuː/^[2] kam-OO; French: [albɛʁ kamy] ^ⓘ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist,^[3] and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.

Camus was born in Algeria during the French colonization, to pied-noir parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating for a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that was rejected by most parties.

Philosophically, Camus’ views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Some consider Camus’ work to show him to be an existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.

Albert Camus – Wikipedia

Absurdism

Absurdism is the philosophical thesis that life, or the world in general, is absurd. There is wide agreement that the term “absurd” implies a lack of meaning or purpose but there is also significant dispute concerning its exact definition and various versions have been suggested.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} The choice of one’s definition has important implications for whether the thesis of absurdism is correct and for the arguments cited for and against it: it may be true on one definition and false on another.^[6]

In a general sense, the absurd is that which lacks a sense, often because it involves some form of contradiction. The absurd is paradoxical in the sense that it cannot be grasped by reason.^[7][8][9] But in the context of absurdism, the term is usually used in a more specific sense. According to most definitions, it involves a conflict, discrepancy, or collision between two things. Opinions differ on what these two things are.^[1][2][3][4] For example, it is traditionally identified as the confrontation of rational man with an irrational world or as the attempt to grasp something based on reasons even though it is beyond the limits of rationality.^[10][11] Similar definitions see the discrepancy between intention and outcome, between aspiration and reality, or between subjective assessment and objective worth as the source of absurdity.^[1][3] Other definitions locate both conflicting sides within man: the ability to apprehend the arbitrariness of final ends and the inability to let go of commitments to them.^[4] In regard to the conflict, absurdism differs from nihilism since it is not just the thesis that nothing matters. Instead, it includes the component that things seem to matter to us nonetheless and that this impression cannot be shaken off. This difference is expressed in the relational aspect of the absurd in that it constitutes a conflict between two sides.^[4][1][2]

Various components of the absurd have been suggested and different researchers often focus their definition and inquiry on one of these components. Some accounts emphasize the practical components concerned with the individual seeking meaning while others stress the theoretical components about being unable to know the world or to rationally grasp it. A different disagreement concerns whether the conflict exists only internal to the individual or is between the individual’s expectations and the external world. Some theorists also include the metacognitive component that the absurd entails that the individual is aware of this conflict.^{[2][3][12][4]}

An important aspect of absurdism is that the absurd is not limited to particular situations but encompasses life as a whole.^[2][1][13] There is a general agreement that people are often confronted with absurd situations in everyday life.^[7] They often arise when there is a serious mismatch between one’s intentions and reality.^[2] For example, a person struggling to break down a heavy front door is absurd if the house they are trying to break into lacks a back wall and could easily be entered on this route.^[1] But the philosophical thesis of absurdism is much more wide-reaching since it is not restricted to individual situations, persons, or phases in life. Instead, it asserts that life, or the world as a whole, is absurd. The claim that the absurd has such a global extension is controversial, in contrast to the weaker claim that some situations are absurd.^[2][1][13]

The perspective of absurdism usually comes into view when the agent takes a step back from their individual everyday engagements with the world to assess their importance from a bigger context.^[4][2][14] Such an assessment can result in the insight that the day-to-day engagements matter a lot to us despite the fact that they lack real meaning when evaluated from a wider perspective. This assessment reveals the conflict between the significance seen from the internal perspective and the arbitrariness revealed through the external perspective.^[4] The absurd becomes a problem since there is a strong desire for meaning and purpose even though they seem to be absent.^[7] In this sense, the conflict responsible for the absurd often either constitutes or is accompanied by an existential crisis.^[15][14]

Absurdism – Wikipedia

Book Review: Create Dangerously by Albert Camus

‘To create today is to create dangerously’

Camus argues passionately that the artist has a responsibility to challenge, provoke and speak up for those who cannot in this powerful speech, accompanied here by two others.

Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York’s underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Create Dangerously (Back of Book Blurb) – GoodReads

As I said above in the introduction to this review – “live dangerously, think dangerously, create dangerously” could be a motto for Albert Camus. And its at the heart of what this small little book is all about. This tract is only 53 pages, of a small sized book. Its fast paced but not a quick easy read, you can easily find yourself reading over a page to regain, or to reorient, or to reread what you just read. Fully embracing, falling into what Camus is saying. Its two essays and one speech, but it packs so much into these 53 pages. I believe the two essays were also at one time used as speeches as well. So, in that sense this is just three speeches laid out in essay form each.

According to a quick Google search, the three speeches were:

• CREATE DANGEROUSLY – University of Uppsala, 1957
• DEFENSE OF INTELLIGENCE – L’Amitié Française, 1945
• BREAD AND FREEDOM – Labour Exchange of Saint-Étienne, 1953

The artist, the writer, the author, the creator is propelled to create, to do so, to not be silenced. It is imperative for a writer, for an artist; to do what is right to him or herself. To write or create regardless of what penalties one might face, no matter the force and the opposition. One is forced by all that is strong and right in the world, to create, no matter the outcome.

Lets break down the individual speeches / essays a bit more:

1) Create Dangerously

Camus is deeply concerned about the tormented relationship between the artist and the public, that is, the society in which he lives. Because the art of nowadays must deal with the masses. It must accept to be either engaged in some kind of historical commitment or corrupt by popularization, a choice the old masters had always been spared until the middle class prevailed and culture became accessible to the masses.

Today everything is changed and even silence has dangerous implications. To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing. The question is how, among the police forces of so many ideologies, the strange liberty of creation is possible.

…

We know now that they exist, because the masses have become stronger and keep people from forgetting them.

Albert Camus – Create Dangerously

Camus is not blinded, nor is he ignorant of ideological faith and bias and prejudices. He’s perfectly aware of the implications of the so-called Socialistic Realism of his time, a delusional attempt to depict a ‘leftist’ reality that inevitably became mere propaganda: the masses were to be portrayed only as the ideal masses of the red utopia, and the writer’s grasp on reality could only be focused on the future – that is, on the non-existent. What we need today is, according to Camus, a creativity that is aware of its own potential. Today’s art is threatened by a dangerous lack of contact with the physical and emotional reality of life.

One of the many reasons I find Camus endearing, and more interesting than most other existentialist writers (like Sartre, or Kierkegard, or Weil) is that he is optimistic. He is looking forward, he is proud of where he is, proud of the future for mankind, and doesn’t have such a bleak and irreverent view of what mankind is or the future of mankind. Camus’ vision is hardly the bleak, depressing cliché of so many existentialists. He forwards an ideal concept of art as an achievement of all mankind throughout history, a common endeavor and a common task of both writers and readers. “Every man, on the foundation of his own suffering and joys, builds for all.” This may not be the core of Existentialism, but it certainly is the core of Existence.

2) Defense of Intelligence

It is interesting that as a system, as a society, that we have to “defend intelligence”. That intelligence, that reasoning and rationale, is in need of defense. That rational thinking, that reasoning, that intelligence isn’t the end goal in and of itself. But sadly, this is where we are at – and here he is talking of this in the 50s. And now, in the 2020’s, so little progress has been made, if anything, we have regressed on intelligence, regressed on our anti-academic and anti-scholarly work, regressed on our positions, our desire for intelligence, our desire for reasoning.

His speech here, done in 1945, was quick, and short, ten minutes, and aimed at France. Aimed at a nation just starting to heal and cure itself of all the wounds from all the recent tragedies that it has endured. n order to overcome the hatred and tension left behind by the war, Camus says, any desire for revenge must be put aside once and for all. Only a new political mentality can lead to a new start and a real change, in which there are neither partisans nor collaborators anymore.

What determined the fall of European civilisation and the ascent of barbaric dictatorships was the lack of respect for intelligence and intellectuals, who had been conveniently used as a scapegoat – or an enemy – by most governments.

The last and most long-lived victory of Hitlerism is to be found in the shameful scars made on the hearts of those who fought it most vigorously.

Albert Camus – Defense of Intelligence

3) Bread and Freedom

The last of the speeches / essays in “Create Dangerously” – this speech was delivered in 1953 for a labor exchange. A critique of the exploitation of freedom, shamelessly betrayed by the Soviet Revolution and often seen by the western government as an annoying ‘inconvenience’ of democracy. Once again indeed, Camus’ thought is not influenced by any political faction.

In this, he discusses how freedom – human freedom – are the same as justice. No justice can be devoid of intellectual freedom, and no intelligence can exist without social justice. Prejudices, biases, hatred, cannot exist within intelligence. An intelligent man cannot hate willfully and ignorantly. For reasons without merit. (ie. the color of someone’s skin, or who they love, or gender, etc.) This speech also shows the most unexpectedly, delightfully optimistic Camus, eventually suggesting a universal brotherhood between the intellectual and the worker as their only chance to fight back whenever their freedom is in danger.

Its amazing how timeless these three essays / speeches feel. How relevant they are in 2024 (with the upcoming election especially playing heavily in all of our minds, as well as the past several years with COVID, and American politics, and the wars that have started), and how timeless and prescient they feel. The issues at hand in these speeches are still issues at hand. Propaganda, freedom of speech, not giving into hatred, intellectual freedom, social justice, justice as a whole, human freedom, the role of an artist, etc – it all is as relevant today as it was in 1945, 1953, and 1957. We lost Albert Camus too early, too young. His words and wisdom are still needed to this day, and he should be essential reading for everyone. Not just artists.

Freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.

Albert Camus

My GoodReads Rating: ****
My LibraryThing Rating: ****.5
Global GoodReads Rating: 3.82 (as of 2.13.24)

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Free Will

What is free will? Do you have free will? Do I have free will? Does anyone have free will? I find myself constantly trying to wrap my head around free will, this way and that, attempting to understand it, from this angle or that. From the determinists, that believe that we don’t have free will – the hard line determinists especially in this regard – that everything is cause and effect, and due to some of the various science experiments and studies done over the years that show our brains actually decide an action up towards 7 seconds before we consciously make the decision or know we are making the decision; so from this, they take the stance that everything is out of our hands, that there is no free will, that we make no decisions, and have no choices. That when you decide on ‘strawberry’ ice cream, instead of ‘chocolate’ ice cream, its due to factors outside of our own decision making. Then there are those who believe we do have free will, and that everything is choice, nothing is decision, etc. Or they walk it back a bit, based on various things (ie. brain tumors, or alcohol, or drugs, etc.).

Sam Harris takes the side of determinism, and states that we don’t have free will. Others in various medias and forums and debates, from eminent scholars, to scientists, to politicians, to philosophers, to theologians, have taken both sides as well.

Philosophy

As I’m sure many readers of the blog are well aware of now, philosophy is one of my (few? many?) joys and interests. Especially when it comes to reading. If you’ve checked out our Instagram page I’m sure you’ve seen my beer pics and hiking pics where there is a book in the background, and more likely than not, that’s a philosophy book. I am actually hoping to be launching a Podcast soon, where philosophy and books and literature will be a large staple of it. (As will beer of course, I mean, we are The Beer Thrillers, after all.) But, needless to say, philosophy is a strong / big interest here, as well as fun hobby for me. I enjoy reading, writing, dissecting, and thinking philosophically about many, many, many topics, and interests. (I love the union and crossing of pop culture and philosophy, the Pop Culture Philosophy books are a fun starting point for many people into the realm of philosophy.)

I have previously covered ‘What More Philosophers Think‘ here on the blog, and in due time, there will be plenty more philosophy books covered as well. From all walks of philosophy; as much as I want to say ‘no one school of thought’ will be the heavy favorite…. I would be lying, as I will most likely cover existentialism, philosophy of the mind, and ethics philosophy the most. These are my favorite topics and branches of the philosophy tree, with some of my favorite writers being Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Baruch Spinoza, Frederich Nietzsche, Peter Singer, and many more. So buckle up, you will be seeing lots of their works covered here on the blog, as well, as hopefully, the podcast once I get that up and running.

Book Review

This is a relatively short treatise on Free Will. It seems to be honest that most free will treatises are just essays and are typically in the short essay form, and this falls in that category. A quick, easy, read (will help pad out your GoodReads 100 Book Challenge), but ultimately will give you lots to chew on and lots of questions, thoughts, and much more to ponder.

GoodReads has it listed as 96 pages, but that’s being a bit generous. My copy (which should be aligned with the one on GoodReads) has the final page as 83 (and this is including the index but not the ‘About the Author’ page). So its certainly a quick read, but there is definitely a fair bit too it. Sam Harris lays out his thoughts and opinions on determinism, how free will is a myth, and his thoughts in general about the subject rather succinctly and clearly and the prose is good and lively. Your mileage on his thoughts may vary, and your opinion of his thoughts and ideas might be different than another person, but his argument is well laid out, and he writes in a clear enough style, staying relatively clear of jargon. This is ‘academia made for laymen’ or as some call it ‘pop philosophy’ or various other terms. It’s an academic and thought out approach, but written for the general public, rather than twelve scholars and academics sitting in big leather chairs high up in some ivory tower probably covered in ivy.

Sam Harris immediately states that free will doesn’t exist, showcases his deterministic viewpoint on the matter, and then proceeds and moves on to why this shouldn’t change anything (or nothing really).

“We do not have the freedom we think we have… Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them. Or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.”

Free Will (Sam Harris)

He makes sure to point out that regardless of our inability to actually have free will, that we are unable to determine our own thoughts, actions, or behaviors, that this does not give us moral latitude, or justification, or even immunity. That justice must still be done to criminals, that if you murder, regardless of your lack of free will, you still deserve to be punished based on the law. This is always an interesting point, and a ‘sticking point’ for many in the deterministic vs. free will debate. Justice, law, and theology – are typically the biggest battle lines in the debate. If you have no free will, how can you be punished? I you have no free will, how can God send you to heaven or hell? Does morality matter if you have no free will? Etc. Sam Harris is an atheist and a strong proponent of it, but he still states that regardless of your lack of free will, you don’t have moral freedom. Your actions still do matter, regardless if its YOU acting it out or if its YOU ACTING IT OUT BECAUSE ‘X’. That justice and morality still need to function, elsewise society would crumble. Now, Harris doesn’t go full doom and gloom and say that much, but thats the slippery slope argument to it all.

“The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness. Rather it appears in consciousness. As does any thought or impulse that might impose it.”

Free Will (Sam Harris)

This is the main hard line for most determinists. And it starts from the studies done with the MRIs and fRMIs, etc, that Libet did, that showcases a person’s choice happens up towards 7 seconds before the person is fully aware of their choice. This is an oft cited study and experiment that the determinists love to use when discussing and having the free will debate. And many articles and essays will go back to this time and time again.

If you are into philosophy, if you enjoy Sam Harris’s writing style, approach, or thought, if you are curious or interested in free will and the debates therein, I would highly recommend this. It’ll be a quick read, a day’s worth, depending on your reading speed and how much you set aside to thinking and contemplating everything. Will it solve your own internal debate on the topic? Will it let you decide if you have free will or not? Is this the ultimate explanation and answer to the debate? — Obviously no. And you, and I, and we all know this going in (or should anyway). No book of philosophy will give you every answer, neither will any book of religion, or science, or any book in general. That’s not the goal or point, or absolute value of a book. But will it give you something to think about? Will it give you a new perspective? Or new insight? Or a new way to look at the argument? That it will, and that is what any good philosophy book should do.

Free will is a tricky subject. Its something we all ‘want’ to have, and also ‘don’t want to have’. Because, we all want to think we have free will – when it obviously benefits us. We want the credit for when we are talented and make an artistic masterpiece, we want credit when we do something right; but at the same time, we don’t want credit (ie. blame) for when we come up short; our failings, our imperfections or flaws, our addictions and vices, etc. Then we want determinism, and to wash our hands and clap and say ‘it was those faulty wires up there’.

Science and philosophy (primarily science) is helping us get closer to the target on this debate, and in the years ahead, it will be interesting to see what new headway and roads we make into this topic and discussion. I’m looking forward to it…. if I chose to or not.

My GoodReads Rating: ****
Average Global GoodReads Rating: 3.87 (as of 8.26.21)
My LibraryThing Rating: ****

Some Interesting Articles on Free Will

Below is a list of some interesting articles, essays, websites, and videos about the subject of free will. Including an hour long discussion by Sam Harris himself on the topic.

• Sam Harris: On Free Will (YouTube)
• Determinism vs. Free Will (Crash Course Philosophy) (YouTube)
• There’s No Such Thing as Free Will (The Atlantic)
• Free Will is Real (Scientific American)
• Free Will (Wikipedia)
• Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Free Will (James Clear Book Review)

As always, thank you everyone for reading. Hope you found this informative and are enjoying our new book reviews on the blog. Be sure to check out more of them, as well as our hike reviews, our beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, and much more. And soon – hopefully in the near future – be on the lookout for our podcasts, which will cover a very wide range of topics. (I just have too many hobbies I think!) Including beer, breweries, home brewing, hop growing, books, literature, philosophy, and pop culture.

-B. Kline

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A Book Review Over a Year in the Making

Sometimes you just slowly …. ever slowly…. so very slowly… finish a book. For many reasons it happens. The book has to go back to the library, you lose it, misplace it, forget about it, set it down in lieu of another newer, cooler, more sparkly book, you spill a drink on it and need to get a new copy, etc, etc.

This was just a case of simply setting it down to read other things and I kind of piece meal read parts of it, slowly devouring it. There were several reasons for that, some because of the book (faults or not) and some because of me (faults or not).

I had picked this up in 2019 at Mid-Town Scholar in Harrisburg. Waiting for the author speaking and presenting (I forget which one it was I was there to see), I snooped around the store and found this and picked it up. Primarily on the basis of Slavoj Zizek and Robert M. Pirsig as well as even seeing Phillip Pullman which I found interesting. So I got this, sat in attendance for whichever speaker it was that day (might have been the time I was there for the speaker about Benjamin Rush) and then took it to ZeroDay Brewing afterwords to read a little…. and from there… it slowly drifted further and further down my “to read” or “reading” pile. (Which is a very complicated mass of a ton of books and is constantly shifting with books falling in and out of the ‘top ten’ of the reading piles.)

This is a selection of interview essays with numerous philosophers , some well known (like Pirsig, Zizek, Foot), and some lesser known (or at least to me anyway lesser known) philosophers as well. The front cover lists the following philosophers for essay – interviews in the book: Igor Aleksander, Philippa Foot, A.C. Grayling, Ted Honderich, Oliver Letwin, Alexander McCall Smith, Onora O’Neill, Bhikhu Parekh, Robert M. Pirsig, Philip Pullman, Mary Warnock, Bernard Williams, and Slavoj Zizek.

The back blurb has a few quotes from Zizek, Grayling, Parekh, and Honderich. Zizek on the topic of tolerance says: “I am more and more convinced that the very notion of tolerance secretly endorses precisely its opposite, a certain kind of intolerance.” Grayling comments on philosophy and public understanding: “Philosophy, for all its apparent abstraction and technicality, is really just a membrane away from ordinary, everyday, practical concerns.”

Philosophy

Personally, philosophy for me, is one of my ‘hobbies’, or things I do for fun. This includes, reading, writing, and thinking (or philosophizing) about philosophy. I went to school for a bit for Journalism and Philosophy (which helps me out tremendously in a field dominated by Mathematics… …to a degree, it actually does despite the joke of it all). So I enjoy finding and picking up esoteric philosophy works, as well as the classics (Aristotle’s Ethics, Plato’s Republic, Spinoza, Kant, etc.). Some topics I especially engage in and find interesting are free will, ethical debates, philosophy of the mind, philosophy of time, and numerous other debates and topics. I typically steer clear of the ‘semantic’ and ‘language’ based philosophies, but I’ll still read them, and you still need to have some understanding of them, as a basis and an underline for much of philosophy in common.

I happened to find this volume – ‘What More Philosophers Think’ randomly in the basement at The Midtown Scholar after a book event there one night, relatively cheap (cheaper than its original pricing), and decided ‘why not’. Has some interesting philosophers included – like Slavoj Zizek, Robert M. Pirsig, Philippa Foot, and even has Philip Pullman.

List of Philosophers in this Work

There is an impressive list of philosophers in this work, interviewed by Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom. The list includes:

• Igor Aleksander
• Philippa Foot
• A.C. Grayling
• Ted Honderich
• Oliver Letwin
• Alexander McCall Smith
• Onora O’Neill
• Bhikhu Parekh
• Robert M. Pirsig
• Philip Pullman
• Mary Warnock
• Bernard Williams
• Slavoj Zizek

There is also a round table discussion about September 11th and post – September 11th with various philosophers. You can click the links on the names above to go to their Wikipedia pages for more information on each philosopher.

Sadly, as you’ll see from going to each of their pages, since the publication of this work, several of these writers have passed (by 2021). Philippa Foot, Robert M. Pirsig, Mary Warnock, Bernard Williams, have all passed.

Book Review

This is a series of interviews with the listed philosophers / writers / authors / (and one politician) above. So the book varies by interview, and how well it goes. Your mileage may also vary depending on your thoughts of the writers / philosophers and their works, and if you agree with their philosophies as well. The editors / interviewers even kind of throw Robert M. Pirsig under the bus in their preamble to his interview, discussing how difficult of an interviewee he was, how they had to do it over e-mail and online exchange, etc.

I enjoy getting to read more from Philippa Foot, most famous for her ‘trolley problem’ – which has become such a central ‘mind thought’ for much of philosophy, and an important part one of my recent favorite shows (The Good Place).

Slavoj Zizek is also always interesting and entertaining in his own right. I feel like interviewing him is more or less just unlocking a cage, and seeing what damage is done to the city while fleetingly throwing whatever escaped some morsels and taking notes of what it does with them.

All and all, the interviews are well done, there is a brief description of each writer / philosopher, and the work should be engrossing for any interested in their thoughts. It is somewhat dated, but in general, most interviews themselves become dated. It also works as a historic anchor for thoughts and feelings from its time as well.

My GoodReads rating: ***
Global Average GoodReads Rating: 3.04 (as of May 23rd, 2021)
My LibraryThing rating: ***.5