[lbo-talk] Cornel West vs Slåvøj Zïßék

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Mar 24 09:22:27 PDT 2011


I am sorry, I had another brain fart today. The author of _The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma_ is the Polish writer Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz, of course.

Wojtek

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ravi, with all due respect, you are looking in a wrong place.  The
> originality cum value of the speakers resides in the audience, not in
> the speaker him/herself.  Nearly anyone has something to say, but what
> is being heard depends on the audience.
>
> A good illustration is Jerzy Kosinski's novel _Being There_
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosinski, also in the film version
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There - itself plagiarized from
> Adolf.  Dymsza's _The Career  of Nicodemus Dyzma_
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Career_of_Nicodemus_Dyzma  The plot
> of both novels is pretty much the same: an uneducated simpleton
> accidentally walks into elite circles where his semi-coherent
> ramblings and digressions are taken for words of wisdom, and the
> simpleton is offered positions of influence and power despite his lack
> of education and experience.
>
> So it pretty much depends on the audience - what they want to hear and
> how they relate to a particular style of presentation and speaker's
> persona.  If the "chemistry" is right, a speaker is viewed as a
> revelation even though what he is saying is not much different from
> opinions than can be found elsewhere.
>
> Wojtek
>



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