John Berger and Michael Silverblatt - part 1
Part 2: podcast.lannan.org/2010/03/29/...
John Berger is a storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, whose body of work embodies his concern for, in Geoff Dyer's words, "the enduring mystery of great art and the lived experience of the oppressed."
He is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years, who has explored the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics and experience and expression in a series of novels, book works, essays, plays, films, photographic collaborations and performances, unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach. His television series and book Ways of Seeing revolutionized the way that Fine Art is read and understood, while his engagement with European peasantry and migration in the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours and A Seventh Man stand as models of empathy and insight.
John Berger in conversation with Michael Silverblatt at Berger's home, a working farm, in Quincy, Mieussy, France, October 2002. Silverblatt is the host of the radio interview program, Bookworm.
Lannan Foundation
At 5:22 when Silverblatt quotes Kaspar, and Berger nods with his entire smile, you recognise the gratitude of being completely understood.
Such a humble man, John Berger. And with so much wisdom! What an inspiration! I've watched this interview more than a dozen times now, and I always feel amazed and touched by their words EVERY TIME.
What great listeners both of these men are.
The comment on tenderness is so well taken, and so many subtleties about writing discussed, makes one appreciate literature even more.
There's poetry in this conversation.
John Berger is so funny, I love the gestures and facial expressions
Legends. Cant get tired to listen to this interview.
Silverblatt knows the people he interviews better than they know theirselves
This conversation so brilliantly illustrates why the writer needs the writer just as much as vice versa.
What?
😂
I like Michael Silverblatt's point about a child learning about life from the suburbs through books. I used to borrow from my grandmother and felt worldly beyond my reality when I read Jean Genet and Henry Miller at thirteen. Without the actual danger.
Very interesting conversation - one of my greatest regrets is getting rid of the books I read from early childhood (4-7). I remember how vivid my imagination was at that time and it's as if the things I visualized when reading those books are always on the periphery of my mind's eye: never accessible but always influencing my thought patterns.
Have found it via Lannan, Thank you.
Thank you!
I love this conversation, thank you both.
1:08:02 Soul recognizing Soul. Beautiful.
thanks for uploading, wonderful stuff
Hoping that Michael gets well soon. He has enriched us readers so much.
What's wrong with him?
wow! what an excellent interview! insightful questions, profound answers! thank you
Two brilliant minds of our time so engrossed in each other, they are hardly aware of the camera, the recording device, and tens of thousands of listeners overhearing their slow, free flowing conversation about words, narrative, voice, image, silence, black currants, snail watching, and pauses so long and pregnant they could populate the vast uninhabited swathes of the noösphere. This kind intercourse requires slow listening, notwithstanding the locale which may be kitchen, pantry, barn, or vineyard. Mark Michael's countenance, his ears cocked, as he hangs on the lips of his interlocutor who has covered his forehead with his outstretched fingers to utter slowly the echt rather than the ersatz.
Prof Sattar Basra -… reflecting Sebald (Austerlitz, Die Ringe Des Saturn), i am surprised by finding this Video, this talk with John Berger and Michael Silverblatt - all these ideas: „[…] the universe within the universe […] the light, […] you see […] through this window,“ ...and then your comment. Prof Sattar Basra „[…] the echt rather than the […] ersatz.“ …- a poem! Thank you ✨🧚♂️✨ ☀️ „[…] the echt rather than the […] ersatz.“ - what a thought! Thank you ✨🧚♂️✨☀️
Rare to learn more from the interviewer than the interviewee. Excellent stuff
Michael Silverblatt has a way of doing that, I think Jean Cageot. He is excellent.
ah! thank you very much.
Interesting exploration of how inter-being of artist and world and art is a 3-way process of co-creation
What an amazing conversation! One feels so small and ignorant (not in a negative way, on the contrary!) when listening to these men... Thank you for posting this!
I am so very impressed and grateful that this video gives me hope and applicable evidence that the concept of better faster newer that we are bombarded with daily through every media in western culture is indeed what I feel it is. That being a brutish assault on humanity .We world is very very hungry for something slow and measured and full of substance to be considered and never the ultimate that seems to me is the opposite of love as the word ultimate implies it is the end hence a judgment .Obviously how could the ultimate product be such every six months?Verbal inflation is damaging to the point where it will or all ready has sponged up all meaning of language.Hence leaving everyone ,even its proponents very vulnerable as a vacuum of principals is manifested leaving one feeling worse than before you had the ultimate.
Thank you for uploading this... what a compelling, and thoughtful interview. Do you know if there is a second part to it?
In a brutal life - tenderness is the ultimate speaking of unspoken love.
This is conversation.
RIP John Berger :(
How could a man hold his head up with a brain that big.
I mean, who really cares? But how fabulously interesting this conversation is. What are most conversations anyway? Getting and giving. This is listening and empathy. Understanding. Questioning. Excellent. Now I can go and have a little sleep, I’m very tired.
We need the reverence of literature back in our cold world. Our brains need to dance again.
Novalis... oh yes, and I appreciate the way this discussion emphasizes the value of a subtle form of nourishment.
what was the name of the person they were referencing in the marionette conversation? it sounded like Kaiss.
John Berger is kind enough to consider Michael's interpretations of him or his work. But it is Michael's interpretation and he insists that he knows him that he interprets him exactly. John Berger's writings can be interpreted in many different ways
What a perfect rootless examination of pretension. Nothing going all directions at once, teaching no subversion, responding to dead animals,, ellipsis and the absence of nada,nada,nada.
I can't understand those 5 thumbs down....
They can't understand it themselves.
Heinrich von Kleist.
I think Burger needs a psychologist or a change of medication or at least a councilor as he is obviously too slow and makes way to much sense and damaging kindness. He is a threat to industrialism and not only a thoughtful man but indeed a danger to our society. Cover your ears and lock up your wife if this guy is around..
The Internet is an absurd place, really.
1:08 :05 - the cringe in that hand shake speaks volumes
"The page makes words present". How many ways can a man speak yet say nothing?
What a load of crap.