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1. james says

   October 4, 2008 at 7:12 pm

   Thanks for uploading William Irwin Thompson to YouTube! I return again and again to Thompson and Gregory Bateson, in whatever form I can find them. When I was younger and more absorbent, I got lost in those two. Their ideas have kept me permanently open, intellectually nimble, curious and awed.

   Is there anyone you know of now who thinks and writes like Thompson did? Who is it that you read?

   Thanks in advance !

2. John David Ebert says

   October 5, 2008 at 1:42 am

   Dear James:

   Have you read Slavoj Zizek at all? I’ve been reading his stuff lately and though he is a Marxist, he writes like Thompson in that he draws on a broad range of references from Hegel to the latest pop movies. He is incredibly erudite and learned, just like Thompson. He differs from Thompson, however, in that he is a Marxist and therefore also a materialist. But he is funny and witty and cranky.

   There is also Camille Paglia who is broadly learned and erudite with a sweeping interest in the humanities and a very sharp tongue. Her best days, however, I think are behind her. Try one of her essay collections.

   There is also Jean Baudrillard, who is a sort of French po-mo equivalent of Thompson. He is very readable and insightful about culture, top or pop. One of his best collections is called “Screened Out,” and it’s a good place to start, since his essays there are particularly readable and intelligible.

   And don’t let me forget Paul Virilio, another great French thinker. He is still alive and he is very good at commenting on technology, especially military technology and its recent transformations. Unlike Baudrillard, he is more of a traditional humanist. He is not difficult to read or understand and he is very insightful about media. If you like McLuhan, I recommend him particularly. Try “Open Sky” or “The Original Accident” or “City of Panic.”

   You might also try my book on movies which is heavily indebted to Thompson, who wrote the Forward for it. It’s available on Amazon.

   That’s about it, as far as I know. Nowadays well rounded intellectuals are few and far between. Academe has crushed them by insisting upon degrees and specialization and so the days of Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan and Bill Thompson are pretty much a thing of the past.

   Publishers and greedy agents are also to blame, for they no longer take chances on intellectual writers since all they’re looking to do is make a buck. Integrity, as far as I can tell, can no longer be found amongst publishers or agents, so many intellectuals, such as myself, have had to resort to Print on Demand or self publishing, which renders you effectively invisible. The insistence on making money is essentially screening out and preventing new intellectuals who are not affiliated with Academe from emerging into the spotlight. If you are too intellectual, trade publishers will not publish you; and if you go to academic publishers, they will tell you your work is not academic enough. So we have lost that middle ground which once could serve as a forum in which public intellectuals (and I don’t mean journalists of the Thomas Friedman type here) like Lewis Mumford or Jane Jacobs could function.

   Hope this helps.

   Best,
   John David Ebert

3. damon heneger says

   February 18, 2009 at 6:07 pm

   I was interested in your views on two new movies coming out, the acting is rather inconsequential but the story line –here is my interest. Knowing and Watchmen.

   thanks
   damon

4. damon heneger says

   February 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm

   In addition to my last question I found this clip today on youtube by allen watts called “who guards the guards?”.

   Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL09_HtGRHU

   or

   thanks
   damon

5. Kyle W. Elsbernd says

   February 10, 2010 at 12:18 am

   I’m trying to find your post called (roughly) “On stupidity in culture” mentioned in your interview with Josh Wagner pt.2. Where is it archived?

   Thanks again for an excellent resource. I shall be buying your book on amazon today.

   Kyle Elsbernd
   Wisconsin USA

6. Stu Grimson says

   September 5, 2011 at 9:38 pm

   Hi Mr. Ebert,

   A book you might find interesting is Brave New War by John Robb. It is written from the perspective of a military intelligence expert, and is 100% non-intellectual in nature, but it is a short and concise book that can be gone through in a few hours. It has to do with the democratization of disruptive capabilities. The increasing complexity of our civilization, combined with technological augmentations that allow individuals or small groups to command vast destructive power, is leading to a situation in which the prevailing social order is simply no longer to maintain itself through conventional means.

   Osama bin Ladin taunts the US in his 2004 speech by saying that he can send two mujahadeen with AK-47’s to a random mountain to fire off a few rounds, and half the US military shows up to chase them around. He is able to expend a few thousand dollars worth of resources that force us, due to institutional inertia and inflexibility, to enact a multi-billion dollar response. And yet our system requires that we respond in such a way. It is likely that developed economies will come to resemble societies like Mexico, in which the authorities preserving the status quo only have the resources to exercise direct control over certain portions of the territory, the rest of which is left to fend more and more for itself. The areas under control, inhabited by the rich and those in the system, will come to resemble walled apartheid communities, lifeboats of order amidst a sea of chaos, with armed guards checking for ID at the gate.

7. Hans G. Despain says

   June 19, 2012 at 10:44 pm

   Invaluable website,

   Reviews are highly insightful.

   Thank you for your efforts!

   Hans

8. Matthew Henson says

   June 28, 2013 at 8:07 am

   Dear Mr. Ebert,

   I am writing to ask if you could please repost your review for David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, because I had a difficulty understanding the film’s meaning due to David Cronenberg’s and Don DeLillo’s obscurity. I have a couple of questions about the film.

   Is Eric Packer the villain and Benno Levin the hero?

   Why do you think writers like Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon have obscure endings, when Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick doesn’t? Because it seems to me all of their novels especially Pynchon’s and McCarthy’s are loosely based on Moby-Dick. What is the need for the obscure endings?

   Love your website, and your book The New Media Invasion.

   Please reply

   Respectfully,

   Matt H. from Niigata, Japan

9. John David Ebert says

   August 1, 2013 at 8:47 pm

   Hi Matthew,

   Thanks for writing.

   I have pulled all the reviews off the website from earlier than 2013 so that they could all be published in my new book “Post-Classic Cinema,” where you will now find the “Cosmopolis” review. I only left the reviews up from this year. Please see the promo and excerpt for the book on the main feed of this site.

   As for your questions about literature, I am planning on writing a book soon that will examine contemporary literature, and questions like these will be dealt with in that volume. There will be chapters on Pynchon and McCarthy and DeLillo in that book.

   But your question about obscure endings pertains to the fact that we are living in a postmodern, post-historic society in which all the traditional narrative structures have been deconstructed and are no longer regarded as trustworthy. Today’s literary writers cannot afford to perpetuate the cliches of previous epochs, which weren’t cliches in those epochs, but have become so today, and still expect to remain relevant. Ours is an age of moral and social and cultural ambiguities: it is no longer “clear” anymore who is the bad guy and who isn’t, or even whether there is such a thing as a “bad guy.” Consequently, our narratives reflect these moral uncertainties. The postmodern narrative — and Pynchon is a classic example — is comfortable suspending itself, as it were, in the ambiguities of unresolved hermeneutical schemas.

   Hope this helps.

   Take care,
   John David Ebert

10. Bill Bridges says

    September 7, 2013 at 1:27 pm

    Thanks for your work here; it’s very insightful. I also like your youtube talks. However, I can’t always devote the time in front of a computer to listen to them. Do you have them available on MP3 anywhere? I’d rather enjoy listening to them when stuck in traffic. Better than inane radio these days. Thanks!

    — bill

11. John David Ebert says

    September 25, 2013 at 9:39 am

    Yes, Bill, my talks are available for download on Google Play at: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=john%20david%20ebert&c=music&docType=2&hl=en

12. bruce c moore says

    March 31, 2017 at 9:25 pm

    what are your thoughts on the movies of ‘Terrence Malick”?

13. Benjamin Cornwall says

    September 9, 2017 at 1:22 am

    Hello John,

    Would it be possible for you to email me? There is something I’d like to ask you about. I tried your e-mail but received an automated response saying that it’s inactive.

    Hope to hear from you