Probably my least favorite Oldster interview! But that isn’t a criticism of you at all, Sari-- this is just a perspective I gain little from hearing. Surprising, too, since poetry is at the center of my life.
A few thoughts:
-Michael seems to forget that attractiveness is not just a physical characteristic? Self-pity and vanity are very unattractive. Especially together. At any age.
-The ego can be a black hole. Thank you for the reminder.
-I am relieved that he’s retired! I am not saying that anything inappropriate happened with his students. But I am saying that a man in power obsessed with sex and status (and a perceived radical decline in both) can be a dangerous man. Desperate men are often dangerous men. Again, not at all an accusation. Just a larger observation. My alarm bells were faintly ringing. I wouldn’t want to be locked in a university office with him now, or at any time in the past.
-What a jolt to hear him mention his wife at the end! He speaks like a life-long bachelor. I wonder if his wife is on the periphery of his life, his emotional landscape, his thinking. Like it appears here.
-I wish him peace. I wonder if some kind of volunteer work or other altruism could pull him out of himself. It can be difficult to find a way when dealing with serious health problems (I empathize with that! I had two surgeries this summer), but it’s often possible. Maybe some kind of spiritual practice like meditation could help too.
-I can tell there is real suffering here and I don’t want to dismiss or minimize or mock that, even if I didn’t enjoy the interview. May you be well, Michael, in body and spirit. May you write many more poems and connect to your loved ones and mourn what you need to mourn fully and find a way to live with what you have now.
Thanks, Ariana. I like to balance the scales and publish lots of things *not *written from the perspective of the straight white male gaze, but I don't want to bend so far in that direction that I'm unwilling to acknowledge that getting older affects absolutely everyone in profound ways. To me, a 74-year-old man lamenting the loss of his libido and sex appeal is actually pretty poignant. And honest.
This is for Michael Blumenthal from me (Margaret Mandell) with all credit due to David Brooks: "The hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old." But, Michael, isn't it nice to watch the world go by?
Thank you for publishing this interview, Sari. SO MANY EMOTIONS!
At sixty, I’m finally able to admit that I wasted a good two-thirds of my life trying to be appealing/interesting (aka fuckable) to men like Michael who, not coincidentally, were the gatekeepers of anything I deemed worth breaking into.
Reading the comments of so many smart and confident people delights me. (Is it too much to hope that internalized misogyny is on its way out?)
While I applaud Michael’s honesty, I also realize it comes from a place of long-held privilege. The guy never had to question (or even dress up) the validity of his decisions and desires and can now openly flirt with unlikability because … he’s always been justified by his mere existence. Until now, it seems.
" I wasted a good two-thirds of my life trying to be appealing/interesting (aka fuckable) to men like Michael who, not coincidentally, were the gatekeepers of anything I deemed worth breaking into" OH SAME. And we all were trained on the tomes of Henry Millers' that set a particular standard for this yes? So many folks used being a writer or poet as an excuse for their terrible behavior. I'm glad I would be invisible to someone like him.
Henry Miller, and Arthur Miller, and Phillip Roth, and Kerouac, old Papa Hemingway, and Mailer, and Updike (still partial to him, though) and the list goes on... *sigh*
I appreciated this interview! In most of your other interviews, I have loved, resonated with, and admired the wisdom and worldviews put forth by the oldsters. I was lulled iinto the pleasant fantasy of wisdom and grace increasing in step with age. However, I found myself quite put off by how Mr. Blumenthal presented himself. It was refreshing and real.
Thanks! I want to show a full spectrum of people, and sometimes that includes someone who is not concerned with whether or not he's a likable character. Someone who, as Blumenthal writes in his poem, is "no closer to perfection now than I have ever been, no closer to sainthood, fantastic that hypocrisy is alive and well within me, and that I will never be the angel others want me to be..."
I love it, truly. It helps me to recognize all people as dynamic individuals , not just through the lens of " oh they older, that means "this"". I quite enjoy finding myself offput by an intelligent, artistic human, it really says more about me than them! Maybe I wish I embraced being off-putting! Maybe I harbor driving, lustful thoughts about bodies and don't say it out loud enough! Who knows:) the interview made me feel things and feeling things is always good in my book
Sep 27, 2023·edited Sep 27, 2023Liked by Sari Botton
I just checked my diary. I met Michael in June 1980 at MacDowell, when he was 32, a lawyer and editor living in Washington. He has always been a good poet and whip-smart. I remember admiring his first little book from around that time, from the Watermark Poets -- I think it won an award from my friends in the Long Island Poetry Collective. On June 19, 1980, I wrote admiringly of his poetry after a reading, saying it had a clear, strong voice and I quoted (probably misquoted) a line: "I sleep like a Jew, and I eat like a Jew, and I fuck like a Jew.” When he was leaving MacDowell, I wrote this: "I slept poorly and dragged myself to breakfast this morning to say goodbye to Sarah and Michael. (I suspect he didn’t really like me – but that’s okay.)" I'm sure he has no memory of me. I think his golden-boy image annoyed a lot of people who were poets. (I have never been a poet.) I have to say he did come off as vain, and it makes me like him more that he seems to have always admitted his vanity. I am probably not as honest as he is. I wish him a very long life, to 90 and beyond...
What an arrogant person; not wanting to hang out with other people in their 70s, what a self hating ageist man! What on earth does he imagine 70+ people are? All the 70+ people I know are vibrant, sexy, fully engaged, intergenerational women. Some of us have aches and pains etc but we still cycle, hike, swim, gym etc. the man needs to get a life and stop moaning about how unattractive he is! Maybe because he is so unattractive to himself!
Reading others' comments here, many articulated the thoughts I had while reading this interview. What a repellent yet pathetic individual Blumenthal is. The sex addiction, the massive ego, the self-adulation. It would undoubtedly be edifying to interview the "very private" afterthought who appeared at the very end of his pity-party, his wife. Sorry (not sorry) if this comment drips with disdain; very glad I never had to take a class of his in college.
Julie, I get where you're coming from. As I've said in other comments:
I like to balance the scales and publish lots of things *not *written from the perspective of the straight white male gaze, but I don't want to bend so far in that direction that I'm unwilling to acknowledge that getting older affects absolutely everyone in profound ways. To me, a 74-year-old man lamenting the loss of his libido and sex appeal is actually pretty poignant. And honest. And... As I was preparing this for publication I thought a lot about that recent David Marchese interview with Jann Wenner, which was a rather arresting read—even more arresting because guys like this mostly aren't given air anymore, so it comes as a surprise when you see them showing you who they are. Wenner obviously did not come off well. It was upsetting to read, but also enlightening. I thought, "This is what I was up against as a young journalist pitching Rolling Stone! I didn't stand a chance!" It was validating to see it presented so clearly. I'll leave it at that...
You hit the nail squarely on the head! I imagine that many people have squandered their energy in trying to impress this guy, obtain his approval, satisfy his libido and other cravings, and the like. What a waste. The emperor has no clothes, but it’s taken this long for this to sink in.
Interested interview. He at the very least owns his vanity and self absorption. The remark that I find most indicative of his character:
The end of being seen (except, perhaps, by those my own age) as an attractive and desirable male. The end of being viewed as terribly “relevant” by the younger world that is now in charge of things.
As a 76 yo women, most of my peers would not find him remotely attractive. His mournful remarks on not being relevant or attractive to the younger world speaks volumes.
In the last 15 years or so, I've enjoyed going to lots of concerts and places where there are mostly young people. I write about the events -- like the famous Pool Party shows in Williamsburg in the mid-oughts, and I take photos. What's great about being an old man is that I'm invisible! I don't have to worry about people noticing me and don't have to think about how I look because I register as "old white man." When I see other old people at these young-people events, we always exchanged smiles: We don't have to work at trying to be attractive anymore. The only thing that I noticed would happen at hip-hop shows years ago, when people would come up to me and offer me mix-CDs of themselves. It also happened at CMJ. People see an old white man and they must think I am a record company executive, because why else would I be there?
Love this honesty from a 74yo man! I suspect my 72yo husband is feeling many of the same things about sex. Frankly, we’ve both been surprised at how the urgency and desire for sex fades at about 70. I always figured things in that department would stay the same til about 80 (or whatever age I’ve been defining as “really old.”) Sari, I’d love to get Michael on my [B]OLD AGE podcast. Can you put us in touch??
I felt a refreshing mix of annoyance and empathy reading this. As I am 61, I really felt the sorrow of: "I wasn’t told that, beginning at 60, you could be forced to have seven surgeries on your back and hips and would turn 75 with a cane, hearing aid, and constant back pain." I saw my parents start to suffer from chronic pain later in life. It's tough. On the other hand, there is all the retrospective preening, the male self-regard.
I personally value interviews that conflict us. So thank you, Sari!
Michael Blumenthal displays the freedom of the male of the species. Women, on the other hand, have had to free themselves of the chains that the patriarchy had prepared for them. At 72 I am finally free to write about women - sexual women, free now to speak of and act on the desire for convenient sex in inconvenient places. The ties that bound me, an African-American woman coming of age in that magical Age of Aquarius, were extra painful when it came to wanting to exist in the wider world free of the baggage of ugly cultural stereotypes. Thank you Michael Blumenthal for your unabashed honesty in discussing the joys and pain of having once been ...Young and Beautiful. Much more success and happiness to you. GDF
Would love an interview with his wife next.
oh my god...YES, Sari. THAT should be fascinating to me, too.
Love this idea! Differing perspectives on the same life events. A fascinating winner!
I asked but she is very private, so no.
These are the guys to avoid at your 50th high school class reunion.
Omg so true!
Lol this!
Some people have 74 years of wisdom and experience
Some people have 1 year of wisdom and experience 74 times in a row.
Probably my least favorite Oldster interview! But that isn’t a criticism of you at all, Sari-- this is just a perspective I gain little from hearing. Surprising, too, since poetry is at the center of my life.
A few thoughts:
-Michael seems to forget that attractiveness is not just a physical characteristic? Self-pity and vanity are very unattractive. Especially together. At any age.
-The ego can be a black hole. Thank you for the reminder.
-I am relieved that he’s retired! I am not saying that anything inappropriate happened with his students. But I am saying that a man in power obsessed with sex and status (and a perceived radical decline in both) can be a dangerous man. Desperate men are often dangerous men. Again, not at all an accusation. Just a larger observation. My alarm bells were faintly ringing. I wouldn’t want to be locked in a university office with him now, or at any time in the past.
-What a jolt to hear him mention his wife at the end! He speaks like a life-long bachelor. I wonder if his wife is on the periphery of his life, his emotional landscape, his thinking. Like it appears here.
-I wish him peace. I wonder if some kind of volunteer work or other altruism could pull him out of himself. It can be difficult to find a way when dealing with serious health problems (I empathize with that! I had two surgeries this summer), but it’s often possible. Maybe some kind of spiritual practice like meditation could help too.
-I can tell there is real suffering here and I don’t want to dismiss or minimize or mock that, even if I didn’t enjoy the interview. May you be well, Michael, in body and spirit. May you write many more poems and connect to your loved ones and mourn what you need to mourn fully and find a way to live with what you have now.
Thanks, Ariana. I like to balance the scales and publish lots of things *not *written from the perspective of the straight white male gaze, but I don't want to bend so far in that direction that I'm unwilling to acknowledge that getting older affects absolutely everyone in profound ways. To me, a 74-year-old man lamenting the loss of his libido and sex appeal is actually pretty poignant. And honest.
Honest yes but as for the rest, no more so than women at 74, just less self-aware.
Yes (to you both)! I found the whole thing way more sad and empty than anything else. Your last point, Ariana, is beautiful.
Come again?🧏🏻♂️
😂
This is for Michael Blumenthal from me (Margaret Mandell) with all credit due to David Brooks: "The hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old." But, Michael, isn't it nice to watch the world go by?
Thank you for publishing this interview, Sari. SO MANY EMOTIONS!
At sixty, I’m finally able to admit that I wasted a good two-thirds of my life trying to be appealing/interesting (aka fuckable) to men like Michael who, not coincidentally, were the gatekeepers of anything I deemed worth breaking into.
Reading the comments of so many smart and confident people delights me. (Is it too much to hope that internalized misogyny is on its way out?)
While I applaud Michael’s honesty, I also realize it comes from a place of long-held privilege. The guy never had to question (or even dress up) the validity of his decisions and desires and can now openly flirt with unlikability because … he’s always been justified by his mere existence. Until now, it seems.
" I wasted a good two-thirds of my life trying to be appealing/interesting (aka fuckable) to men like Michael who, not coincidentally, were the gatekeepers of anything I deemed worth breaking into" OH SAME. And we all were trained on the tomes of Henry Millers' that set a particular standard for this yes? So many folks used being a writer or poet as an excuse for their terrible behavior. I'm glad I would be invisible to someone like him.
Henry Miller, and Arthur Miller, and Phillip Roth, and Kerouac, old Papa Hemingway, and Mailer, and Updike (still partial to him, though) and the list goes on... *sigh*
Diversity in publishing has come a long way.
I appreciated this interview! In most of your other interviews, I have loved, resonated with, and admired the wisdom and worldviews put forth by the oldsters. I was lulled iinto the pleasant fantasy of wisdom and grace increasing in step with age. However, I found myself quite put off by how Mr. Blumenthal presented himself. It was refreshing and real.
Thanks! I want to show a full spectrum of people, and sometimes that includes someone who is not concerned with whether or not he's a likable character. Someone who, as Blumenthal writes in his poem, is "no closer to perfection now than I have ever been, no closer to sainthood, fantastic that hypocrisy is alive and well within me, and that I will never be the angel others want me to be..."
I love it, truly. It helps me to recognize all people as dynamic individuals , not just through the lens of " oh they older, that means "this"". I quite enjoy finding myself offput by an intelligent, artistic human, it really says more about me than them! Maybe I wish I embraced being off-putting! Maybe I harbor driving, lustful thoughts about bodies and don't say it out loud enough! Who knows:) the interview made me feel things and feeling things is always good in my book
Glad it made you think and feel. That's a win in my book, even if it someone you might not choose as a friend.
I just checked my diary. I met Michael in June 1980 at MacDowell, when he was 32, a lawyer and editor living in Washington. He has always been a good poet and whip-smart. I remember admiring his first little book from around that time, from the Watermark Poets -- I think it won an award from my friends in the Long Island Poetry Collective. On June 19, 1980, I wrote admiringly of his poetry after a reading, saying it had a clear, strong voice and I quoted (probably misquoted) a line: "I sleep like a Jew, and I eat like a Jew, and I fuck like a Jew.” When he was leaving MacDowell, I wrote this: "I slept poorly and dragged myself to breakfast this morning to say goodbye to Sarah and Michael. (I suspect he didn’t really like me – but that’s okay.)" I'm sure he has no memory of me. I think his golden-boy image annoyed a lot of people who were poets. (I have never been a poet.) I have to say he did come off as vain, and it makes me like him more that he seems to have always admitted his vanity. I am probably not as honest as he is. I wish him a very long life, to 90 and beyond...
a bit of a freudian slip there?
Oops. Thanks for the correction. That's embarrassing. But you are probably right.
What an arrogant person; not wanting to hang out with other people in their 70s, what a self hating ageist man! What on earth does he imagine 70+ people are? All the 70+ people I know are vibrant, sexy, fully engaged, intergenerational women. Some of us have aches and pains etc but we still cycle, hike, swim, gym etc. the man needs to get a life and stop moaning about how unattractive he is! Maybe because he is so unattractive to himself!
Reading others' comments here, many articulated the thoughts I had while reading this interview. What a repellent yet pathetic individual Blumenthal is. The sex addiction, the massive ego, the self-adulation. It would undoubtedly be edifying to interview the "very private" afterthought who appeared at the very end of his pity-party, his wife. Sorry (not sorry) if this comment drips with disdain; very glad I never had to take a class of his in college.
Julie, I get where you're coming from. As I've said in other comments:
I like to balance the scales and publish lots of things *not *written from the perspective of the straight white male gaze, but I don't want to bend so far in that direction that I'm unwilling to acknowledge that getting older affects absolutely everyone in profound ways. To me, a 74-year-old man lamenting the loss of his libido and sex appeal is actually pretty poignant. And honest. And... As I was preparing this for publication I thought a lot about that recent David Marchese interview with Jann Wenner, which was a rather arresting read—even more arresting because guys like this mostly aren't given air anymore, so it comes as a surprise when you see them showing you who they are. Wenner obviously did not come off well. It was upsetting to read, but also enlightening. I thought, "This is what I was up against as a young journalist pitching Rolling Stone! I didn't stand a chance!" It was validating to see it presented so clearly. I'll leave it at that...
I do appreciate this view into the aging of a white, admittedly privileged male who can’t control his own aging process.
You hit the nail squarely on the head! I imagine that many people have squandered their energy in trying to impress this guy, obtain his approval, satisfy his libido and other cravings, and the like. What a waste. The emperor has no clothes, but it’s taken this long for this to sink in.
At least he is honest. I’m sorry his surgeries have taken their toll.
Interested interview. He at the very least owns his vanity and self absorption. The remark that I find most indicative of his character:
The end of being seen (except, perhaps, by those my own age) as an attractive and desirable male. The end of being viewed as terribly “relevant” by the younger world that is now in charge of things.
As a 76 yo women, most of my peers would not find him remotely attractive. His mournful remarks on not being relevant or attractive to the younger world speaks volumes.
In the last 15 years or so, I've enjoyed going to lots of concerts and places where there are mostly young people. I write about the events -- like the famous Pool Party shows in Williamsburg in the mid-oughts, and I take photos. What's great about being an old man is that I'm invisible! I don't have to worry about people noticing me and don't have to think about how I look because I register as "old white man." When I see other old people at these young-people events, we always exchanged smiles: We don't have to work at trying to be attractive anymore. The only thing that I noticed would happen at hip-hop shows years ago, when people would come up to me and offer me mix-CDs of themselves. It also happened at CMJ. People see an old white man and they must think I am a record company executive, because why else would I be there?
Love this honesty from a 74yo man! I suspect my 72yo husband is feeling many of the same things about sex. Frankly, we’ve both been surprised at how the urgency and desire for sex fades at about 70. I always figured things in that department would stay the same til about 80 (or whatever age I’ve been defining as “really old.”) Sari, I’d love to get Michael on my [B]OLD AGE podcast. Can you put us in touch??
Yes, I'll connect you.
I felt a refreshing mix of annoyance and empathy reading this. As I am 61, I really felt the sorrow of: "I wasn’t told that, beginning at 60, you could be forced to have seven surgeries on your back and hips and would turn 75 with a cane, hearing aid, and constant back pain." I saw my parents start to suffer from chronic pain later in life. It's tough. On the other hand, there is all the retrospective preening, the male self-regard.
I personally value interviews that conflict us. So thank you, Sari!
Michael Blumenthal displays the freedom of the male of the species. Women, on the other hand, have had to free themselves of the chains that the patriarchy had prepared for them. At 72 I am finally free to write about women - sexual women, free now to speak of and act on the desire for convenient sex in inconvenient places. The ties that bound me, an African-American woman coming of age in that magical Age of Aquarius, were extra painful when it came to wanting to exist in the wider world free of the baggage of ugly cultural stereotypes. Thank you Michael Blumenthal for your unabashed honesty in discussing the joys and pain of having once been ...Young and Beautiful. Much more success and happiness to you. GDF