Episode 550 – Ron Rosenbaum

Virtual Memories Show 550:<br /> Ron Rosenbaum “We’re in an age where machines — AI, big data — are taking over human emotions and endeavors.” With the release of IN DEFENSE OF LOVE: An Argument (Doubleday), Ron Rosenbaum offers up a series of essays to save love from scientizers, extremists, the jaded, and anyone else who doubts whether Amor Vincit Omnia. We get into why love needs a defense and how it’s not reducible to chemical surges on an fMRI scan, the overwhelming emotion of Linda Ronstadt’s Long Long Time, the beauty of Philip Larkin’s poem An Arundel Tomb and why Larkin may have been embarrassed by the honesty of its last line (“What will survive of us is love.”), and the ways bullshit science can lead people ridiculously astray. We talk about seeing Tolstoy in the light of his late novellas, in which he puts forth an extinction agenda and wants to end human reproduction, the first and last times Ron fell in love, why he included a closing chapter on his own experiences of love & regret, whether dangerous passion outweighs a moderate marriage, and whether one can write about human nature without having a fully human nature. Plus, we talk about Ron’s writing career, his arrival during the late days of magazines’ golden age, how he discovered his superpower of close reading, why America’s greatest love poems come from country music, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read IN DEFENSE OF LOVE! “When it comes to Anna or Levin [in Anna Karenina], I’ve always wanted the more passionate relationship, even if it doesn’t last, even if you end up hating each other.” “I feel like a lot of my writing, and reading, and life, was coming in at the end of a golden age.”