Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

Katha,

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Is there anything more disorienting than someone stealing your newspaper? This is the second time this week, which suggests someone new may have moved into my building and as yet be unaware of who he's messing with. Scanning the web is no substitute, because your eye somehow doesn't meander in the same way. That small letter to the editor, the incongruous ad placement, the wry smile at a quickly glanced Tom Friedman column, all these small pleasures are lost. Which reminds me of one of the best days of my young life. It was when I finally got to meet the man on whom I wrote my doctoral dissertation, Michael Oakeshott. He was an idiosyncratic, but brilliant political philosopher - started out as a neo-Hegelian, ended up as completely himself - and lived in a tiny slate cottage (no heating) near a quarry in Dorset with his fourth wife. I sent him my dissertation in advance, and we spent the day in front of his coal fire, talking about liberalism and salvation and the joys of America. Ever since I had read his introduction to the Leviathan, I had revered the man. It was like stumbling across a man who seemed to understand exactly the way you saw the world, but was also eminently wiser and smarter and funnier than you could ever be. So I particularly remember the distraught look on his face when he finally asked me what I intended to do with my life. I said I thought I might become a journalist. "Oh, dear," he said, as only the English can. "I've always thought that the need to know the news each day is a nervous disorder."

Well, I suppose I get paid to indulge my nervous disorder, which is more than you can say for some people.

So, Katha, what do you think of Indonesia?

best
Andrew

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