
Manifesto!
Your regular visit to the archives of vanity, where men and women who stopped making myths turned to issuing commandments.
Your guides for this journey are the writers Phil Klay and Jacob Siegel, along with their trusty engineer, Jacqui Rigazio
May you continue to be a person.
Manifesto! Is now sponsored by Fairfield University, a Jesuit University in Fairfield Connecticut. Fairfield’s mission is to develop the creative intellectual potential of students and to foster in them ethical and religious values and a sense of social responsibility. Phil also teaches at Fairfield, in both their undergraduate English department and in their Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. We’re very pleased to be associated with Fairfield, and thank them for their sponsorship.
Latest episodes

Nov 8, 2018 • 1h 28min
Episode 9: The Oulipo and the Naked City
Jake and Phil are joined by Olivia Garard (@teaandtactics) of The Strategy Bridge (https://thestrategybridge.org/editorial-team/2016/8/16/olivia-a-garard) to discuss Oulipo member Anne Garréta's "On Bookselves" and Guy Debord’s “The Naked City”
Works cited:
R.O. Kwon, In Defense of Keeping Books Spine In
https://lithub.com/in-defense-of-keeping-books-spine-in/
Anne Garréta, On Bookselves
http://oulipo.net/fr/on-bookselves
Wittgenstein's private language argument
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
Borges, The Library of Babel
https://libraryofbabel.info/libraryofbabel.html
Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Intuition-Pumps-And-Other-Tools-for-Thinking/
Phil Klay, What We're Fighting For
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/opinion/sunday/what-were-fighting-for.html
Michel Houellebecq's face
https://s1.lemde.fr/image/2015/01/07/534x0/4550663_7_8cd6_michel-houellebecq-en-septembre-2014_68730539b00035181bbb264f4a38e9e9.jpg
Guy Debord, The Naked City
https://paulwalshphotographyblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/the-naked-city/
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
Michel de Certeu, The Practice of Everyday Life
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520271456/the-practice-of-everyday-life
Marc Auge, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity
https://www.amazon.com/Non-Places-Introduction-Supermodernity-Marc-Auge/dp/1844673111
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
https://www.press.umich.edu/9900/simulacra_and_simulation
Isaac Babel, Guy de Maupaussant
https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/isaak-babel-complete-works.pdf
Audio Clip:
Method Man at Def Jam offices in 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=BWml7yoFwHA

Oct 10, 2018 • 1h 28min
Episode 8: Resentments, Justice, and the Sins of the Father
Jake and Phil overcome audio difficulties to discuss Jean Amery's "Resentments" and Andre Dubus II's short story "A Father's Story."
Works cited:
Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits
https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/jean-amery-at-the-minds-limits-contemplations-by-a-survivor-on-auschwitz-and-its-realities.pdf
Camus on Scheller’s definition of resentment: The Rebel
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/23475/the-rebel-by-albert-camus/9780679733843
Portraits of Reconciliation
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/magazine/06-pieter-hugo-rwanda-portraits.html
Rwanda and the NY Times
https://africasacountry.com/2014/04/rwanda-the-genocide-must-live-on
Derrida, ‘To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible’
https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PPP668/%CE%97%20%CF%83%CF%85%CE%B3%CF%87%CF%8E%CF%81%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7/Derrida%2C%20J.%2C%20To%20Forgive.%20The%20Unforgivable%20%26%20the%20Imprescrible%2C%20pp.%2021-51.pdf
GK Chesterton, “The Chief Mourner of Marne”
https://harpers.org/archive/1925/05/the-chief-mourner-of-marne/
Fred Alford, “Jean Amery: Resentment as Ethic and Ontology”
https://philpapers.org/rec/ALFJAR
Andre Dubus II, “A Father’s Story”
http://www.mbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/AndreDubus_AFathersStory.pdf
Audio Clips:
Joel Osteen, “Living Guilt Free”
Brian Stevenson interview
You should know the final one.

Sep 10, 2018 • 1h 39min
Episode 7: Patriotism and the Unknown Soldier
Jake and Phil discuss Alasdair MacIntyre's "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" and the story of the November 11, 1921 burial of the Unknown Soldier, as told by Jonathan Ebel in his book GI Messiahs
Works referred to in this episode:
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism A Virtue”
https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/12398/Is%20Patriotism%20a%20Virtue-1984.pdf
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan
http://www.marcresource.org/ibn-tufayls-hayy-ibn-yaqzan/
Peter Singer, “The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle”
https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm
Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism”
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/political-philosophy/utilitarianism-and-against?format=PB&isbn=9780521098229
Ralph Ellison “The Little Man at Chehaw Station”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46137/the-collected-essays-of-ralph-ellison-by-ralph-ellison/9780812968262/
Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/72422/a-writer-at-war-by-vasily-grossman-edited-and-translated-by-antony-beevor-and-luba-vinogradova/9780307275332/
John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism
https://thenewpress.com/books/two-faces-of-liberalism
Ta-Nehesi Coates, I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/05/im-not-black-im-kanye/559763/
George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
Gregory Pardlo, Air Traffic
http://www.pardlo.net/books
Aris Roussinos
https://www.vice.com/en_us/contributor/aris-roussinos
Valeria Luiselli, Difficult Forgiveness
https://www.guernicamag.com/difficult-forgiveness/
Jonathan Ebel, GI Messiahs
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300176704/gi-messiahs
Jesus Christ and the American Soldier 2nd version Bumper Sticker
https://www.zazzle.com/jesus_christ_and_the_american_soldier_2nd_version_bumper_sticker-128506846244291909
Peter Lucier, Not Your Messiah
https://therevealer.org/not-your-messiah/
Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20086/kafka-was-the-rage-by-anatole-broyard/9780679781264/
Audio clips:
Independence Day (1996)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t1IK_9apWs
Charles Olson, Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYxpSjkyAg
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmW0SF5gYEk

Aug 7, 2018 • 1h 20min
Episode 6: Revolution, Entropy, and Abstract Art
Jake and Phil side with the madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics on this episode, discussing Yevgeny Zamyatin's “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters,” alongside the paintings Composition VI and Composition VII, by Vasily Kandinsky.
Works referenced in Episode 6
Yevgeny Zamyatin, “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters”
http://evildrclam.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-literature-revolution-entropy-and.html
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/17201/we/
Alistair Hamilton, The Appeal of Fascism
https://www.amazon.com/Appeal-Fascism-Study-Intellectuals-1919-45/dp/0218514263/
Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/13561/russian-thinkers/
Lawrence Joseph, So Where Are We?
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374266677
Paul Scharre, Army of None
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Army-of-None/
Kenneth Payne, Strategy, Evolution, and War
http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/strategy-evolution-and-war
Mitch Hedburg, Tennis
https://twitter.com/M_Hedberg/status/174677445432188928
Isaiah Berlin, The Origins of Cultural History: Vico versus Descartes
https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/origins-cultural-history-2-geisteswissenschaft-and-natural-sciences-vico-versus-descartes
Vasily Kandinsky, Composition VI, 1913
https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-35.php
Vasily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/composition-vii/CQHOKgpWcL_UPA?hl=en
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/292003/swanns-way-by-marcel-proust/9780142437964/
Vasily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane
https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/book-117.php
Vasily Kandinsky, The Spiritual in Art
https://librivox.org/concerning-the-spiritual-in-art-by-wassily-kandinsky/

Jul 10, 2018 • 1h 29min
Episode 5: Everybody's Protest Novel and the Responsibilities of Art
Jake and Phil talk about the political and social obligations of art. To set the stage they discuss W.E.B. Du Bois' "Criteria for Negro Art" originally delivered as a speech to the 1926 Conference of the NAACP in Chicago. The main event is a consideration of James Baldwin's famous 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel." For the finale, the gents
talk about James Thurber's 1931 short story, "The Greatest Man in the World."
Other works referenced in this episode:
Paul C. Taylor, Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Black+is+Beautiful%3A+A+Philosophy+of+Black+Aesthetics-p-9781405150620
Ta-Nehisi Coates, I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/05/im-not-black-im-kanye/559763/
Francois Mauriac's Nobel Prize Speech
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1952/mauriac-speech.html
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060557546/the-known-world

Jun 12, 2018 • 1h 12min
Episode 4: My Twisted World and Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver
Discussing the impact of the Elliot Rodger manifesto and the incel subculture, media coverage on violent acts, obsession with materialism and misogyny, exploration of characters with dangerous ideologies, the nature of cruelty, societal challenges, violence triggers, and Elliot Rodger's disturbing views on intimacy. Also comparing dark themes in 'Taxi Driver' to the manifesto.

May 29, 2018 • 1h 6min
Episode 3: Schiller's Aesthetic Letters and and Ian McEwan's The Use of Poetry

May 14, 2018 • 1h 25min
Episode 2: SCUM, Intercourse, and Cat Person

Apr 28, 2018 • 1h 16min