17 July

Germaine is still alive! But I’ve worked for years to understand the particular genius of her work, separate from all of the fake outrages about her. Most people who I discuss Greer with haven’t read a single word she’s written. They’ve joined this or that team for or against her, in social status rivalries. I’d go so far as to say they’re the most joyous books I’ve ever read, but for very specific reasons I’ve tried to capture in the image here. It goes well beyond feminism. Real life is never an ‘example’ for her, as in other books. From page one you’re always in the life you’re already living, and you never leave it to discuss abstract things. The books show that we really live inside beliefs, and that other beliefs can give us much better lives. You feel your own life expanding, in the reading, you feel the power of ideas to open up toxic situations which other bad ideas have created. All without ever leaving the forensic detail of everyday life. Greer’s method is like the common law. Every trivial ‘case’, full of the glorious and often sordid details of our everyday lives, embodies past and future precedents. Every case can change the entire common law. The specific and the general are one and the same thing. The greatest of all thinkers show that life and thought are the same thing. Greer to me is unique in history in the degree she can pull that off. She did what Tesla did with cars, wrote books that combined all types of books, inside a single book.