Know Your Enemy - Even More Listener Questions, Answered [Teaser]

Matt and Sam answer even more listener questions about Straussianism, esoteric writing, prose style, Steely Dan, and more.

Duration: 5m
Broadcast on: 18 May 2026
Audio Format: other

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

As always, listeners asked more mailbag questions than we could respond to in one episode, so we continue answering them here for subscribers. In this second round we take up: a playlist of KYE's Straussian-related episodes; (Straussian) esoteric writing versus (French) death of the author and the art of writing (and interpretation); prose style—what it is, why it matters, its relationship to poetry, and the rhythms of Norman Maclean; a "Straussian" reading of Steely Dan; and why liberalism is (mostly) worth defending.

Thank you to everyone who attended our live event in NYC on Thursday! We had a great time.

Sources:

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)

— Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (1987)

Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," Poetry, Oct 1921

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976)

— The Norman Maclean Reader (2008)

Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

W.H. Auden, "Friday's Child," (1958)

Sam Adler-Bell, "Can Liberalism Stop Being So Darn Liberal?" The New Republic, June 20, 2024.

What I want to do for you, Matt, and for listeners is offer a Strausian reading of Steely Dan. -And esoteric reading? -Yes. -I mean, Sam, I don't know if an esoteric reading is even possible because Steely Dan is totally trapped in their historical moment. -No, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it against the historicists, against the Hermannus' suspicion. I'm going to grant them the capacity to be entirely in control of the various levels of meaning of their work. -Steely Dan was free within a circle. -Yes. So let's start with the surface. First of all, what's obvious? Steely Dan is jazz fusion. It's a kind of music that sounds kind of stupid to a lot of people. The music is, you know, reaching for precision. It's reaching for perfection. I think at its best, it's riding this line between corny and cool and finding the place where cornyness becomes cool and vice versa. It's not tossed off. It's the most prepared and executed music. You love it or you hate it for the same reason. They're basically employing the best jazz and rock session musicians in the world, and they're playing just hot licks with astonishing precision. This to people who are like punk rockers, and I think also probably a lot of people like you, like country and all country fans, this is the corniest thing you could possibly listen to. Whereas for Dan heads, it's the best thing you could possibly listen to, but for the same reasons. And I think this surface level is where the term yacht rock comes from, which is how they're described. It's the kind of music yuppies would listen to on a booze cruise. -What dimension lived on? -Okay, that's the surface. The second level is the lyrics, and here's where I feel like yacht rock is a funny term because the lyrics of Steely Dan tend to be about seedy, defective, overconfident men who are somewhat sympathetic in their delusions, sympathetic because they're almost certainly doomed, like the narrator of Deacon Blue, one of their most famous songs. The idea of being stuck on a yacht with the characters from Steely Dan's songs is a nightmare straightforwardly. You would be buttonholed by a coke dealer who thinks he's being hunted by the government. At the same time, the yacht is beached on a sandbar. The sun is coming up. You're sober, everybody else is still high. You're never getting home. You're stuck. It's a nightmare. So the notion of yacht rock is belied by the content of these songs, unless yacht rock is like a floating prison of the most annoying coked out people you've ever met. Okay, here's the esoteric reading. And this is going to combine the music, which strives for perfection with the lyrics, which describe and revel in failure. Because ultimately these characters, on the surface, you think they're toxic masculine figures, right? They're hitting on young girls. They're addicted to heroin. They're, you know, delusionally confident in themselves. But the truth is they're not toxically masculine. They are farsically masculine. They're straightforwardly pathetic, in the sense that they inspire pathos. They are losers. They cannot possibly succeed, but we admire them for going for it. Anyway, and they're in this reading heroic in a way, tragic heroes. And I'll give an example from a song. There's a song called Hey 19, one of their best songs. It's from Gao Cho, probably their best album. If you listen to this song kind of like vaguely, it sounds to be about an old creepy guy creeping on a beautiful young woman, a 19 year old. But what it's really about, if you listen closely, is about how ridiculous and embarrassing the older man is. He says like, that's Aretha Franklin. She don't remember the queen of soul. From the perspective of the woman, it would be a song about the saddest, silliest man she's ever met. And he's not even capable of being predatory because he is so pathetic. The end of the song is we can't dance together. No, we can't talk at all. He recognizes this endeavor is doomed. So from my perspective, combining the music, the precise, the jazz fusion, and the lyrics, which at first appear to be about toxic masculinity, but are actually about a far-school kind of masculinity that has kind of inspiring tragic quality to it, is that the esoteric meaning of Steely Dan is this. You can strive for perfection while ironizing failure. Steely Dan, they're not too cool to try. And you shouldn't think that trying is uncool. This music tries incredibly hard. And that's good. It's admirable. But it also recognizes how funny it is to try, especially when you have no chance of succeeding.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam answer even more listener questions about Straussianism, esoteric writing, prose style, Steely Dan, and more.