Rod Dreher recalls an encounter or two with Al Goldstein:
“I had to look at copies of Screw for research, and it was probably the most repulsive, degrading thing I’ve ever seen. It was utterly despicable, and without the least redeeming merit. Yet I was genuinely startled by how much I pitied Goldstein — I mean, really pitied him, not in a sneering, condescending way. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was such a black hole of raw emotional need. Nor have I ever met anyone who so plainly despised himself — or in whom self-loathing manifested itself so strangely. When he talked about his son, Jordan (that he would give his son that kind of name tells us a lot), doing well at Georgetown, he got tears in his eyes. He was, as I recall, estranged from his son at the time, and if memory serves, felt acutely that his boy was ashamed of his old man. And Goldstein thought the boy should be ashamed of him … and yet he loved that kid ferociously. What a sad, complicated man.”
Not exactly on topic, but the comments echo the movie “Boogie Nights,” particularly this quote: “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was such a black hole of raw emotional need. Nor have I ever met anyone who so plainly despised himself — or in whom self-loathing manifested itself so strangely.”
If anything, the mainstream-ization of porn underscores our broken humanity. Looking for love in all the wrong places, indeed.
Ugh.
you know what i was thinking? the very saddest part is what he says about not having any regrets. that he had the best women, the best booze, the best cigars….it made me think of cs lewis’ the great divorce. eventually, we cannot even see what we are missing. we have descended so far that we cannot recognize our truest good. i think any of us are in danger of this….but here is a man for whom it’s happened. he’s gone (of course god in his great mercy can still intervene, we never know).