Daniel DiMassa, Author at Public Seminar

Politics

Marco Rubio in Dante’s Inferno

His orazion picciola at Munich, and the fate of Republican oratory post-Trump

May 18, 2026 • by Daniel DiMassa

It hasn’t escaped the commentariat that, among other things, the appeal of Trumpism is rhetorical. “I love the way he talks,” a supporter told Vanity Fair in 2020. “I understand him more than any other president.” Iterations of the same remark have become a refrain over the last decade. There ...

Steve Bannon and the Aesthetics of Catholic Romanticism

Why the populist Svengali wants to have a power base near the Vatican

April 15, 2021 • by Daniel DiMassa

_____ Steve Bannon would have you believe he’s a “gladiator,” but his exploits in Rome suggest a more apt historical analogy: clearly he is a Romantic. In August 2020, Bannon was arrested and charged with fraud for his involvement in the mismanagement of a crowdsourced fund to build President Trump’s border wall. ...

Elena Ferrante Returns to Naples

A new novel delights, but reveals decay

October 8, 2020 • by Daniel DiMassa

————— The four novels in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan saga were a literary sensation when they appeared between 2011 and 2015. Now she’s back with a new novel in seven parts, The Lying Life of Adults, with a translation by Ann Goldstein. Though no less compelling than her blockbuster series, the smaller ...