Plain Radical: Living, Loving and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully

by Robert Jensen

There was nothing out of the ordinary about Jim Koplin. He was just your typical central Minnesota gay farm boy with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology who developed anarchist-influenced, radical-feminist, and anti-imperialist politics, while never losing touch with his rural roots. But perhaps the most important thing about Jim is that throughout his life, almost literally to his dying breath, he spent some part of every day on the most important work we tending the garden.

Plain Radical is a touching homage to a close friend and mentor taken too soon. But it is also an exploration of the ways in which an intensely local focus paired with a fierce intelligence can provide a deep, meaningful, even radical engagement with the world.

Drawing on first hand accounts as well as the nearly 3,000 pages of correspondence that flowed between the two men between 1988 and 2012, this book is about the intersection of two biographies and the ideas two men constructed together. It is in part a love story, part intellectual memoir, and part political polemic; an argument for how we should understand problems and think about solutions—in those cases when solutions are possible—to create a decent human future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Activism, Memoir, Biography

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2015

About the author

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in northern New Mexico with his wife, Eliza Gilkyson, a two-time Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter.

Reviews

[Aimée Santillán · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book very much. I took an intro to journalism class with Robert Jensen at UT Austin and learned so much from him about being radical and assertive. I enjoyed that this gave a little more insight into what can be done about political views that might seem radical and unacceptable to others even if those views feel necessary given what is going on in the world. I appreciated the straightforwardness that Jensen provides to his views and how he connects them to an ecological responsibility we all have.

[Sara]

Lovely book. Here were some bits and pieces that stood out:
- Love does not die with the body
- The universe is an undifferentiated whole … the analytical process [of scientific analysis] destroys the unity of what we study.
- …These sentences are several ways of saying I love you
- Consider that you really have everything you need, only you have not found a way to properly “name” it
- Our job is to mill around, live cheap, and die
- …That act of apparent humility too easily becomes a cover for not being accountable. Should I wait to speak only after I have lived with a perfect political for at least a month? A year? Waiting to be pure before weighing in with a political critique is a cowardly way out.
- God: the physical world, what we struggle to understand. Jesus: the individual, who must choose how to act on that understanding. Holy spirit: what is beyond our understanding, what connects us to each other and to the larger living world in ways that don’t reduce to logic or evidence (I’m not religious in that I don’t believe in a higher power, but I’m interested in viewing religion as symbolic…)

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could I'd give it a 3.5. It's an easy read, which is great because it was a quick finish, but there also wasn't a whole lot of substance. The intro hypes up a reader in expectations of reading about a white man who, among few others, identified as a feminist, activist, and ally, all while understanding the negative impacts that are inevitable to these issues with capitalism (again, rare among white American men in particular). Jensen follows up with a 200 pages of mostly relationship experience between him and Jim Koplin, who he is referring to in the beginning, lacking a lot of the nuance or deeper intellectual discussion that he seems to foreshadow in the beginning. It's a nice intro and might help a lot of other young white men stop idealizing capitalism in the way that most do, or at least encourage them to consider other avenues, but doesn't serve much benefit beyond that.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deeply vulnerable and brave book, but ultimately unsatisfying.

I would have preferred to have heard more about Jim, but the author seems to have been explicating his own life as much as, if not more than, writing about Jim Koplin. Much of the book is about the author, and only tangentially about the ostensible subject.

I enjoyed reading about places I know in Minneapolis.

This review may be swayed by my personal feelings about the author, with his thoughts on what he calls "transgender ideology" and "transgenderism".

[Dina Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, tender insights into a truly remarkable man.

[Paige I · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book but I doubt this book is for everyone. So much on the complexity of what is means to be a person today. Didn’t want it to end.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting thinking mixed up with some squirm inducing (for me) reflections on a very close relationship between two feminist men.

[Melon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book for anyone who is thinking about the issues surrounding politics, ecological sustainability, womens equality and maybe more.

It's written through the lens of a friendship, and how the two parties have grown and shared in common goals and beliefs - and impart small lessons that we can take and practice in our own lives.

One of my favorite lines from the book is:
"It's time to get apocalyptic, or get out of the way"

Intrigued?
Read the book!