Some august world body said not to say "plague," but surely literary people have a dispensation? How far this dispensation extends we will discuss below. Right now, I reintroduce a poem I wrote and posted to this website in the fall of 2014. I was writing a lot of poetry then: I had been hired … Continue reading Commonplace Book in a Time of Plague
Tag: political philosophy
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James My rating: 3 of 5 stars Is it possible to ask, without sounding like a morbid troublemaker, why the death of Clive James last November was not greeted with the outpouring of vituperation that marked Harold Bloom's demise the month before? Granted, Bloom … Continue reading Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
On the occasion of its website redesign, the London Review of Books has removed its paywall for a month. I've subscribed off and on over the years, and the site's paywall has shifted its criteria and limits enough, that I've read a great deal of the LRB's articles in the areas that interest me since … Continue reading A Walking Tour of the LRB Archives
The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone My rating: 4 of 5 stars If the independent left-wing journalist I. F. Stone had lived to write this 1988 bestseller in 2019 instead, he might have expressed its thesis this way: Socrates was an alt-right troll redpilling young men with corrosive irony and anti-democratic sentiment; therefore, democratic … Continue reading I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates
Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life by Theodor W. Adorno My rating: 5 of 5 stars It helps to know that this 1951 book, an unclassifiable philosophical masterpiece consisting of 153 divisions ranging in length from the aphorism to the brief essay, was written largely in the light of Southern California. Adorno was a … Continue reading Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America by Richard M. Rorty My rating: 2 of 5 stars Richard Rorty is a Pragmatist philosopher: he believes that ideas and actions should be judged on their effects rather than their metaphysical or ontological status. Don't ask whether it's true, whatever "it" may be, ask only if … Continue reading Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country
The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Rebel is Albert Camus's answer, written in 1951, to the painful question of why the human attempt to overcome oppression, to destroy all religiously and socially prescribed hierarchies, led instead to fascism, communism, imperialism, and the softer … Continue reading Albert Camus, The Rebel
Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation by Gillian Rose My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a posthumous 1996 essay collection by the British philosopher, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995 and is perhaps best known less for her philosophical corpus than for her stunning memoir, Love's Work: A Reckoning with Life … Continue reading Gillian Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law
On the Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you'll allow me, dear reader, a self-indulgent preamble— Readers of my novella, The Ecstasy of Michaela, will notice a few lines from Simone Weil quoted as the heroine's reading material. This should not be mistaken for deep familiarity with … Continue reading Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties
