Reading Lately …
I’m much more familiar with Iliad than The Odyssey. As a teenager, with the help of a magnifying glass and Liddell and Scott’s ancient Greek lexicon, I learnt to write the first line of Iliad in Greek...
View ArticleClaudio Magris’s A Different Sea
One morning as I was riding my bicycle–I must have been around five or six years of age–I was struck by the sensation of being ‘me’. It hadn’t occurred to me before but the feeling persisted for...
View ArticleConcentrated Exchanges
“The concentrated exchanges between Valéry “who does not forgive himself for not having been a philosopher” (Cioran) and Alain who may not have forgiven himself for not being a great novelist, like his...
View ArticleForthcoming Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading
Roberto Calasso, The Unnamable Present Laura Nasrallah, Archaeology and the Letters of Paul Jan Zwicky, The Experience of Meaning Yiyun Li, Where Reasons End Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob Hans...
View ArticleThe Ethics of Ambiguity
‘”The continuous work of our life,’ says Montaigne, ‘is to build death.’ He quotes the Latin poets: Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora corpsit. And again: Nascentes morimur. Man knows and thinks this tragic...
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