I’m going to start reporting on my non-scholarly reading here regularly, in order to kick some life into this blog thing. So, backing up a bit, here’s some of my reading from Christmas week.
John le Carré. A Most Wanted Man. He once again has his spy world snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. His books have been bleak indeed since the invasion of Iraq.
From LRB: 4 December 2008
- Neal Acherson. “A Chance to Join the World: Neal Ascherson imagines a future for Abkhazia”
On the small ethnic Abkaz region on the Black Sea, in danger of being swallowed up in the conflicts between Georgia and Russia. It’s a beautiful place, and “if the outside world were to consent, it could become a prosperous, credible Black Sea micro-state.”
- Donald MacKenzie. “An Address in Mayfair: Donald MacKenzie on Hedge Funds.”
Explains how hedge funds work: essentially betting on the decline of stocks to “hedge” against a depressed market.
- Adam Phillips. “Self-Made Aristocrats.” Review of Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.”
Of the nine Wittgenstein children, three of the philosopher’s brothers committed suicide. Paul moved to London with the rise of the Nazis. The Wittgenstein’s part-Jewish heritage caused the Nazis to relieve the family of much of its fortune.
- Michael Neill. “Old Dad Dead?” Review of Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, ed., Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works.
The new standard edition of Middleton. Imitates the Oxford Shakespeare, which Taylor also co-edited. Taylor continues his old pitch for making Middleton, if not Shakespeare’s equal, then at least his rival.
- Elizabeth Lowry. “That Roomful of Words.” Review of Jenny Diski, Apology for the Woman Writing.
This review made me want to immediately go out and buy this novel, but it seems that it’s not available yet in the US. It’s a fictional account of Marie le Jars de Gournay’s “fan-worship” of Montaigne. This passage suggests a fetishizing of books similar to my own:
She opened the book again and lifted it right up against her nostrils to inhale the smell of new leather and freshly produced rag. The sharp scent of paper hit the back of her throat, then deepened and darkened into the complex smell of treated hide, chemical and animal, and finally she caught the special high note of newness.
Oh yeah, baby.
