“There is something ersatz, if not quite fraudulent, about [Alain] de Botton’s entire intellectual enterprise.” At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Levy throws down the gauntlet.
The School of Life
How and How Not to View Africa
Mama Hope, a group that works with local African organizations “to connect them with the resources required to transform their own communities,” has released a great promo featuring four young men who are tired of Hollywood’s African stereotypes. Their complaints are reminiscent of those enumerated in Binyavanga Wainaina’s classic essay “How to Write about Africa,” and also in Laura Seay’s great article from last week, “How Not to Write About Africa.”
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Poet Cops
“The worlds of poetry and law enforcement would seem to share little. But a few poet cops hope to change that perception, one line at a time.”
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Remain Ourselves
“Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.” The remarkable love letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger are both touching and predictably philosophical. Here’s a jarring, surreal reimagining of three works of Arendt’s over at 3:AM Magazine.
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David Du-cow-vny
If I told you a famous actor wrote a book called Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale, would you be able to guess the person’s name? The truth is out there.
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“Let us not desert one another”
In honor of Jane Austen’s recent birthday: five feminist lessons, culled from her body of work.
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Anne Frank’s Legacy
“Nathan Englander’s characters have invented ‘the Anne Frank game’ whose major question is ‘who would hide you if there were another Holocaust.’ By making this a game, the characters demonstrate their affective distance from the event, but at the same time Englander illustrates that the Holocaust remains a touchstone for the marijuana-smoking, Orthodox Jews who bring the game to their secular Jewish friends.” On the fictional afterlife of Anne Frank.
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“There is something ersatz, if not quite fraudulent, about [Alain] de Botton’s entire intellectual enterprise.” At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Levy throws down the gauntlet.
I’ve been checking out Mr. de Botton’s books since 1998. Ersatz? Hoooey. Fraudulent? How dare you!
I find his mind limpid, curious, original, and congenitally non-elitist (and that’s coming from a blue collar gal). Loved his book on travel. Who else had the concept of “traveling” around the four corners of your own bedroom, and had the openness to “see” so much there? Who else set up his work desk smack in the middle of a busy airport terminal to chat and converse with the teeming crowd?
In addition, I think de Botton has a special talent for distilling complex ideas into a deceptively simple form. Not as easy as it looks.
Finally, if there’s any harm in folks gathering together at a London storefront after work to discuss Love, Travel, Sex, and everything else rather than sit brain-dead before the telly, I’ll never be the one to see it.
A sour and axe-grindish article, Los Angeles Review of Books!
Sincerely,
Maureen Murphy
(“Moe Murph”)