“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
Down to/Poetry
A couple weeks ago, we published our review of Ben Lerner’s 10:04, the follow-up to his debut Leaving the Atocha Station. At the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Adam Plunkett argues that 10:04 inadvertently reveals its author’s poetic training. The book, he says, “dissolves into a poem.”
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Killing a Zombie
Here is a not-quite list of eighty books no woman should read–in which Rebecca Solnit, badass feminist and author of Men Explain Things To Me, attempts to kill the “internet zombie” that is Esquire’s “The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read” list.
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Is a Harper’s Café Around the Corner?
The Oxford American will soon run its own restaurant out of its Arkansas headquarters. Like its associated publication, South on Main will “try and explore the whole breadth of the South.” It will also feature an event space.
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Covering Eco
Following up on a contest to redesign the cover of Lolita, Venus Febriculosa is at it again with a contest to redesign the cover of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The prize this time is a whopping $1,000.
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Eleven-Year Itch
Following last year’s Pulitzer Prize, which Donna Tartt won for her first novel in eleven years, it means something when a critic draws a favorable comparison between The Goldfinch and a new book. For Laura Miller, though, it’s a natural reaction to the latest from Sarah Waters, which seems poised to “scratch the same big-novel itch” as Tartt’s novel did last year. (FYI, Sarah Waters wrote a Year in Reading entry for The Millions.)
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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”)