Joy

I've just finished reading Joshua Landy's Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust. It is the best thinking (and writing) on In Search of Lost Time I have read so far. Landy writes in a lucid prose with an analytic flair that is both a joy to read and relatively easy to understand. If any are interested in a novel and compelling view of what the Recherche is 'about', this is by far the best place to start, perhaps even better than the Recherche itself.

I'm now about to start Leo Bersani's Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and Art, but before I get there, I am taking a break to read parts of Samuel Brittan's Against the Flow. Brittan is a columnist for the Financial Times where he writes mostly on economics and politics. The book is a collection of his columns, essays and lectures. It will soon become a gift for a good friend of mine, as it was originally intended, but, not wanting to give her an unknown book on speculation, I am reading it first. I was initially drawn to the book by a review by The Economist, who wrote that "this book is so good that rivals in the field will, like this reviewer, put it down not knowing whether to feel inspiration or despair" ("Peerless Commentary" March 3rd 2005). Alas, the book is not, so far, that good. Some of the articles have been excellent indeed, those on economics in particular, but others, especially those focused on a political issues of a particular historical moment, are rather less enlightening. That said, I am inclined to agree with The Economist's closing hortative, "Against the Flow is the work of a remarkable journalist, a scholar and a profound thinker. Read it."