Heady Times

Two of my favorite people came to visit last month. Books were forthcoming. Tihana gave us a copy of Berlin Stories by Robert Walser. Joel sent us a copy of The Philosopher's Touch a work by Francois Noudelmann concerning Nietzsche, Sartre and Barthes at the piano. I really loved this book, largely for the images depicted of Sartre and Nietzsche. I recognize that Clive James may wish to kick my ass for my adoration of JPS, but I'd wish to arrest such an assault by stating that it is the aesthetic Sartre that I find so endearing, not the political.

I've also read another Iain Banks novel, Dead Air. I then made time with Elizabeth Bowen but it wasn't the proper setting. I'm now deep into a biography of Mao. much like Robert Service's biography of Trotsky, it wishes to discredit all evidence of merit or accomplishment in the subject's tenure. Apparently both Trotsky and Mao ignored and abandoned their children. Somehow, I find this a rather wrongheaded approach.