Bons Mots and Bêtes Noires
Christopher Hitchens reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism in the Times. There are a number of interesting anecdotes in the article, such as the ones about how several prominent French ex-Communists supported Sarkozy against Royal in the most recent French presidential election. But then it kind of fizzles out at the end with a tired, signature diatribe against GOD and FUNDAMENTALISM. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)
The Tailor of Ulm
Lucio Magri in the New Left Review:
A first task for the new era, then, is to draw up a balance sheet—in a spirit of truth, whatever the convictions with which one begins and the conclusions at which one arrives; without fabricating facts, without offering excuses or separating lived experience from its context… In sum, to recompose the thread of a titanic undertaking and dramatic decline, not seeking to make allowances or to pursue an impossible neutrality, but aiming at an approximation to the truth.
(Via No Useless Leniency, where you can find a copy of Brecht’s poem.)