Category: Scholarship

All memoirs are essentially about ageing. It is a natural and therefore unavoidable sexagenarian instinct to lean in to the past  -  in search of explanation, amusement, forgiveness. However, almost no autobiography you have ever read is  -  let’s put it out there  - persuasively reliable. Perhaps the knowing reader silently nods at every half-fumbled but very obvious evasion, all the Pollyanna Pollyfilla that covers the cracks of pain and disappointment, the casual casuistry that gets us all, specially the grey and the balding, through the remains of the day. Perhaps it’s also true that the mightier the celebrity of the author, the weaker the credibility all round. Who was it said that you must not touch your idols since the gilt is bound to be left on your fingers?…

It seems to rest in the nature of modern times for us to search for liberating wisdoms in exotic venues, the more remote the better. The best proverbs all come in a foreign accent. Personal happiness can be achieved if we but drop our grubby habits and follow the ways of the Danes or the Japanese or the mystic de-clutterers or the gurus of mindfulness. Invariably, these narratives will contain an injunction to simplify our needs, perhaps find contentment in what we all already possess, disavow consumption of material goods to the benefit of interior balance, isolate what is truly valuable to the spirit… When our current traumas end, versions of this narrative will freshly appear, gaudier than ever. And self-flagellation over claims of national malaise will be as misguided…

Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon : the new science and stories of the brain Dr Rahul Jandial (more…)

Our new 21st century Third Age is calling forth so many semi-scholarly books which cannot decide whether their goal is to achieve dispassionate social analysis or to offer superior self-help guidance. So it is with The Happiness Curve. From whatever perspective, this is not good karma. But firstly a thought experiment... Imagine you are 75 years of age this very day. Coincidentally contacted by a respectable research agency, you are invited to rate your general level of personal happiness / life satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 (where 10 would equal totally blissed-out). You agree to participate. But a silent inhibition tugs at your guts. “If I say that I am, in fact, dreadfully unhappy, will the whole world know that my whole life has ipso facto been a failure?…

This book is a monumental accomplishment. In the rapids of the Left Bank in the 1940s, some hardcore artistic talent survived the Nazi Occupation and founded the various versions of liberation which still enrich the West today. (more…)

Well, first of all, this is a book so well written that one’s faith in American non-fiction letters is almost restored in one go. (more…)