Further Suggestions for BHL's Research

Not that I thought that many of the nouveaux philosophes had much intellectual integrity, but the latest news on Bernard-Henri Lévy, television personality and bloviator at large, is that BHL's current book, entitled De la guerre en philosophie, cites a hoax source to support his arguments against Immanuel Kant. The Telegraph UK reports that

In his book, which has received lavish praise from some quarters, the open-shirted Mr Lévy lays into the philosopher Immanuel Kant as being unhinged and a "fake". To support his claims, he cites a certain Jean-Baptiste Botul, whom he describes as a post-War authority on Kant. But the chorus of approval turned to laughter after a journalist from Le Nouvel Observateur pointed out that Mr Botul does not exist: he is a fictional character created in by a contemporary satirical journalist, Frédéric Pagès. [...]

But Mr Lévy missed the joke, citing Mr Botul from a "series of lectures to the neo-Kantians of Paraguay" he supposedly gave after the war, in which he said that "their hero was an abstract fake, a pure spirit of pure appearance".

With or without his intellectual integrity intact, I'm sure Mr. BHL will continue to write, so let me suggest a few more avenues of research. There are, in fact, several dangerous writers moving in little-known fascist circles in the Americas that BHL might want to discredit. They are first profiled in Roberto Bolaño's path-breaking Nazi Literature in the Americas, which was published in translation by New Directions in 2008.

BHL might want to refute, first, Luiz Fontaine Da Souza (1900-1977), a Brazilian writer who dedicated much of his work to attacking the legacy of French Enlightenment philosophy in a series of Refutations aimed at Voltaire (1921), Diderot (1925), Montesquieu (1930) and Rousseau (1932). However, no threat, for Fontaine, loomed as large as the ascendency of existentialism and the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, to whom he dedicated six volumes of criticism. Five volumes of his Critique of Being and Nothingness appeared in his lifetime from 1955-1962, and a sixth was neither completed nor published. Taking on the work of Fontaine ought to be personal for BHL.

Then there are a few other fascist writers still living. The include the American novelist Harry Silebius, sci-fi writers Gustavo Borda and Zach Sodenstern, and poet and land artist Willy Schürholz. What they share in common is anti-semitism. Silebius, of Richmond, Virginia, has dedicated several novels to the scenario that Hitler's forces conquer North America. Borda's science fiction has gained him some recognition in his native Guatamala, while Sodenstern's series on the Fourth Reich in America have been made into cult films.

However, the most scorn and most serious philosophical journalism should be reserved for Schürholz, whose career rests on his land art. He's produced nothing like the well-known Spiral Jetty, instead this fascist poet has dug the maps of what he has called an "ideal concentration camp" in deserts in Atacama, Arizona, and a wheat field in Colorado.

BHL should act now before these pernicious characters gain more influence and notoriety, as Silebius, according to Bolaño's research, does not die until 2014, Borda until 2016, Sodenstern until 2021, and Schürholz, who holds a Chilean cultural attaché position in Angola, until 2029.

Roberto Bolano's Skating Rink

Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), due to the circumstances surrounding translations, has been introduced to the English speaking world largely through the publication of The Savage Detectives and 2666. Although they weren't the first to be translated (several shorter books had already been published by New Directions), they are his most in depth and labyrinthine novels. While in Spanish, their original publication dates were 1998 and 2004, allowing for some time to assimilate their contents, The Savage Detectives (at almost 600 pages) and 2666 (nearly 900) appeared in English in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Add to this the fact that they keep discovering more of his work, including a previously unknown sixth section to 2666, and we have a literary myth in the making, (the posthumous genius) along with the necessary backlash ('he's only popular because...he's only the latest fad...').

Certainly, the all-encompassing character of the two larger novels lend themselves to this situation. Both are ambitious works. The Savage Detectives follows Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano (who are only themselves recounted by other people) as they travel around North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, sometimes searching for an obscure poet named Cesarea Tinajero, and other times drifting and writing; 2666 revolves around a mysterious German author named Benno von Archimboldi, and his whereabouts in Europe and possibly Mexico, with some connection to a city named Santa Teresa, which is a fictional representation of Ciudad Juarez, the border town where hundreds of women have disappeared with very little police interference.

Those who are familiar with these two novels may be surprised by The Skating Rink. It is marketed as a crime novel, but I doubt that it comfortably fits in that genre. True, the first page mentions the murder that orients the narrative, but instead of creating suspense through plot twists and tricks, Bolano tells a tale of small town intrigue, surrounding Remo Moran, Gaspar Heredia, and Enric Rosquelles. The story takes place in a town near Barcelona called Z, whose rhythm corresponds to the tourist season, and is told, alternately by these three, the first a businessman, the second a writer and drifter (whose story is modeled somewhat on Bolano's life) and the third a civil servant. The story converges on their interest in a young woman named Nuria Marti, who is an ice skater.

Both Remo and Enric develop affections for Nuria, who aspires to regain her place on the Spanish Olympic team, and these affections, and the rivalry that they create, drive the story. Gaspar is, in this regard, the odd man out, but the chapters he narrates are no less important. While Remo and Enric go about their respective business and interests, Gaspar whiles away time working the night shift at a campground owned by Remo. It is through Gaspar's wanderings that the story converges on its central location, the Palace Bengivut, a 'heritage building' as Canadians might call it, now owned by the town of Z. In the Palace, Enric has built, illegally with city money, a skating rink for Nuria so that she can practice for her qualifications.

Enric might have gotten away with it, except that the Palace has drawn a few itinerant residents, who used to live on the campground where Gaspar worked. With so much spare time at the camp, Gaspar has struck up friendships with the two women, Carmen and Caridad, who are eventually forced to leave the camp, and when they go, he begins to wander the town of Z to find them. Which leads, eventually, everybody to the rink. But in the meanwhile, Bolano develops suspenseful and humorous web of intrigue as the reader discovers the relationships and petty quarrels between the characters. At one such point, he has some fun at the expense of his other passion, poetry. Searching for Gaspar, Remo goes to the campground and discovers through the secretary that the guard has been mostly absent:

She had only seen him about three times since he started work, and that wasn't normal. I tried to reassure her by explaining that he was a poet; she replied that her boyfriend, the Peruvian, was a poet too, but he didn't behave like that. Like a zombie. I didn't feel like arguing with her. Especially when, examining her fingernails, she remarked that poetry was a waste of time. She was right; on the planet of happy eunuchs and zombies, poetry is a waste of time.

Of course, Bolano knows better; in our times, poetry and fiction, when done right, are all the more important. Bolano's work is no exception.

Reading List Endurance Test

There is something about finishing a thesis that makes you just want to grab all those books you've been putting aside for just after you finish that last chapter, paragraph, or abstract, and start catching up on reading. And then you end up with this:

• Horkheimer and Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. I've been reading this in the morning. I don't know what possessed me to make that arrangement, but it has stuck. I'm only on the second Excursus, but I can say that I now remember how strident Adorno's work can be.
• Annie Cohen-Solal, Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life. Sartre writes that "my life and my philosophy are one and the same." He also writes that "I have always considered quantity a virtue," so it's nice to have a good biography to put his thousands and thousands of pages of work into perspective.
• I just finished Roberto Bolano's, The Skating Rink. Bolano's first novel, although in English, it's his most recent. It's funny how the order of translations can alter the reception of an author's work. I should have a review up by the end of this week.
• Ronald Aronson, Living without God. Another read for the Sartre and New Atheism paper at the Sartre Society conference. Aronson will be there, so I suppose if I have questions for him...
• For my course, I will be reading parts of Rousseau's The Social Contract. I haven't read it in over eight years, (or more?) but lately he seems to keep coming up in conversation. I also noticed a section on 'Civil Religion,' which might tie in with some of the work I did on what Schelling called 'new mythology.' We will see, and by 'we' I mean myself and 120 members of the captive audience called PHI 1104.
  
• From the previous reading list: I mentioned Ulysses, but I didn't even manage to start it. (see above) Regarding the rest, I did. Still working slowly on the Benjamin, and I liked Pynchon's latest.