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Tag: philosophy

Published March 14, 2011

Rousseau Deep, Montaigne High

Anthony Gottlieb writes on the renewed interest in 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne for The New York Times:

Like Socrates, Montaigne claims that what he knows best is the fact that he does not know anything much. To undermine common beliefs and attitudes, Montaigne draws on tales of other times and places, on his own observations and on a barrage of arguments in the ancient Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition, which encouraged the suspension of judgment as a middle way between dogmatic assertion and equally dogmatic denial. Montaigne does often state his considered view, but rarely without suggesting, explicitly or otherwise, that maybe he is wrong. In this regard, his writing is far removed from that of the most popular bloggers and columnists, who are usually sure that they are right.

And, funnily enough, Sarah Bakewell author of How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer — one of the books mentioned by Gottlieb — recently spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about Montaigne for CBC  Radio’s Writers & Company:

CBC RADIO WRITERS & Co. WITH SARAH BAKEWELL

The cover of the US edition of How To Live, published by Other Press, is by Mr. John Gall (pictured above). But you knew that already of course….

ANTHONY GOTTLIEBAnthony Gottlieb
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Published October 14, 2009

Missed Things: Wednesday

Henry Sene Yee, Creative Director of Picador, discusses the elegantly understated cover design for Time by Eva Hoffman, the latest addition to Picador’s BIG IDEAS // small books series.

And I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating: Picador are putting their catalogues — and, therefore, their outstanding cover designs — on their Facebook page.

Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou reviewed in The New York Times,  The Guardian, and FT. It sounds kind of awesome. The book also has a nice website with lots of content.

The Inevitable Frontier — Jennifer de Guzman, editor-in-chief at the independent comics publisher SLG Publishing, on digital comics in PW:

Right now, sales from digital comics aren’t going to mean we can pack up print publishing. Not even close. But despite being in the midst of it rather than a wide-eyed observer, I can see that in the near future digital comics are going to be playing a bigger role for all publishers than they do now. And it’s better to be so integrated in the change that you don’t notice that it’s happening than to find yourself left behind and marveling at “the things they can do now.”

“Issues” — A less than warm reception for the Kindle in Australia:

Jeremy Fisher, executive director of the Australian Society of Authors, said he was advising his 3000 members to resist publishing through the Kindle.

“As I understand at this point in time, Amazon asks for a very, very big discount from publishers for their works to be included in Kindle so that the return coming back to the publisher is smaller and the return coming back to the author is smaller,” he said.

“The person making the most money is Amazon.”

Hmm… Yes, well, moving swiftly on…

Jacket Whys — A really nice blog about children’s and YA book covers.

And on the subject of kids books…

Who The Wild Things Are –Artist Roger White looks at the inspiration Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things for the Boston Globe:

The Wild Things looked like nothing ever seen in a children’s book. Rendered in simple ink-hatch over watercolor sketches, they evoked a perfect mixture of proto-adult dread and anarchic, childlike glee – an eternal, platonic form of the kindly monster. From the moment they appeared in 1964, they seemed bracingly and completely original. But in fact Sendak’s monsters had a long series of ancestors and descendants…

But according to Bruce Handy, deputy editor at Vanity Fair, (and his children) kids don’t actually like Where the Wild Things Are… Umm… What?

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