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The impostor : BHL in wonderland / Jade Lindgaard and Xavier de la Porte ; translated by John Howe.
Van Pelt Library PQ2672.E946 Z7513 2012
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Lindgaard, Jade.
- Series:
- Counterblasts (Verso (Firm : London, England))
- Verso Counterblasts
- Standardized Title:
- B.A.BA du BHL. English
- Language:
- English
- French
- Subjects (All):
- Lévy, Bernard-Henri.
- Journalists--France--Biography.
- Journalists.
- France.
- Journalism--France.
- Journalism.
- Critics--France--Biography.
- Critics.
- Intellectuals--France.
- Intellectuals.
- Public opinion--France.
- Public opinion.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 271 pages ; 20 cm.
- Other Title:
- Bernard Henri Levy in wonderland
- Verso Counterblasts presents : the impostor
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Verso, 2012.
- Language Note:
- English translation from the French: "Le B. A. deBA du BHL : enquete sur le plus grand intellectuel de France", c2004.
- Summary:
- How do we explain what Perry Anderson calls "the bizarre prominence of Bernard-Henri Levy," easily the best-known "thinker" under sixty in France? "It would," he continues, "be difficult to imagine a more extraordinary reversal of national standards of taste and intelligence than the attention accorded this crass booby in France's public sphere, despite innumerable demonstrations of his inability to get a fact or an idea straight. Could such a grotesque flourish in any other major Western culture today?"
- This book, based on a careful investigation comparing BHL's words with his deeds, seeks to explore the remarkable persistence of this celebrity pseudo-philosopher since he burst onto the scene in 1977. Delving into his networks in the spheres of politics, the media and big business, Lindgaard and de la Porte reveal what the success of this three-decade long imposture tells us about the degeneration of contemporary French intellectual and cultural life. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- 1 The Pope of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
- The soirée at the Flore: a cartography of debtors 1
- BHL the celeb 6
- BHL the publisher 13
- BHL the diarist 14
- 2 An Impressive Network of Influence
- BHL the prince of advisers 19
- BHL and Ségolène Royal: 'adviser to the princess' 22
- BHL against, up close against, Nicolas Sarkozy 27
- BHL the businessman 33
- BHL the film producer 43
- BHL the newspaperman 45
- BHL the networker 47
- 3 In Search of the Lost Oeuvre
- The catalogue 51
- Using 'BHL: supply and demand 61
- Strategies for fabricating the semblance of an oeuvre 63
- Whence the pies (statement from le Gloupier) 68
- 4 Birth of an Imposture
- The flowering of New Philosophers in the media 73
- Confessions of the child of a barbaric century 77
- Me, myself, I 80
- Smashing '68 80
- How BHL missed the Solzhenitsyn event 83
- Television and the 'market environment' 84
- Publishing and the logic of the 'coup' 86
- New Philosophy: philosopher-proof 88
- The confessions of Jacques Derrida 93
- 5 The World Is My Spectacle
- The showman of commitment 97
- Self-invention 100
- Iraq war, 2003: how Bernard-Henri Levy changes his mind when he goes through immigration control 102
- The man who 'cannot quite believe' in the massacres ordered by Algerian generals in the 1990s 103
- The alleged meeting with Major Massoud in 1981 109
- August 2008: marching through Georgia 114
- 6 The Murder of Daniel Pearl: How It Was Commandeered by BHL
- A whole year? 119
- Agent Bennett's doubts 121
- 'Faction': an object of (almost) unanimous admiration 125
- Fake scoops in the devil's house 128
- 'You don't put words into the mind of a dying man' 130
- Incomprehension: Bernard-Henri Levy and Omar Sheikh 133
- The 'cause of truth', or the book's central thesis thrown into doubt 139
- Bankruptcy of the French media 141
- 7 Waging War for Democracy
- Fascism everywhere, especially in Islamism 147
- 'We will all be Yugoslavs!' 150
- Darfur: all united against the 'Islamist militia' 156
- Iran: revolution by proxy 160
- Libya: muscular humanitarianism 166
- A method 173
- 8 Is Bernard-Henri Lévy Left-Wing?
- The art of testifying against your own side 177
- The world as one giant bordello 180
- A friend to Israel 187
- 9 The Nightmare of Endless New Beginnings
- The decline in sales 199
- Little-loved public enemies 200
- The Botul affair, or, philosophy down the toilet 204
- Bernard-Henri Levy, beaten at his own game 212
- 10 BHL Worldwide
- American Vertigo, 2006: a French triumph 219
- The BHL operation sets up shop in America 222
- BHL 2.0 229.
- ISBN:
- 9781844677481
- 1844677486
- OCLC:
- 711052042
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