The hall of uselessness : collected essays / Simon Leys.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leys, Simon, 1935-2014.

Series:

New York Review Books classics

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

French

Physical Description:

572 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York Review Books, [2013]

Summary:

Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao's Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys's essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of Andre Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time. Book jacket.

Contents:

Quixotism. The imitation of our Lord Don Quixote

An empire of ugliness

Lies that tell the truth

Literature. Balzac

Victor Hugo

Chesterton: the poet who dances with a hundred legs

Portrait of Proteus: a little abc of Andre Gide

Malraux

The intimate Orwell

Terror of Babel: Evelyn Waugh

The truth of Simenon

The sins of the son: the posthumous publication of Nabokov's unfinished novel

Cunning like a hedgehog

The experience of literary translation

On readers' rewards and writers' awards

Writers and money

Overtures

China. The Chinese attitude towards the past

One more art: Chinese calligraphy

An introduction to Confucius

Poetry and painting: aspects of Chinese classical aesthetics

Ethics and aesthetics: the Chinese lesson

Orientalism and Sinology

The China experts

The wake of an empty boat: Zhou Enlai

Aspects of Mao Zedong

The art of interpreting non-existent inscriptions

Written in invisible ink on a blank page

The curse of the man who could see the little fish at the bottom of the ocean

The Cambodian genocide

The sea. Foreword to the sea in French literature

In the wake of Magellan

Richard Henry Dana and his two years before the mast

University. An idea of the university

A fable from academe

Marginalia. Prefer reading

A way of living

Tell them I said something

Detours

Memento Mori.

Notes:

Originally published: Collingwood, Vic. : Black Inc., 2011.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 513-562) and index.

ISBN:

9781590176207

1590176200

OCLC:

798058855