March 16, 2005
Keep an eye out
A few books floating around the office have caught my attention. Here are three worth noting.
Martin Jay's Songs of Experience (California, January, 0-520-24272-6): I missed Refractions of Violence, his last book, but was taken with Downcast Eyes, and his new tome, subtitled "Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme," seems promising. From the jacket flap: "Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis...[it] explores Western discourse from the sixteent century to the present asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy."
Hannah Arendt's The Promise of Politics (Schocken, June, 0-8052-4213-9): A collection of previously unpublished texts that "addresses the problem of political philosophy, the problem of action after the French Revolution, and the promise inherent in political practice." According to the uncorrected galleys, it will feature an introduction by Arendt scholar Jerome Kohn, professor of philosophy at Cooper Union.
Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Viking, July, 0-670-03421-5): Solnit, whose 2003 book River of Shadows garnered much acclaim and a National Book Critics Circle award, wanders from scholarly exegesis into the realm of the autobiographical, using personal stories to "[explore] losing yourself in the pleasures of experience." From the publisher's PR materials: "Written as a series of autobiographical essays, it draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place."