Art and Literature All books
Herbert Lottman
The Committed Writer and his Ambivalences From Chateaubriand to Malraux
By definition, a committed writer is a well-known one who puts the respect and admiration his name has accrued in the service of a cause. But is it really that simple? Is political commitment only a matter of principles? Isnt it also driven by a quest for celebrity? Described here are the stratagems adopted by some of the greatest figures in the French literary pantheon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as they faltered between a quest for purity and the desire for personal glory. Herbert Lottman is a renowned biographer.
Sébastien Balibar
The Child and the Concerto
An amateur pianist blends the present of a concert, recounted as it unfolds, and an inner monologue, with different episodes from the past and from his musical memories, and ends up telling the story of a life.
André Miquel
Chateaubriand’s Memoires from Beyond the Grave Selections chosen and presented by André Miquel
For the 250th birthday of François-René de Chateaubriand: colloquia, commemorations (Saint-Malo, Combourg, Châtenay-Malabry) celebrate the great writer.
Jean-Didier Vincent
Celui qui parlait presque
When a rich English woman, a grouchy scientist, a bonobo monkey and a young man interested in religion meet together in a castle of Provence, what do they do? They talk. And what do they talk about? About the origins of life, the appearance of language, about the secrets of memory, or about the emergence of desire. Subtle and witty, J.-D. Vincent, a neurobiologist, author of The Biology of Passions, offers us here a defense and an illustration of material reason.
