How We Create Ourselves: Second Place by Rachel Cusk
The voice reaches and reaches at answers to broad questions. Sometimes it pulls back pieces of insight and beauty.
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Posts Tagged: existentialism
Pursuing the Unattainable: A Conversation with Zaina Arafat
Zaina Arafat discusses her debut novel, YOU EXIST TOO MUCH.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #139: Debra Jo Immergut
“If the door doesn’t open, it’s okay to walk away, give your poor head a rest. And try again later.”
...moreInto Paradox
Over at the New York Review of Books, Peter E. Gordon writes about Søren Kierkegaard’s legacy through the lens of Daphne Hampson’s biography, Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique, which she dedicates to S.K. for helping her grasp “with greater clarity why I should not wish to be Christian.”
...moreThe Crisis of Man
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Robert Zaretsky writes about Albert Camus’s one and only visit to the United States, to New York City, and how the questions of absurdity, meaning, and rebellion Camus’s visit raised for him still cut as deeply now as they did seventy years ago.
...moreThe History of The Second Sex
At Flavorwire, Sarah Bakewell shares an excerpt from At the Existentialist Café. In the excerpt, Bakewell looks at Simone de Beauvoir’s writing of The Second Sex—for Bakewell, the most important book to come out of existentialism, a hugely important feminist tome that began with a wild-looking de Beauvoir sitting at a writing desk unsure of what to put down.
...moreExistential Black Magic
Desperate stuff, all about sex. Some fella called Simon de Beaver. It’s called existentialism. The Independent’s John Walsh sat down to interview Sarah Bakewell about At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, her book about the lives, influences, and impact of that wacky French bunch, the Existentialists.
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The Last Book I Loved: Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living In New York
But when my loneliness feels as vast—and capable of drowning me—as the sea, this book about self-destruction comforts me more than any self-help.
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