Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [126]
Letter of June 3, 2008
In which we learn that Michel Houellebecq considers the novel to be a “minor genre” compared to poetry. The “radioactive halo” of poetry; the “power of words.” There is also some mention of Jean Cohen and Victor Hugo.
Letter of June 8, 2008
In which Bernard-Henri Lévy relates a tale of an evening spent with Louis Aragon in a Paris long since vanished.
Letter of June 26, 2008
Whether it is best to make love in the wee small hours or when completely conscious. Flaubert and Michel Houellebecq respond. Whether Schopenhauer and Plato are masters or colleagues? Michel Houellebecq responds.
Letter of June 30, 2008
On whether Malraux is a model. The truth about the Gary affair? What, at the end of the days, truly separates and unites Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy? Bernard-Henri Lévy responds.
Letter of July 3, 2008
What one forgets most quickly, of life and of one’s books.
Letter of July 11, 2008
Why it is important to try not to forget—and why Nietzsche was wrong in his theory of resentment.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY is a philosopher, journalist, activist, and filmmaker. Among his books are American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? Lévy is cofounder of the antiracist group SOS Racism and has served on diplomatic missions for the French government.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ is the bestselling author of numerous works of poetry and fiction, including Whatever, Lanzarote, Platform, and The Possibility of an Island.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS
MIRIAM FRENDO has been working as a translator for eight years and divides her time between Dublin and Lucerne, Switzerland. She works from French, German, and Italian and translates academic papers and newspaper articles as well as legal texts for law firms and international institutions. She also does book translations and is currently working on two Italian historical works on the Knights Templar and the mystery of the Turin shroud, both scheduled to appear in 2011.
FRANK WYNNE is a writer and a distinguished literary translator from French and Spanish into English. Born in Sligo, Ireland, he lived in Paris in the 1980s, where he developed his passion for languages. He began working as a literary translator more than a decade ago, after he moved to London. Among the many authors he has translated are Michel Houellebecq, Yasmina Khadra, Almudena Grandes, and Tomás Eloy Martínez, and he has just finished work on the memoirs of Claude Lanzmann. His translation of Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles won him the 2002 IMPAC prize (jointly with the author); his translations have also won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2005) and the Scott Moncrieff Prize (2008). He travels widely and is currently based in London.