Today I have a guest post at Normblog: a contribution to the long-running Writer’s Choice series for which the contributor discusses a book that has been important to him. My post is on Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.
The semi-eponymous Normblog is the blog of Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Manchester and author of Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend, and Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind: The Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty, among other works. Normblog has been listed on The Sunday Times compilation of best blogs and was named Best UK Blog in the 2005 Weblog Awards.
Norm was also a primary author of The Euston Manifesto, a 2006 document that called for a new political alignment on the left, and to which I was pleased to sign my name. Said its conclusion:
It is vitally important for the future of progressive politics that people of liberal, egalitarian and internationalist outlook should now speak clearly. We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic ‘anti-imperialism’ and/or hostility to the current US administration. The values and goals which properly make up that agenda – the values of democracy, human rights, the continuing battle against unjustified privilege and power, solidarity with peoples fighting against tyranny and oppression – are what most enduringly define the shape of any Left worth belonging to.
Norm is a man of impressive intellect and interests. The latter range from all matters political, philosophical, linguistic, literary, and cricketty to his Jazz Collection, Songs of love and heartbreak, The Momma ‘n’ Daddy Archive of country music and a heart apparently split among his wife (first, no doubt, of all), Jane Austen, Anne Tyler, and Emmylou Harris.
The intellect reveals itself regularly in posts of careful, patient logic that all too often reveals the lack of same in the arguments of those to whom the quarter has all those years been traveling. Here is a recent example.
If you will, go to Normblog and read my piece on Camus. Consider it my second post of the day. Then linger and be rewarded.
AJA