Garnett, Boswell, Amery

Since my last post I've read an issue each of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Psychology Today, Gentleman's Quarterly, Utne Reader, two issues each of The Economist, Hello Canada, The New Scientist, and OK Magazine, and four issues of Eclectic Reading.

I've also finished the biography of that boor, Boswell, and read the biography of Edward Garnett. Both were excellent, Garnett's was a little boring. I mean, the guy spent his life reading and discussing literature with very eminent people: Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy to name only two. The biography was by George Jefferson.

I also read Amery's essays in At the Mind's Limit. They are really discouraging to read, since he is a pessimist and, I would say, a man whose hope was broken, broken by torture and Auschwitz, of course, but broken nonetheless. He remained a victim, however understandable that is. Primo Levi, for example, is quite different in tone.