Memory Theater

[DEBUT] This debut novel by Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, might be called a philosophical mystery, but first and foremost it is a portrait of obsession. Tasked with going through the papers of friend Michel, the former chair of the Sorbonne's philosophy department, the narrator uncovers Michel's interest in the memory theater, a means of recall dating from ancient Greece and here paralleled to the development of philosophy. In boxes marked by the signs of the zodiac, the narrator discovers memory maps created by Michel that take the memory theater to its fullest extent, providing means of visualizing the life details of eminent philosophers and close friends, including the narrator himself. Thus does he become wholly absorbed in building a memory theater of his own, a task that leads readers through a history of philosophy too elegantly and overarchingly crafted to be called a lecture. He finally lands in the Netherlands, having pretty much abandoned life in general, to build a large-scale memory theater that is essentially time made space, or the concrete visualization of his life. But does it work as he expects?