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Public Enemies

Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World
by Michel Houellebecq
Lévy, Bernard-Henri & Michel Houellebecq. Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World. Random. Jan. 2011. c.320p. ISBN 9780812980783. pap. $17. PHIL
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These two intellectually sharp and psychologically inquiring contemporary Frenchmen provide the series of letters they exchanged during their purposely revealing correspondence of the winter and spring of 2008. Lévy (Who Killed Daniel Pearl?), a philosopher and filmmaker who was raised in the aftermath of World War II and developed an abiding alienation from both Judaism and Christianity, and Houellebecq (The Possibility of an Island), a fiction writer with best seller status in France and whose youth also caused him to consider and reconsider the differences between faith and religion, allow their discourse here to range from personal stories of their childhoods through their fears of the void, distrust of chaos, and the difficulties with political commitment. The resources they call upon to illustrate and buttress their arguments range through modern Western philosophy, from Kant to Comte, and French literature from the canon (Malraux, Flaubert) to more recent popular writers.
VERDICT While a heady brew, this epistolary dialog is accessible, engaging, and as refreshing as listening to a pair of keen-witted and observant artist-thinkers on stage. For all educated lay readers after a stimulating read.
Reviewed by Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, Berkeley, CA , Dec 01, 2010
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