Tag: Simon Leys

• Why We Fight

  Before continuing my now-continuously delayed exploration of The Failure of Technology, I wanted to take a moment to delve into the quote from Ernst Jünger I cited in the last post: During World War I we confronted the question of whether man was more powerful than machines. In the meantime, things have gotten more complex. We…

  Dan

  April 26, 2022

  Series

  CS Lewis, Ernst Junger, Friedrich Georg Junger, Romano Guardini, Simon Leys, The Failure of Technology

• The Appeal of the Sea

  On this topic, seamen always repeat the same thing.  Thus, in one of his last essays, Conrad confessed: “The monotony of the sea is easier to bear than the boredom of the shore.”  And earlier on, in a short story (which, paradoxically, is a masterpiece of disturbing and suspenseful ambiguity), he described the feeling of…

  Dan

  December 23, 2016

  de umbris idæarum

  Patrick O’Brian, Simon Leys, The Sea

• True Philistines

  At that moment the realization hit me-and has never left me since: true Philistines are not people who are incapable of recognizing beauty; they recognise it all too well; they detect its presence any where, immediately, and with a flair as infallible as that of the most sensitive aesthete-but for them, it is in order to be able…

  Dan

  December 15, 2016

  Book Notes

  Aesthetics, Barbarism, Simon Leys, Virtue