#simon leys

With Márquez, Gordimer, Berger, and others passing, it’s been a rough year on literature. Now Pierre Ryckmans (AKA Simon Leys) is gone, leaving us a rich body of critical work. Outspoken, concentrated, eccentric, lucid, and always interesting–Ryckmans was a rare breed of critic who could be humane and combative and smart all at once. Pick up his collected essays, The Hall of Uselessness, out on NYRB and worth every bit of your attention. From the short essay, “Momento Mori,” parting words: 

We never cease to be astonished at the passing of time: “Look at him! Only yesterday, it seems, he was still a tiny kid, and now he is bald, with a big moustache; a married man and a father!” This shows clearly that time is not our natural element: would a fish ever be surprised by the wetness of water? For our true motherland is eternity; we are the mere passing guests of time. Nevertheless, it is within the bonds of time that man builds the cathedral of Chartres, paints the Sistine Chapel and plays the seven-string zither–which inspired William Blake’s luminous intuition: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time."