Greek Tragedy

Review: Talking to my Daughter about the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis

How refreshing! Economics explained in a Greek manner with frequent references to Zeus, Socrates, Sophocles, Icarus & Daedalus, the Trojan Wars, Aristotle, Plato, Odysseus, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Midas, Mephistopheles, the Oracle at Delphi, Archimedes, Homer and Achilles. He also draws on classic stories (Frankenstein, Doctor Faustus, and Grapes of Wrath) and movies (Matrix, Star Trek, and Chaplin’s Modern Times) to get across his particular take on capitalism and his take back the streets message.

Economics, he says, is not a science. It is more akin to a religion with mystical notions.

When [today’s experts] fail to predict properly some economic phenomenon, which is almost always, they appeal to the same mystical notions that failed them in the first place … [like the Ancient Greeks before the Delphi Oracle].

Not as good a book as I hoped for, but very readable.

 

New Member of the Pantheon

Review: The Weight of Snow by Christian Guay-Poliquin

I have a short list of writers that I read without hesitation. Most of them are never mentioned by my acquaintances so they seem to be a bit outside mainstream popular reading. They are characterised by very even-toned poetic works containing rather human stories with no fireworks. Perhaps the best known are Jim Crace and Graham Swift but others include Hubert Mingarelli and Laurent Gaudé. I am now ready to add Christian Guay-Poliquin to this pantheon.

He is a Canadian writer recommended to my wife (on my behalf) by my bookseller this summer. I could tell from the blurb that it was his second novel. Having read it (in French) I went exploring to find out if it has been translated and IT HAS!!!! Indeed, it turns out that this novel was a sequel to the first so I probably should have read the other (Running on Fumes) first. Never mind! I’ll read it next.

Some apocalypse has occurred, rarely mentioned and never explained. The protagonists are in a cabin in a Rocky Mountain type of terrain with no electricity, one an old man wishing to get home, the other a young man with broken legs.  That’s all I’m saying.

Read it, its worth it.

Update April 2020:  … especially now in a Pandemic!!