Customer Reviews

Notebooks of Simone Weil

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Simone Weil's 'Notebooks' are a major achievement and contain a staggering wealth of insights on a very wide range of subjects from a woman who has been described, without exaggeration, as the most profound thinker of the twentieth century. As such, this collection is invaluable and one doesn't have to read far in it to realize that Simone Weil could pack into a short sentence what many writers would need an entire volume to express, always supposing they had insights of such depth to express in the first place.

Sadly, however, the present edition is merely a cheaply reproduced reprint in one volume of the original 2-volume edition. Physically it could hardly be said to be a real hardbound book at all since it is in effect merely a glued-spine paperback which has been stuck between paper-covered boards, a book that does not open flat, an object masquerading as a real book but with a price tag one expects to find on a limited edition fine press book. Hence the single star.

Prospective buyers should try to find the original cloth-bound stitched edition of 'Notebooks' (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1956, 2-volumes) on the used book market where they are readily available. They will be getting permanent books that open flat and represent much better value for their money.

Yes, the binding is cheap, and the price is exorbitant. Yes, the publisher ought to be ashamed. But the content of Simone Weil's notebooks far outweigh the slipshod production. Weil remains one of the greatest interwar thinkers, with a brilliant mind, and a saint-like intensity for the pursuit of truth, beauty and kenotic love. The works of Levinas, Agamben, Canada's George Parkin Grant and a host of other postwar thinkers, French or otherwise, would be unthinkable without Weil. As such, this book deserves more than the one star given by an earlier reviewer. I give it five stars just to even out the overall average.