Curiosity

January 12, 2015
The search for knowledge, and the discontents associated with that search, provide a loose pretext for this rambling literary meditation. Manguel (All Men are Liars) frames his text around The Divine Comedy, his model for a soul-shaking inquiry into the cosmos, examining Dante’s approach to a raft of questions about the nature of language, reasoning, animals, acquisitiveness, good and evil, and much more. Along the way he calls in other writers and philosophers, including Aquinas, Hume, Dickens, and Primo Levi, and visits topics such as economic inequality, environmental devastation, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and language skills among chimpanzees. Manguel’s loose-jointed, free-associative chapters make for a hit-and-miss intellectual tour. At some points, he gets bogged down with ornate self-indulgence, while at others his thoughts focus into sharp, insightful discussions of intriguing themes, such as identity in Alice in Wonderland, the unjust disparagement of the ancient Sophists, and the contrast between the morally coherent punishments in Dante’s hell and the inexplicable torments of Auschwitz. Throughout, Manguel’s main guiding principle seems to be to simply follow his nose to whatever tangentially related topic interests him. The average reader’s curiosity will be piqued by some, though perhaps not all, of the discoveries he makes. Photos.

January 15, 2015
An erudite analysis and exploration of curiosity through the author's own works and those of countless others.Manguel (A Reader on Reading, 2010, etc.), an Argentina-born Canadian essayist, translator, critic and editor, tackles a variety of difficult questions: Who am I? What is language? Where is our place? How are we different? Why do things happen? What can we possess? What comes next? In each of his 17 chapters, the author focuses on a different question posed by a curious mind, and each begins with a brief and sometimes-poignant anecdote from the author's youth. Chief among the curious minds that fascinate Manguel is that of Dante, whose quest in The Divine Comedy is spiritual and who serves here as the author's constant companion. It is worth noting that one of the book's charms is the presence of numerous unusual illustrations, including many woodcuts from a 15th-century edition of Dante's work. Among the fictional or mythical characters that readers meet on this journey through the history of mankind are Eve, Pandora, Ulysses and Ebenezer Scrooge, as well as a host of real scholars, religious figures, authors, poets, artists, philosophers and even economists. Human beings are, Manguel notes, self-conscious animals, capable of experiencing the world by asking questions and putting our curiosity into words, then turning those words into stories that lead to further questions. A fair sample can be found here. The author's personal library is said to contain more than 30,000 volumes, and the wealth of references in this book demonstrates that he is indeed a voracious reader. For casual readers, the brief personal passages may provide welcome pauses in what is a highly literate and demanding text perhaps best appreciated by followers of Manguel's previous works.

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March 1, 2015

Four hundred years ago, French essayist Michel de Montaigne asked himself, "What do I know?" According to Manguel (A History of Reading), this question functions not to conduct us toward definitive answers but rather to stimulate us to explore ourselves and our surroundings, opening up vast horizons of doubt and potential. Hewing to this principle of exploration, Manguel's work contains 17 erudite meditations on humanity's great existential questions, framed within Dante's journey through hell in the classic Inferno. Each chapter takes the form of a question: What Is True? Who Am I? What Comes Next? The chapter then pursues each inquiry through the writings of Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, the secret authors of the Talmud, and the occasional modern thinker. Manguel does not attempt to provide a biography of the theory or science of curiosity. Like Umberto Eco and other classical intellectuals, he produces a meandering flow of stories and musings, both personal and literary, that contrasts favorably with the methodical, linear narratives that audiences and peers expect from mainstream scholars. VERDICT Manguel's meditations will appeal to a niche readership of the intellectually curious as well as lovers of the classics.--Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL

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