How much notice do you have to give?
derek ryan valium
This year, I spent a lot of time rereading Albert Camus, prompted by the publication in English???over 50 years after its appearance in French???of a collection of writings on Algeria. "Algerian Chronicles" is beautifully translated by Arthur Goldhammer and edited, with an incisive introduction, by Alice Kaplan. Camus, so out of sync with his times on the Algerian question, proves, these many years later, morally sound and strikingly relevant to contemporary discussions about change in North Africa and the Middle East. If this book takes you back to "The Stranger," or to "The Rebel," or to Camus's beautiful essays, then it's worth it for that alone. I also greatly enjoyed Rachel Cohen's "Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade." Berenson's extraordinary and colorful life???from his humble birth in Lithuania, to Harvard and thence to his august and influential position as a critic and art historian, to the renowned splendor of his Florentine villa I Tatti???makes a rich and compelling subject. Ms. Cohen's remarkable book affords the occasion also for rumination upon self-invention and authenticity, upon the making of the man, and of taste, too. Another of the year's pleasures was Amity Gaige's "Schroder," another account of self-invention???though in this case gone awry. The novel's protagonist, Erik Schroder, tells his story from a jail cell, having lost everything, including his beloved daughter. Ms. Gaige's skill is such that, while you can't help seeing Schroder's errors???and ultimately, technically, crimes???they seem to make perfect sense. This man will break your heart.