Weekly Update (September 15th to September 21st)

Well, I finally finished off Michael Williams’s Unnatural Doubts. It’s compelling on most points and he’s particularly good on other Wittgenstein-inflected approaches to problems like scepticism, etc. He is well aware that we do understand sceptical problems and that there’s a reason that we think that they’re problems. That really grounds his approach and sets it above some other accounts. Ultimately, though, I don’t think that he quite manages to achieve the task he sets for himself. In my view, he still surrenders to the sceptical interpretation of knowledge. For him to avoid this, I think that he would have to engage in a little more historical work around the different strands of scepticism and try and give an explanation for why a certain sort of epistemological project became the central task of philosophical reflection.

I also read two novels last week: Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley, and Nocturnes for the King of Naples by Edmund White. Very different books.

Lonely Mouth was read on my mother’s recommendation and I enjoyed it, perhaps partly because of that. I enjoy talking about books with her, I think that it is an important part of our relationship. It’s a fairly well-executed example of a standard ‘trauma plot’ novel I guess, very in-step with current issues, etc. The plot isn’t really the attraction and drags it down in the last fifth or so. It’s ending is not particularly good and I think that the trauma aspects sort of contribute to that: all the conflict, the story’s motor, is cast in backwards-looking terms and it strangles its momentum. There’s also a bit of tedious media class conservatism: hypocrisy of youth, fear of cancellation, etc., etc. I think that it does impair the book, but not overally much.

I enjoyed the White novel, though found myself needing to reread a few sections. He was a great writer and the way that he reuses parts of his own life in all his fiction is fascinating. He has a few scenes and characters that he always returns to. I’m starting to become more alert to the way that he plays with those motifs, though. He will place them in slightly different configurations every time and it brings out different aspects, that I hadn’t noticed before. It can get tiring, reading about the same set of scenes in every novel, but I’ve decided to lean into over-interpreting it.