In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek. So too in the luckless genre of letters artificially exchanged for the purposes of publication.
There’s been a little spate of these lately, the most interesting and unbalanced having been Public Enemies, in which Michel Houellebecq brilliantly began the exchange by telling Bernard Henri-Levy that what they had in common was that they were both a bit contemptible, a bond from which BHL tried unsuccessfully to extract himself for the rest of their collaboration.
Disagree with half of it, enjoy reading all of it
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