A robust memoir written with wit and passion, and a sparkling ability to connect the pieces of life and history - and to charm the meaning to the surface.How does a historian record his own life? Not so much unlike a novelist, I would say, as I deeply enjoyed the unabashedly literary style of the book - and it's sincere inclusion of sentiments, blunders, self-delusions and ironies, of food that's been 'boiled to death' as well as the decline of meritocracy and how education can mean having your views carefully picked apart with utmost seriousness -and being able to respect that.Girls. A comical but also analytical view of political correctness. A case for austerity, or a loving satire of 60s 'revolutionaries' that loved to epater la bourgeoisie but sadly missed the revolution that was going on in Prague and Warsaw. And so on.A clever, erudite but endearingly sincere and lively book that never underestimates the reader; it talks in the kind of voice one would use when dining out with his academic friends, enjoying a turn of phrase but also enjoying the miracle of conversation, of ideas being shared.This would be a lovely book even if it were written in the serenity of good health; but it was actually created in the darkness and solitude of almost complete paralysis, formulated at night so it can be dictated in the morning. I take it as an evidence that there is, indeed, a life of the mind. At first, I was completely entranced by this book, by the beauty of Judt's prose, from the simple beauty of the idea of a memory chalet to the subtle reminders that Judt dictated these essays while dying of ALS. But then I neared the end of the book, and read the essay "Girls, Girls, Girls," in which Judt bitterly laments the rise of awareness of sexual harassment. Which was bad enough, but it was quickly followed by some of the most transphobic language I have ever encountered in print, let alone within the writing of a scholar I greatly admire. The Memory Chalet is a beautifully written book. But it has so changed the way I think of Judt that I could barely finish it.
What do You think about El Refugio De La Memoria (2010)?
Lyrical. One of the toughest first chapters in terms of topic, but lyrical beauty from then on.
—wakamau
A moving look at the memory and past of a great mind whose body is slowly deteriorating.
—debby
