| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
06 Nov 2005 04:56:29 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
'Jean-Jacques Rousseau': An Unruly Mind
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/books/review/06schiff.html?pagewanted=all
By STACY SCHIFF
Published: November 6, 2005
THE well-behaved biographical subject follows a haphazard course to his
destiny. He shies from the predictable, shuns the inexorable, plummets
into sand traps. Which makes Jean-Jacques Rousseau a paragon of
biographical good manners. Generally speaking, penniless provincials
were not the stars of the 18th century. Rousseau's early years make the
classic underachievers - the Churchills and Einsteins - look
distinguished. Late blooming doesn't even begin to cover it. The future
political theorist was a clumsy footman, a feckless clerk. Learning
that he had written a successful opera, one of his former employers
could only sputter: "What? that imbecile?" In this fine new biography,
Leo Damrosch, the Ernest Bernbaum professor of literature at Harvard,
sees Rousseau's as a sort of Cinderella story. He is eloquent on the
mouse-and-pumpkin phase, entirely central to the tale.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Restless Genius.
By Leo Damrosch.
Illustrated. 566 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $30.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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