Evolution of Desire: “as absorbing as a very good novel – I could not put it down.”
Sunday, February 10th, 2019A lovely letter from William Cain, Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, who has just finished reading Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard: “I am writing to congratulate you, and to thank you, for your brilliant and beautiful biography of René Girard. It is so interesting and enlightening about his life and career. You did a wonderful piece of work from start to finish: it was as absorbing to me as a very good novel – I could not put it down.
“You did a great job on this book … Thank you again for this superb biography.”
He had some firsthand experience with the subject: he knew René Girard when he was a grad student in the English department at Johns Hopkins University, 1974-1978. “I especially remember his great enthusiasm about Shakespeare,” he writes.
Below, that’s one of my tribe of bros, posting on Facebook from Barnes & Noble in Rochester Hills: “Look what’s on the shelves in southeastern Michigan!” There’s Aristotle, and there’s me … or rather there’s René Girard and Evolution of Desire.
Postscript on February 18: Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard in Ann Arbor, too!