John le Carré visto da John Banville

David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, was tall, muscular, and physically forceful, even into old age, and possessed of what used to be called film-star good looks. He seemed, on the face of it, wholly at ease with the world and with himself. But what the camera so often revealed, behind the confidently winning smile, was the wounded man whose mother, when he was five, abandoned him without even saying good-bye, and who after he had become the successful novelist John le Carré was asked by his father to reimburse him for the cost of his education. The New York Review of Books

e anche, sempre sulla New York Review of Books, un interessante articolo sul nuovo libro di Adam Kirsch, The Revolt Against Humanity (Columbia Global Reports)

If humanity were to disappear from the Earth, what would be lost? On the human scale, the answer is everything; but on a planetary scale, it’s tempting to concede that such a loss might amount to a net gain. It is probably not necessary to enumerate the various ways that humanity has been unambiguously bad for the planet and pretty much every other living creature on it. But we tend not to think of our species, and the prospect of its extinction, in such bluntly utilitarian terms. We’d rather we weren’t so terrible, but we’d also like to think, even if it means fooling ourselves, that we might in time become less terrible—and either way, an enthusiastic embrace of our extinction would surely be taking things a bit far.

Or would it? This is the question that animates The Revolt Against Humanity, a brisk and bracing new book by the poet and critic Adam Kirsch. NYRB