Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

“An Empire of Ugliness” first appeared in the Australian Review of Books (March 1997); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“Lies That Tell the Truth” was published in the Monthly (November 2007).

LITERATURE

“The Prince de Ligne, or the Eighteenth Century Incarnate” first appeared as the preface to Sophie Deroisin, Le Prince de Ligne (Brussels: Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Française de Belgique/Le Cri, 2006); it has been translated from the French for the present volume by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

“Balzac” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (12 January 1995); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“Victor Hugo” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (17 December 1998); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“Victor Segalen Revisited Through His Complete Correspondence” was originally published as “Victor Segalen revu à travers sa correspondance complète” in Le Figaro littéraire (3 February 2005); it has been translated from the French for the present volume by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

“Chesterton: The Poet Who Dances with a Hundred Legs” is the text of a lecture delivered to the Chesterton Society of Western Australia, Perth, September 1997.

An abridged version of “Portrait of Proteus: A Little ABC of André Gide” was published in Best Australian Essays 2000 (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2000).

“Malraux” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (29 May 1997); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“The Intimate Orwell” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (26 May 2011).

“Terror of Babel: Evelyn Waugh” first appeared in the Independent Monthly (March 1993); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“The Truth of Simenon” is the text of a speech delivered to Académie Royale de Littérature Française of Belgium on the occasion of Leys’s election to the Chair of Georges Simenon (1992); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“The Belgianness of Henri Michaux” first appeared as “Belgitude de Michaux” in Le Magazine littéraire (January 2007); it has been translated from the French for the present volume by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

“The Sins of the Son” first appeared in the Monthly (February 2010).

“Cunning Like a Hedgehog” first appeared in the Australian Literary Review (1 August 2007).

“The Experience of Literary Translation” has been adapted by the author from “L’Expérience de la traduction litteraire,” published in L’Ange et le cachalot (Editions du Seuil, 1998), translated by Dan Gunn. It was published in Notes from the Hall of Uselessness (Lewes: Sylph Editions, 2008) and in Best Australian Essays 2009 (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009).

“On Readers’ Rewards and Writers’ Awards” is the text of an address to the 2002 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

“Writers and Money” first appeared in the Bulletin (17 December–24 January 2003).

“Overtures” first appeared in the Australian Review of Books (May 1999).

CHINA

“The Chinese Attitude Towards the Past” is the text of the Morrison Lecture at the Australian National University (1986); it was first published in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“One More Art: Chinese Calligraphy” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (18 April 1996); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“An Introduction to Confucius” first appeared in Simon Leys’s translation of The Analects of Confucius (New York: Norton, 1997).

“Poetry and Painting: Aspects of Chinese Classical Aesthetics” first appeared in The Burning Forest (New York: Holt, 1986).

“Ethics and Aesthetics: The Chinese Lesson” was first published in Le Magazine Littéraire . It was translated from the French by Mary Coupe and published in the Diplomat (August — September 2004) and Best Australian Essays 2004 (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2004).

“Orientalism and Sinology” first appeared in the Asian Studies of Australia Review (April 1984); it was reprinted in The Burning Forest (New York: Holt, 1986).

“The China Experts” first appeared as “All Change Among the China-watchers” in the Times Literary Supplement (6 March 1981); it was reprinted in The Burning Forest (New York: Holt, 1986).

“Roland Barthes in China” was first published as “Roland Barthes en Chine” in La Croix (4 February 2009); it has been translated from the French for the present volume by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

“The Wake of an Empty Boat: Zhou Enlai” first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (26 October 1984); it was reprinted in The Burning Forest (New York: Holt, 1986).

“Aspects of Mao Zedong” was first published in the Australian (13 September 1976); it was reprinted in Broken Images (London: Allison & Busby Limited, 1979).

“The Art of Interpreting Non-Existent Inscriptions Written in Invisible Ink on a Blank Page” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (18 April 1996); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“The Curse of the Man Who Could See the Little Fish at the Bottom of the Ocean” first appeared in the New York Review of Books (22 June 1989); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“The Cambodian Genocide” first appeared in the Monthly (September 2009).

“Anatomy of a ‘Post-Totalitarian’ Dictatorship: The Essays of Liu Xiaobo on China Today” first appeared in the New York Review of Books as “He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny” (9 February 2012).

THE SEA

“Foreword to The Sea in French Literature ” is adapted and translated by the author from Simon Leys, La Mer dans la littérature française , Vol. 1, “De François Rabelais à Alexandre Dumas”; Vol. 2, “De Victor Hugo à Pierre Loti” (Paris: Plon, 2003).

“In the Wake of Magellan” first appeared in the Monthly (August 2008).

“Richard Henry Dana and His Two Years Before the Mast ” first appeared in English in the Australian Literary Review (3 November 2010).

UNIVERSITY

“The Idea of the University” is the text of Simon Leys’s address to the Campion Foundation Inaugural Dinner, Sydney, 23 March 2006.

MARGINALIA

“I Prefer Reading” first appeared in the Independent Monthly (1994); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“A Way of Living,” first appeared in the Independent Monthly (1995); it was reprinted in The Angel & the Octopus (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999).

“Tell Them I Said Something” first appeared in the Monthly (February 2006).

An earlier version of “Detours” first appeared in Notes from the Hall of Uselessness (Lewes: Sylph Editions, 2008).

“Memento Mori” first appeared in the Monthly (June 2006).

THE IMITATION OF OUR LORD DON QUIXOTE

1. For this episode of Nabokov’s career, I am drawing most of my information from Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 213–14. The lectures were published posthumously as Lectures on Don Quixote (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).