Michel Foucault

I've always loved this bio of Foucault, since it was written by someone who knew him and was a member of the scene in which he moved. Not a massive tome of scholarship, or a tell-all full of latex and pills, but a contemporary account. A great French take on a French thinker with a clear and engaging translation.

I had the good fortune to visit France and found this in a used book store. Normally you don't think of biographies as page-turners where you can't put it down, but that's how this one was for me. I am still entranced by the intellectual environment in France in the 1950s 1960s and 1970s. An era that will never be duplicated. Socialism in its heyday. Not bowled over too badly yet by corporatization, at least compared to the level it came to suffer from in later decades, and still recovering from the war. Yes there was the Algerian crisis, and the generation of intellectuals that still inspires us.
Plus, I swear, all an editor/book designer ever has to do is put a subject of any book in front of a packed bookshelf, and I will buy the show more book, no questions asked. How silly is that! Mind you, it's hard to think of a time when I have ever bought a book with this description and been disappointed by it.
It's similar to the wonderful thing that some librarything members do when they put pictures of their multiple bookcases in their gallery/profile. Can you say fetish?
It is interesting to read about the travels around Europe, and the venture over to California. This book made me love France and its love affair with books even more than before reading it. show less

The less salacious of the two Foucault bios I devoured some 20 years ago {https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/107966.The_Passion_of_Michel_Foucault being the other) . I had went to tour a facility in Ohio for work. Every turn provided some down time and another spin into this fascinating figure. Looking back, I think I invented excuses and dodged some duties: I suppose I thought I was combatting hegemony by my being distracted.

This approach situated MF into certain traditions as well as movements. Miller sought to configure Foucault's sexual practices as being evidence of his theoretical bend.