The life of Stanley Hoffman

When a heckler shouted "death to imbeciles" at Charles de Gaulle, the general responded by saying, "vast program."

One can see already that the next big book will come from Europe, that it's being written right now by a Syrian migrant, and that the first scene commences with harrassment at the train station in Budapest.

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran, reads Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" once a year. Nobody is sure what this means, though some interpret it as a good sign, favorable to the West.

Going through very old notebooks, I found this high-school syllogism: man's capacity for delusion is boundless; I am a man; therefore my capacity for delusion is boundless.

I'm reading Cioran again, being hopelessly addicted, "The Trouble with Being Born" this time, translated by Richard Howard. "I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions."

I wonder about a guy like Cioran: did he write, as some journalists write, from preconceived ideas, and shape his philosophy to fit the narrative of his preconceptions? I don't know, I'm only asking, knowing that some journalists write their stories this way, toward an end they had in mind from the beginning, and some write their stories as if there's some truth to be rendered that would otherwise remain unknown.

I made a vow not to watch professional football this year, but the more I dislike the NFL the better it becomes, and so I break my vow on Week One, watching NFL highlights on ESPN.

(Baker Mayfield, qb for the University of Oklahoma, will be the next big NFL star.)

Professor Stanley Hoffman died a few days ago. Born in France during the incipient Nazi rise, he taught at Harvard for many years and wrote books critical of American foreign policy. Here's to hoping he'll have more readers--particularly among the influential--now that he's gone.