Chrisafis, Angelique. "The Cultural Whipping Boys' Manifesto: France has Vomited on Us for Too Long." GUARDIAN October 3, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri, and Michel Houellebecq. Ennemis Publics. Paris: Flammarion, 2008. France has often delighted in publicly thrashing its literary greats, from Flaubert and Baudelaire's morality court cases to Françoise Sagan's drug busts. But now two self-declared cultural whipping boys have joined ranks to express their outrage at being constantly "vomited on", ridiculed and victimised by their nation. Michel Houellebecq, the award-winning novelist and ageing enfant terrible, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, the dapper leftwing philosopher, epitomise France's love-hate relationship with its bestselling literary exports. In a surprise joint venture, they have produced a book of confessional letters to each other, raging at the vitriol heaped on them as the "whipping boys of our era in France". The book, Public Enemies - released next week and seen by the Guardian - is being billed as the publishing sensation of the year, sure to spark a fresh slanging match with critics, some of whom are already talking of a work of staggering vanity and egotism, and a precious insight into the mind of French literary celebrities. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/03/michelhouellebecq.france.

Da Costa, Damian. "Le Reve Gauche." NEW YORK OBSERVER October 1, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri. Left in Dark Times: a Stand against the New Barbarism. New York: Random House, 2008. Yes, he’s a celebrity who wears expensive suits. But he’s a real-deal philosopher, too, so let’s put on our thinking caps and review the principles of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s political thought as presented in Left in Dark Times, a manifesto with a subtitle suitable for the barricades, A Stand Against the New Barbarism. Beware the four pillars of totalitarianism—the Absolute, History, the Dialectic and Disease. The Absolute, Mr. Lévy explains, is the dream of a utopian society emptied of politics and conflict; History is the one-way path to utopian salvation; the Dialectic is the final arbiter of the meaning of events and experience in the light of History’s goal; and the idea of Disease is what, in totalitarian regimes, substitutes for the idea of Evil, replacing that old, religiously rooted notion with a clinical, materialistic image of noxious bacteria or a virus that must be purged from an infected body. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/le-r-ve-gauche.

McLemee, Scott. "The Playboy Philosopher." INSIDE HIGHER ED October 1, 2008.

In Paris, it’s just the done thing to bash BHL. . . . Recently I featured an awesome graphic that went along with a BHL piece on Sarah Palin in New York magazine — an image of Palin getting bopped on the head with a baguette — and I included a link to the NY mag article, because hey, I re-used their graphic, I owed them a link. The comments that followed amounted to taking the baguette and turning it on BHL!” (Well, at least it wasn’t a cream pie.) Usually the expressions of exasperation are “all in good fun,” says Elkin. But one item at her blog — linking to a BHL piece on Simone de Beauvoir — provoked an exceptionally pompous display of aggravation from a French journalist. “You and your fellow Americans,” he wrote, “should realize that BHL is not a philosopher but a clown and a buffoon. You want real French philosophy, read Derrida, Foucault, Badiou, Baudrillard, if you are a right winger, read Aron, but please forget about this pompous arrogant shmuck BHL and his unending and shameless self-promotion. As a Frenchman, I am ashamed of BHL. . . . Read the rest here: http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/10/01/mclemee.

McLemee, Scott. "Darkness Becomes Him." THE NATION September 23, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri. Left in Dark Times: a Stand against the New Barbarism. New York: Random House, 2008. The interest of Lévy's latest book comes from watching him apply his version of phenomenology to something grander than our provincial struggle between being and nothingness. Published in France following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy last year, the book opens with BHL receiving a phone call from the candidate. We eavesdrop on Sarko angling for an endorsement and are given a quick tour of the grounds for abundant mutual admiration between philosopher and politician. But, hélas, Lévy must withhold his support, for, as he says, "the Left is my family"--a remark that surprises, not to say unhinges, Sarko. The naïve reader, too, and perhaps even an American one, may find this claim of leftist affiliation coming out of nowhere. Thirty years ago, Lévy was the coordinator and chief publicist for the New Philosophy--a school of thought, largely staffed by ex-Maoists, that argued that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had not been such a boon to humanity (in all, a reasonable thesis) and so any radical critique of capitalism would lead to the Gulag Archipelago (a judgment that does not seem beyond all argument). . . . Read the rest here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/mclemee.

Lichfield, John. "Poisoned Penpals: Clash of the Literary Titans." INDEPENDENT September 23, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri, and Michel Houellebecq. Ennemis Publics. Paris: Flammarion, 2008. Two of the most self-promoting, outspoken, and hated, men in France will go head-to-head next month in a literary "clash of the Titans." The re-make of Godzilla vs King Kong will pit Michel Houellebecq, dishevelled curmudgeon and best-selling novelist, against Bernard-Henri Levy, dandy philosopher and telegenic human rights activist. Their joint book, Ennemis Publics, has been the subject of a masterful "advertease" campaign for the past three months. The publishers, Flammarion, let slip in June that they were printing 150,000 copies of a hush-hush, two-handed book. Even before the identity of the writers was known, bookshops placed orders for 100,000 copies, guaranteeing the tome best-selling status in France. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poisoned-pen-pals-clash-of-the-literary-titans-938933.html.

Hitchens, Christopher. "Bons Mots and Betes Noires." NEW YORK TIMES September 19, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri. Left in Dark Times: a Stand against the New Barbarism. New York: Random House, 2008. The election of Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency of the French Republic, on a ticket of the Gaullist and centrist right, was marked by two kinds of defection from the left. In advance of the vote, a number of former Marxist Parisian intellectuals like André Glucksmann announced their intention of voting for Sarkozy and against the rather vapid and temperamental quasi-spousal Socialist party team of Ségolène Royal and her significant other, François Hollande. And then, once the victory of Sarkozy had been assured — probably rather more by the votes of former rightists than former leftists — the new president offered some plum jobs to prominent Socialists like Bernard Kouchner, the ex-Communist and cofounder of the campaigning internationalist outfit Doctors Without Borders, who is now foreign minister, before himself proceeding to give new meaning to the term “husband and wife team” by marrying the former supermodel Carla Bruni in the Élysée Palace itself. You might say that this situation was superbly designed for an address from Bernard-Henri Lévy — universally known in France as BHL — who cuts a commanding figure both in the circles of the Left Bank intelligentsia and in the world of Parisian high fashion and salon society (and whose lovely wife, Arielle Dombasle, could look Carla Bruni in the eye any day). But the fact is that these developments make him feel extremely uncomfortable. He happens to have known Sarkozy since 1983, when Sarkozy was elected mayor of Neuilly; yet when he received a telephone call from Sarkozy last year, demanding to know when the BHL endorsement would be coming, he found himself unable to play ball. In fact, he found himself abandoning intellectual terrain for a moment and saying that he would cast his vote for the left candidate, as ever, because it was la gauche that was his “family.” . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/books/review/Hitchens-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

Romano, Carlin. "A French Intellectual Star Considers What's Right About the Left." CHRONICLE September 5, 2008.

Levy, Bernard-Henri. Left in Dark Times: a Stand against the New Barbarism. New York: Random House, 2008. Isn't it time that snobs in French departments, who'll schedule 20 Bataille, Blanchot, or Deleuze seminars before permitting even an invited chat on Lévy, admit that his impact on French intellectual history will far outlast that of their heroes? Left in Dark Times: a Stand against the New Barbarism (Random House, September) — Lévy's blend of memoir, dissection of the 1970s New Philosophy movement that made him famous, and call for a leftism that's neither infantile nor robotic — demonstrates the acuity of his antennae, and his good fortune in reflecting current events. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i02/02b00601.htm.