Book Review: The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt

From Bibliobuffet.com:

"Earlier this month, Penguin Press published The Memory Chalet, a series of essays by the late Tony Judt, who died this August. Judt was a historian who wrote and edited fourteen books, including Ill Fares the Land, a commentary on today’s economic woes which was released earlier this year. Ill Fares the Land is a deep look into the social costs of laissez-faire capitalism. The essay collection is a deep look into Judt’s racing mind. The author was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2008 and was paralyzed from the neck down when the essays were written.

The Memory Chalet is a collection of twenty-five essays, most of which have appeared in The New York Review of Books. 'These essays in this little book were never intended for publication,' writes Judt in the book’s preface. Instead, he wrote the essays to help him cope with his increasingly limited mobility as his ALS worsened. Judt, who is able to speak and breathe with a ventilator but is unable to move any muscle in his body below the neck, verbally dictates his stories. 'The salient quality of this particular neurodegenerative disorder,' Judt writes, 'is that it leaves your mind clear to reflect upon past, present and future, but steadily deprives you of any means of converting these reflections into words.'" (more)