Interesting After All
Any writer hopes to interest his readers, not necessarily to convince them, but to make them reflect, and to count the time well spent. So I was happy to discover Harry Readhead’s recent review of Chastity. He writes: ‘Chastity is a curious little book. It is immensely readable, yet deals with something I never thought I would find remotely interesting. It reconsiders and reframes a virtue that has long been understood simplistically and scornfully. By the time the curtain, as it were, comes down, we have the impression that chastity, in its broadest definition, communicates something noble, something admirable, something freeing and — ironically — something desirable. We are, in other words, persuaded by the author’s argument, which is subtle but insistent, clothed in the language of reflection and meditation: for it is an argument for a life lived on our own terms, liberated by the racket and noise of ego.’