A Summer with Pascal

Today's students are lucky devils! Without difficulty, in an appealing way, they can grasp the essence of a classic writer thanks to this summer series...launched by Antoine Compagnon with Montaigne, continued with Baudelaire, and now enriched by A Summer with Pascal. -- Bernard Pivot * Le Journal du Dimanche *
[An] elegant, unconventional 'beach read'...The appeal of Pascal, as presented by Compagnon, lies not just in the ironies of his writing, but also in the performative contradictions of his life. The man was not immune to the paradoxes he wryly noted in other humans...We might see Compagnon's project in this book as a harmonisation of contradictions - those of the man himself and of his thought. It thus serves as a guide to understanding Pascal himself, a thinker whom the intervening centuries have made it difficult to understand on his own terms. -- Jonathan Egid * Literary Review *
The name Blaise Pascal isn't always associated with seaside leisure. We think of him as cerebral and sanctimonious, austere and despondent...But this is to misunderstand him...Antoine Compagnon doesn't just give him another face in A Summer with Pascal: in forty short chapters that one could read between swims, he alternates between literary study and biographical anecdotes with a joyfulness that suits his subject. * L'Express *
An excellent introduction to a complex yet intellectually enticing writer. -- Joseph Epstein * Washington Free Beacon *
What better guide than Antoine Compagnon...to introduce us to the world of this scientific and literary 'terrifying genius,' mystic and polemicist, 'jouster and game player,' this writer without equal of the Pensees and Provincial Letters? * Causeur *
Following A Summer with Montaigne, Antoine Compagnon excels once again in resuscitating and animating a key figure in French intellectual history. Clarifying without simplifying, A Summer with Pascal invites readers along the fascinating paths of Pascal's dialectical thought-and Catherine Porter's elegant translation is the icing on the cake. An excellent read for any season. -- Cathy Yandell, author of The French Art of Living Well: Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World
Antoine Compagnon offers us a new portrait of a great, often quoted and perhaps even more often misunderstood writer. The effect is to let us in on an intimate conversation across centuries. However much we may think we know about Pascal, we can learn a great deal from this absorbing work. -- Michael Wood, author of The Road to Delphi