Feldman's Faves: January 19, 2026

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

I guess this week’s theme song in sports could be “Bye, Bye, Bo”.  If anyone knows Justin Timberlake let me know and I will ask for the rights. Sad to see Bo Bichette sign with the Mets (but not surprised he’s gone) and really unfortunate that Bo Nix broke his foot on Saturday (basically at the end of the game) – but boy was he good.  I guess we could also use the songs “Bye, Bye, Bills” and “Bye, Bye, Bears” – as per usual….

I want to thank everyone in our section for the incredibly hard work you are all doing so far this year. We never know what the year will bring but at least we are starting really strong thanks to all of you.

Lastly, if you are able please do try to make our CLE on Thursday entitled, “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - Recognizing, Reframing and Rising Above Imposter Syndrome”, which I think will be very interesting.

No theme this week – just topics of interest.

FLESH By: David Szalay – Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize, which I can say with confidence, was an outstanding choice. I read this book in one sitting and was sad to have to put it down. David Szalay – a Canadian , woot, woot -  is such a brilliant writer in the “less is more” tradition of writing. He provide only the bare minimum in order to advance the plot but it is enough to get more than the full picture. The story is simple – the life story of István – who started as a poor boy with a criminal record in Hungary and made it to the top of British society only then to fall and effectively be a manchild back in Hungary. How he gets there is fascinating to follow.  You feel like you are living beside him and winning with him when he wins and hurting when he hurts. The story itself is not super interesting but the way it is constructed is truly amazing. One of the best books I have read in years. As one reviewer notes, “Samuel Butler’s 1903 novel The Way of All Flesh carried with it an implied subtitle. In the book of Kings, from which Butler drew his title, the dying David tells his son Solomon, “take thou courage and shew thyself a man”. Butler’s inference was clear enough: here is a book about what it means to live, what it means to die, and what might be a worthwhile way to fill the time in between. Flesh, the sixth book from David Szalay, has more than just a biblical allusion in common with Butler’s masterpiece. Thrillingly, in an age when we arguably have weaker stomachs for such things, it also shares its bold ontological and artistic ambitions. In Flesh, Szalay has written a novel about the Big Question: about the numbing strangeness of being alive; about what, if anything, it means to amble through time in a machine made of meat. The novel recounts the life of István, whom we meet as a psychologically isolated and taciturn teenager and follow until he is a psychologically isolated and taciturn middle-aged man. The intervening years see István pulled along by the undertows of life; an affair with an older neighbour that ends in tragedy and violence, a stretch serving in the military, the uprooting of his life from Hungary to London, a vertiginous climb up the British class strata and, ultimately, a stoic and melancholy return to the town where he grew up. Crucially, there is precisely nothing of the agentive, questing hero in István’s journey. Szalay has rendered a man buffeted by forces beyond his control, be they the erotic or material desires of those who surround him, the undulations of the global economy or the interventionist and racialized foreign policy of the European Union. A consistently phlegmatic and passive participant in the events of his life and the events of the wider world, István has something of the existential wayfarer about him – Camus’ Meursault meets Forrest Gump.

Over the course of the novel, the nature and implications of István’s pliability are gradually revealed. He begins with a detached but curious naivety, unsure what pleasures life might bestow on him but willing to silently put one foot in front of the other until he finds out. But over time, this hardens, first into phlegmatic acceptance, and later into an almost eerie resignation. Before long, István seems entirely alienated from his own desires, a ghost haunting the edges of a life that he is not even sure is his. In the hands of a less skillful writer, this might seem a predictable trajectory, the incremental retrenchment of a mind and a heart in the face of pain. But instead, Szalay gives us something far more disquieting: the creeping implication that perhaps István is not engaged in an act of psychospiritual retreat, but is instead reckoning, in a clear-eyed and reasonable way, with the reality of fate’s cold indifference. However, the sense of psychological, social and emotional detachment that pervades the novel does have one notable counterweight. From the title on, Szalay ensures the reader never forgets that, for all his otherworldly remove, István exists in a body: while he may not articulate his desires verbally, they nonetheless exist. Whether it be his disfiguring urge for violence, or his disorienting and occasionally ennobling urge for sexual release, it is through these acts, often sudden and shocking, that we get closest to understanding what might lie beneath his silence. It is telling that István seems most energized during the period of his life he spends at war. While his experience is ultimately defined by trauma on the battlefield and the monumental futility of the “war on terror”, we also sense that for István it takes the proximity and imminence of death, the undeniable confrontation with his mortality, to render the world meaningful and vivid. In this sense, Flesh is a novel that frequently reminds us how often motion precedes emotion. Stylistically, Flesh is all bone. Szalay has always been a master of the flinty, spare sentence but in this novel he has pared things back even more brutally. Over 350 pages or so, the cumulative effect is one of controlled, austere minimalism, a series of thumbnail sketches that suggest precisely the needed amount of detail. Dialogue is handled similarly, staccato exchanges that only rarely erupt into exclamation. When István is asked how it felt to be in the army, to see people die and to shoot a gun, he finally settles on “it was OK”. At times, Szalay’s writing is reminiscent of Henry Green’s great modernist trilogy, Loving, Living, Party Going, where stylistic flatness is deployed with an intensity that is almost comic, such that the very idea of meaningful emotional connection is called into question – rendered absurd. There will be a temptation to pigeonhole Flesh as a novel about masculinity; its silences and its contortions, its frustrations and its codes. But while that is clearly a central concern, Szalay is also grappling with broader, knottier, more metaphysical issues. Because, at its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language.” This year the Booker Shortlist was one of the best I’ve seen in years and Flesh stood head and shoulders above almost every book on that list. Here’s an a good review from the NYT –  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/books/review/david-szalay-flesh.html

The Peter Attia Drive  - Special episode: Understanding true happiness and the tools to cultivate a meaningful life—insights from past interviews with Arthur Brooks – In the world of celebrity modern day philosophers, Peter Attia and Arthur Brooks rank pretty high on the list. Their conversation in this PODCAST is a summary of Brooks’ main ideas that have been in the popular culture for years. It is a good summary and an interesting discussion. Here is an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter's Weekly Newsletter In this special episode of The Drive, Peter presents a curated "best of" conversation with bestselling author and previous guest Arthur Brooks, organized around four core themes: happiness itself, the forces that undermine it, the tools and practices that help cultivate it, and the courage required to live and love well. The episode brings together the most meaningful moments from two past interviews into a single, focused discussion that distills Brooks' most insightful ideas and offers practical takeaways for building a life that's both successful and deeply happy. We discuss: Happiness vs. happy feelings, and how happiness and unhappiness can coexist [2:15]; The six fundamental emotions [5:30]; The three main "macronutrients" of happiness [15:00]; Enjoyment: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [22:45]; Satisfaction: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [30:45]; Sense of purpose: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [38:45]; Fame: one of the traps that hijack our happiness [46:30]; Success addiction, workaholism, and their detriment to happiness [49:15]; The reverse bucket list: one of Arthur's tools and practices he recommends for moving past the traps that hijack our happiness [59:15]; Metacognition: one of Arthur's tools and practices he recommends for moving past the traps that hijack our happiness [1:01:00]; Taking charge of your happiness: discipline, transcendent experiences, and other deliberate actions for "happier-ness" [1:11:30]; Tracking happiness: the biomarkers and micronutrients behind the macronutrients of happiness [1:22:45]; The value of minimizing the self and looking outward [1:30:45]; How Arthur surprised himself with his ability to improve his happiness [1:34:45]; and More.”: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-peter-attia-drive/id1400828889?i=1000742270620

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon