After receiving notes from friends, I checked out the extract from the Naipaul biography by Patrick French at The Telegraph (UK). The extract has an easy narrative flow and answers many questions that people had about Paul Theroux’s bilious but entertaining Sir Vidia’s Shadow. French finds out that Theroux was a grasping fellow and he was often just making it up. The biographer writes: “The material in Sir Vidia’s Shadow combines the accurate, the fictional and the appropriated, and they merge to the point where they cannot be disentangled.” French doesn’t take much delight in Theroux’s lively, often excoriating, description of a lunch at Naipaul’s house. He has found out that some of it was manufactured and inaccurate. It was one of the more memorable parts in Theroux’s book. As these reports reveal, French found a subject who is strikingly honest about this cruelty, which of course will be painted in loud, lurid colors by the media. As French reveals here, he had unique access to private documents. I’m looking forward to reading the biography. When I was listening to French read on that clip, it was clear that he is going to be able to tell me more about Naipaul’s life, but even during that admittedly brief extract it struck me that rarely are biographies able to tell you about the work itself, for which, as far as Naipaul’s body of writing is concerned, the gold standard for me has been London Calling, a magisterial book-length study by Rob Nixon.

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Why is there such a proliferation of economic discourses in literary theory, cultural studies, anti-sweatshop debates, popular music, and other areas outside the official discipline of economics? How is the economy represented in different ways by economists and non-economists?

In this volume, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and countries, from inside and outside the academy, explore the implications of the fact that the economy is being represented in so many different ways. They analyze what it means for scholars and activists in trying to make sense of existing representations-theories, pictures, and stories–of the economy. They also show how new representations can be produced and utilized to change how we look at and participate in current economic debates.

By encouraging the mutual recognition of existing approaches and exploring the various ways economic representations function in diverse venues within and beyond mainstream economics, Ruccio has produced a book that is relevant to subjects as diverse as economic sociology and anthropology, political economy, globalization and cultural studies.

My friend David Ruccio has sent word of a forthcoming book he has edited, Economic Representations: Academic and Everyday.

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