Forgetfulness

Crisp and elegant ... Cultural memory, [O'Gorman] argues, shapes our sense of time and connectedness to one another on a local and global level. By winding down the portcullis on the past, we risk closing our minds. * The Observer * A book as acutely intelligent and as original as this is a rare gift of fortune. Read it and you will not easily forget what you have learned. * John Gray, New Statesman * [A]n engaging dissection of an important phenomenon. * Morning Star * [This] provocative and engaging little book should be read as a personal essay ... [O'Gorman] manages to be both erudite and accessible, which is something of a feat. * Literary Review * After a glut of books about mindfulness it came as something of a relief to encounter Forgetfulness ... the book is supremely intelligent, but with the knowledge worn lightly and it's eminently readable, regardless of how you feel about the conclusions he draws ... a book to be savoured and considered. * The Bookbag * What is wrong with the modern world? Why does life seem so pointless, anxious and annoying? For Francis O'Gorman, the answer is pleasingly simple: we have lost touch with the stability of traditions from the past, and now live in a state of constant, confusing flux ... O'Gorman is at his best when he writes about literature, which is not always the case with literary critics ... At his best Prof O'Gorman sounds, perhaps not surprisingly, like an inspired young John Ruskin reminding his readers that they needed to pay more attention to their heritage before it vanished forever and they are left in an ugly, utilitarian world fit to serve material rather than spiritual needs. * The Irish Times * An ambitious, often engaging argument. * Prospect * Carrying his learning lightly, Francis O'Gorman elegantly enquires into the reasons why the 21st century is losing touch with the past. History, he argues, has become a mere commodity, emptied of meaning by commercial choices, ideological sleight of hand, cultural theories and educational decisions. In these post-truth days he challenges us to reconnect with the past, actively and analytically, in order to restore the links between sense and meaning, language and reality, and to reestablish the authority of the past. No nostalgist, O'Gorman speaks for history. This is not a hymn to the past, but a call critically to recall it. At a time of migration and globalization, he rediscovers the home of memory. Forgetfulness is for anyone who wants to remember what it is like to read an intelligent and provocative book. * Robert Hewison, cultural historian and author of Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain (2014) * Forgetfulness brilliantly diagnoses the cultural Alzheimer's disease from which modern man so complacently suffers, to the great detriment of his character. O'Gorman makes a strong plea for the importance of cultural memory and, above all, for a healthier and less narrowly self-referential historiography. * Theodore Dalrymple, writer, doctor, and author of Our Culture, What's Left of It (2004) *