Bergson later published a book by this same name. This award was given to him just five short years after his famous debate with Albert Einstein that centered on the topic of duration and simultaneity. Henri Bergson won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927 for his theories on memory, time, intuition, affection, and perception. This friendship was immortalized in the pages of In Search of Lost Time through the character Bergotte, a writer whom the narrator dearly admired early on. Marcel Proust even stood beside Bergson as the best man when he married Louise. Bergson rubbed elbows with several prominent minds, including Albert Einstein, whom he debated in the spring of 1922. It is no surprise that these two thinkers developed similar concepts of consciousness at the end of the 19th century. William James, the American Psychologist associated with pragmatism, greatly admire Bergson’s intellect.

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke on Race, Writing, and Friendship.Kenneth Burke on Reading for Identification.Lost in Translation: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.Ray Bradbury on the Seduction of Space in The Rocket Man.Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read.Walter Benjamin on the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.Simone Weil on the Generosity of Attention in Gravity and Grace.Simone de Beauvoir on The Ethics of Ambiguity and Existential Courage.The Role of Reciprocity in Nature in Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes.Bridge and Door: Georg Simmel on How Separation Inspires Human Connection.Mary Oliver Finds the Antidote to Confusion in Literature.Transforming 1984: The Pursuit of Wisdom and Wonder With How We Read.Ethics of the Infinite: The Origins of Radical Responsibility in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas.

Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson