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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Joanna Biggs, an associate editor at the LRB and today I'm talking to Toral Moy, who teaches at Duke and joins me from North Carolina

and has a piece in the latest issue dated the

1st of July about the philosopher Simone Veil. It's a review of Robert Soretzky's new life

of her, the subversive Simone Vei, a life and five ideas, but the essay is also about the

challenges Vaye's writing and life still poses. Torrell, you draw out some of the implications

of her work, such as just what happens

if we live our philosophy too thoroughly, about the place of work in our lives, and what it

might mean if we actually paid attention. Spoiler, it would be intolerable. I first encountered

Vé in Simone de Beauvoir's memoir. She was mysterious and impeccable. They weren't quite

friends and they weren't quite not.

I had the sense that de Beauvoir was scared of her. Is that why you first came across

Oterol and what image did you have of her before starting on this piece? Well, first of all,

I have to say that I didn't know much about Vei and I I think that passage in Baudois's memoirs,

that shows, as you so rightly say, that Bauer was a bit scared of Vey, and scared me too.

You know, I've spent so much of my life working on French intellectuals,

but there was like a kind of, I had a general sense of way.

I had read the Petremont biography, which is fantastic, and I'd read a couple of essays.

...