Flirts, Victims, Connivers 
Jerry Fodor
- Enchantment: The Seductress in Opera by Jean Starobinski, translated by C. Jon Delogu Buy this book
I’ve been told you can’t judge a book by its cover; and not by its subtitle either, it would seem. Jean Starobinski’s Enchantment presents itself as concerned with ‘the seductress in opera’, but not much of it actually is. It consists, rather, of a collection of occasional pieces, most of which have previously been published. They offer relatively impressionistic accounts of one or another opera. Starobinski has a good ear for wordplay and his essays are very strong on literary, historical and anecdotal background. Much of it opera addicts will find fascinating, some of it they will find illuminating, and all of it is impressively erudite. But there’s nothing much holding the book together except its covers.
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Jerry Fodor is collaborating with Massimo Piattelli-Palamarini on a book about evolution without adaptation.
Other articles by this contributor:
A Science of Tuesdays · Jerry Fodor writes about the Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World by Hilary Putnam
The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism · Pinker and Plotkin
Let your brain alone · why the brain?
Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings · The Case against Natural Selection
Water’s water everywhere · Kripke
Headaches have themselves · Panpsychism
Neither Egypt, nor Italy, nor Broadway, nor Theatre · Jerry Fodor sees the Elton John and Tim Rice reworking of Aida
Look! · Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
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