Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His previous books include On Humour, The Book of Dead Philosophers, How to Stop Living and Start Worrying, Impossible Objects, The Mattering of Matter (with Tom McCarthy), The Faith of the Faithless, and Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine (with Jamieson Webster). An experimental new work, Memory Theatre, is forthcoming. He is series moderator of “The Stone,” a philosophy column in The New York Times, to which he is a frequent contributor.

BOWIE Simon Critchley melds personal narratives of how David Bowie lit up a dull teenage life in England’s suburbs with philosophical forays into the way authenticity and identity are turned inside out in the artist’s work. More