Itineraries: An Intellectual Odyssey

In writing Itineraries, Philip Resnick has focused on a number of influences and currents that have shaped his intellectual life. It begins with his early years, growing up Jewish in Montreal and his subsequent break with organized religion. This is followed by his encounters with nationalism — Québécois, Canadian, and that of a number of other states with majority and minority nationalities within their borders. There is an ongoing commitment to and series of reflections on socialism and the left. How poetry became his second calling is crucial in his intellectual development. He explores the challenges to democracy and its evolving fortunes from antiquity to our own day. The subject of Canadian identity — multinational, European-influenced, North American in character — is a major strand to the development of his thinking. Itineraries also offers reflections on academic freedom and key political developments over the last forty years and, in a more personal way, on the passage of time. In concluding this memoir, he asks the question that any of us looking back on our lives will have been prone to ask: What was it all about?