When I met Brian Dillon in February 2023, he seemed to have a lot on his mind. We had arranged to speak about Affinities, the newly published final instalment of Essayism, his sprawling three-part survey of literature, art and aesthetics. That morning, as he sipped decaf coffee in a quiet corner of the Barbican Kitchen café in London, he still didn’t know what his book was about. ‘At this point you don’t,’ he confessed. But even though he hadn’t made up his mind about Affinities, Dillon had already begun to think about his next project. It was to be a memoir of his education, called Ambivalence. This has now come to fruition. It’s clear from the opening pages of this aptly titled volume that Dillon is still trying to work out not only what his books, but all the books he has read, are about.

For all his protestations of not knowing, Dillon is exceedingly well educated. He holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin, and is something of a polymath, with a grasp of subjects that range from literature and philosophy to music and photography. His modesty places him in good company. We might recall that Socrates was pronounced the wisest man in Greece precisely because he believed he possessed no wisdom at all. In Ambivalence, Dillon sets out to demonstrate, using his life as a case study, that education is just as much about questioning things as it is about obtaining answers. For him, education takes place in the act of seeking knowledge through........

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