After his death, a public figure leaves behind an astonishing manuscript - an embarrassment to his godson, the executor of his estate. What should be done with these disconcerting essays, which touch on disparate topics, jumping from the iconoclastic to the ironic, from the moving to the provocative, from the highbrow to the eccentric, at times preposterous and ridiculous, but all fundamentally contradictory? It is a difficult question to answer, especially as none of these essays seem to match the persona he hid behind and seem to have been written against everything he stood for. ...