Berfrois

Eli S. Evans: Is That It

Eli S. Evans: Is That It

Thanks, Berfrois...

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Farah Abdessamad on François-René de Chateaubriand

Farah Abdessamad on François-René de Chateaubriand

I spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...

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Where Berlin Begins

Where Berlin Begins

From the bridge, I go back, usually, through Babelsberg. I pass flocks of ducks trustingly swimming up to the shore. Above, on a small hill—the palace...

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Artificial Taste by Mary Wollstonecraft

Artificial Taste by Mary Wollstonecraft

A taste for rural scenes, in the present state of society, appears to be very often an artificial sentiment, rather inspired by poetry and romances, than a real perception of the beauties of nature...

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Some Sounds

Some Sounds

A house down around the block is getting a new roof, hammers echoing like giant flickers. Since the big virus outbreak...

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Chaos in Colombia

Chaos in Colombia

I was twenty years and thirty days old when that bomb went off in downtown Bogotá...

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While on holiday in Bognor…

While on holiday in Bognor…

All men are equal on their holidays: all are free to dream their castles without thought of expense, or skill of architect...

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As Read

As Read

I neither wish to be hated & deified by such as I startle...

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Katey Keogh was a real Dubliner…

Katey Keogh was a real Dubliner…

Katey worked for a time at the Volta Cinema when she was seventeen...

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Contacts

Contacts

Yesterday, while on extended hold with an appliance store, I deleted dead people from my Contacts...

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Italy’s Midsummer Bescheerung by Vernon Lee

Italy’s Midsummer Bescheerung by Vernon Lee

The cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy...

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Friendship in Fiction

Friendship in Fiction

In philosophical treatments of friendship, it can often be elevated to the highest form of human relationships, even if its perfect form is rare...

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George Orwell on bookshops

George Orwell on bookshops

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people...

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Thomas Travisano on Elizabeth Bishop

Thomas Travisano on Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop explored Brazil extensively, making trips down the Amazon, traversing the tropical rainforest with Aldous Huxley...

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‘Why was I making so many cups of tea?’

‘Why was I making so many cups of tea?’

It couldn’t possibly be that I was actually missing the ebb and flow of office life, could it?

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(Parentheses are outward-looking); “quotation is inward-looking”

(Parentheses are outward-looking); “quotation is inward-looking”

A parenthetical phrase (like this one) may refer to things outside of it, parts of the sentence it inhabits (say)...

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More than Heavenly Bliss by Andre Gerard

More than Heavenly Bliss by Andre Gerard

Important as the soup is in To the Lighthouse it is never identified, never seen as “beautiful red soup” or “eternal” tomato soup...

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This Tree

This Tree

There is a great tree in Sussex, whose cloud of thin foliage floats high in the summer air...

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