Marcel Proust represents many things. Chief among these perhaps, especially for non-French readers, is quantity…
Read MoreProust would advise us to refuse the tyranny of algorithms…
Read MoreThe Sirens imploring Ulysses to stay, 1886 by James Heffernan More than twenty years ago, Suzette Henke challenged what was then the reigning view of Virginia Woolf’s response to James Joyce’s Ulysses. To judge this response by Woolf’s most damning comments on the book and its author, Henke argued, is to overlook what she said…
Read MoreMarcel Proust at a garden party Those who have read Proust, and even those who haven’t, all know about the episode with the madeleine and tisane. As this is the scene that begins the Recherche, it is especially worth returning to given its the centenary of the publication of Swann’s Way: not only does “the…
Read MoreStyle is more than how you put something down on paper. It’s how you live…
Read MoreUnleashed on social networks, the first sentence becomes a sign of recognition, a knowing wink, a cabalistic sign between insiders…
Read MoreBooks always give us something different than expected…
Read MoreAll life seems to be like wine, in that one always wants more; but unlike wine, in that one cannot quit it. Writing in particular seems to be a lot like wine. It’s good, it’s bad…
Read MoreIt seems there are some writers who teach you how to write and there are others who teach you what to write about…
Read MoreWe find ourselves in New Hampshire, or Mexico, driving about, or at home, and writing and thinking ahead…
Read MoreIt is the duty of intellectuals and artists to reject enforced glee, to carve out a preserve for the life of the soul as best they can, and to call madness by its name…
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