256. (Samuel Beckett)

Beckett said Samuel Johnson was always with him; yet reading the trilogy, Molloy etc, one feels also (Kenner remarked on … More

219. (Marcel Proust)

The last volume of Proust’s great novel is, from the sado-masochistic fantasies of Baron de Charlus in the first half, … More

216. (Marcel Proust)

In the sixth volume of Recherche, Proust approaches Tennyson: the section of The Fugitive entitled “Grieving and Forgetting” is an … More

215. (Marcel Proust)

In the fifth volume of Recherche, The Captive, Baron de Charlus refers to a visit he has recently paid to … More

213. (Marcel Proust)

Aristotle, whose “hexis” is not passive habit, but whose thought of human happiness and nature turns on habituation, tells us … More

209. (Marcel Proust)

From the “Proust and Other Matters” blog, a debate from an old Yahoo Proust listserv, over the name of “Cambremer,” … More

208. (Marcel Proust)

To illuminate Proust, consider Zola, who aspires, like Proust to a mythic scale, and whose novel Germinal is an epic … More

196. (Marcel Proust)

In trying to describe the relationship between instinct and intention, convention and originality, which characterizes literary creation, few notions are … More

150. (Cao Xueqin)

This morning, I deleted, for the first time, one of the posts on this blog, the most recent, on Marguerite … More

58. (Leo Tolstoy)

Rather than say anything about Tolstoy, I want to try to explain what I think would be the sort of … More