263. (Marlon James)

Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women is, like, A Brief History of Seven Killings, a book about plotting and … More

262. (Theodor Fontane)

When Christine dies at the end of Theodor Fontane’s No Way Back, it is felt less as a consequence of … More

Thackeray’s Vanity Fair doubles that charge: the novel is braced by a simultaneous awareness of Regency and Victorian foibles, of … More

Vanity Fair asks that we accept the affection that the novelist-narrator feels for the creatures of the Fair, animated as … More

Stendhal is exhausting and bracing because his energy is relentless and directed relentlessly to one end: the refusal of … More

Stendhal’s romanticism has been described by Erich Auerbach in terms of “atmosphere,” a unifying relation of place, person, and time … More

Stendhal’s narration is a perpetual mystery of European literature; it goes hand in hand with his characterization (as narration usually … More

It’s not only re-reading Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House at the same time as reading the final volumes of Proust’s novel … More

Even though it is frequent in contemporary fiction, present-tense narration is not easily justified. People and place are no more … More

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