“I don’t deny it,” answered Swann in some bewilderment. “The fault I find with our newspapers is that they force us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only…
Henry put me in touch with Darren Crews Prof in the French Department At Bloomington After I’d been home awhile One weekend I drove to see him He visits the West Bank most every summer…
From a young woman’s fan letter to Marcel Proust: And after three years of uninterrupted reading, my conclusion is this: I understand nothing, but absolutely nothing. Dear Marcel Proust, don’t be a poseur, descend for…
It’s a book about living and loving and losing and being human through all of it—thank you for helping me accept more of my own humanity. —Cami Kasmerchak I’ve often noticed how many readers recognize…
Journal, July 2005 Susan Sontag spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1968, and wrote 90 pages about her experiences. (Perhaps I will cull from those notebooks I kept in Gaza and the West Bank…
I feel oppressed by an error of mind which offends me most as unjust and even more as annoying. I try to correct it, but I cannot root it out. It is that I attach…
My father had an Appalachian education That went through sixth grade I went after and got a BA, MA And a PhD I doubt my father Ever finished reading a book (I once asked him…
for Emily, Kelley, and Lindsay 1. In reality every reader is, while she is reading, the reader of her own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to…
Once an aging actress told [Abbé] Mugnier, “When I pass in front of my mirror, I cry out, ‘How beautiful I am!’ Is that a sin?” “No,” murmured the abbé, “It’s only an error.” –From…
When I was reading Proust And about 200 pages into Swann’s Way I suddenly remembered a friend Who had told me about his friend Whose father was the CEO of a major transnational corporation & Whose…