Personality
“Our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people.” –Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way “It’s very refreshing to shed the personality thrust on you by other people.” –Keith Johnstone, Impro
Tag: Marcel Proust
Photo Meditation/112
I’ve been reading volume four of Proust’s Selected Letters, translated into English by Joanna Kilmartin. I liked this passage from a letter to a Madame Greffulje– “When you refused me once before, you gave me…
For Example, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and The Diamond Sutra
“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…
Shimmelstoy’s Way
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…
An Ardent Reader’s Simple Request
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…
“Be in Love with Yr Life”*: A Spring On-Line Writing Course with The Book of Mev
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…
On Susan Sontag, Trip to Hanoi
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…
The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence
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…
Books
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…
Reading/Writing/Seeing
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…