Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine /2
40. The principal truth is this: latent in every act of complete reading is the compulsion to write a book in reply. The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in…
Tag: Marcel Proust
“Be in Love with Yr Life” — A Online Summer Writing Course with The Book of Mev*
From time to time I’ve learned how some readers of The Book of Mev recognize themselves in Mev Puleo’s words, say, from her letters and journals. They remind of the French novelist Marcel Proust, who…
A Thousand Letters Behind
Marcel Proust, Selected Letters, volume 4: 1918-1922 Edited by Philip Kolb, translated and with an introduction for Joanna Kilmartin Months ago, I read volume 4 of Proust’s selected letters translated into English. As the Buddhists…
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
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…