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…

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…

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…

Perspective

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…

Memory is a Mysterious Thing

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…

The Gospel according to Marcel

Neeta and I were happily shopping for books in Left Bank Books this afternoon, and she ended up with Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and I  left with Days of Reading by Proust. As for the inner book of…