The Erasers is one of the most convoluted, complex, knotty novels a reader could possibly encounter, a novel that can be approached from multiple perspectives and on multiple levels, everything from an intricate detective mystery to a meditation on the circularity of time, from the phenomenology ...
Different mediums handle styles of narrative with more success than others. I think that Robbe-Grillet's style is one such example. I loved the film Last Year at Marienbad, which he wrote the screenplay for. The repetitiveness, the continual focus on the details of the hotel, the surreal dream...
1.5"La logica della passione ha sempre fretta: è sollecitata da un così profondo interesse a sapere la verità, che non si può permettere inutili precauzioni"In effetti, prima di concepire questo romanzo Stendhal avrebbe fatto meglio a mettere il preservativo alla penna. Premessa: ho amato Il ross...
Here's a recent essay on Baudelaire from the trusty, always-interesting online mag The Millions:http://www.themillions.com/2013/04/th... So as to try to follow that, I've got to disclose a bit of an embarrassment. Baudelaire was, for me, the kind of poet only certain kinds of people liked. By th...
« Je vois énormément et je sens monstrueusement », s’écriait un grand dramaturge roumain du 19e siècle. Pour s’en échapper, il s’est réfugié dans l’ironie en choisissant la comédie. Un siècle plus tard à peu près, Cioran, en souffrant de la même déformation de vue et de sensation, trouve son refu...
"But we must warn them! Warn our ancestors!" Michel cried. A fierce light burned in his keen young eyes. "They must not choose the path that leads to... to this!" He spread out his arms to indicate the entire world of 1960: Napoleon V, the great Monopolies that controlled France, England and Amer...
In the "The Unfinished Masterpiece" Balzac takes up the age-old debate about where nature ends and art begins. He does so, not surprisingly, through the most classic medium: the nude female form. Or, more precisely, he enters the debate of art versus nature by writing about the painting of the nu...
“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem...
this is on jealousy, a later later later later... addition: is it possible to read this one book too many times? does it render all other novels or anti-novels or experimental novels less than enjoyable in comparison? as much, that is not at all, as for me a beautiful woman or vista or world does...