Witness of disruption
L’éducation sentimentale by Gustave Flaubert My rating: 4 of 5 stars [My delight in this book came from the beauty of Flaubert’s descriptions and phrasing and also his acute observations of the turmoil preceding, during and following the great social revolution of 1848 in France, especially Paris. This despite the ridiculous, comical passivity of his … read more »
Humour mordant
On M’a Demandé De Vous Calmer by Stéphane Guillon My rating: 4 of 5 stars Toujours amusants et parfois cruels, ces commentaires de Stéphane Guillon sur la politique et la culture françaises au temps de Sarkozy, légèrement récrits de ses textes pour radio Inter. Pour moi, ça m’a sert pour apprendre beaucoup d’expressions populaires, comme … read more »
Riches of the Lowlands in Rembrandt’s time
Rembrandt’s Holland by Larry Silver My rating: 3 of 5 stars This will no doubt be a helpful starting point for anyone interested in discovering how so much artistic and intellectual accomplishment could arise in 17th century Netherlands. Unfortunately it is written in a scholastic prose that sucks the life from a story so full … read more »
Back to the blog
In case anybody has been wondering about my long blog silence, the reason is that I was putting all my writing energy into completing my novel THE BOOKBINDER. It was a challenge to work out the conclusion of such a complex story and took longer than I had hoped, but it’s done and off to … read more »
Art: And what is it for?
[ I’ve been too busy with other projects — mainly, completing my current novel — to post anything new. Here, I re-post an old note that a reader just brought to my attention, from my earlier blog “Literature & Society”. To see it in its original form, click on What is art? And what’s it … read more »