More specifically concerning: henry james
Update
Spent the morning reading articles on Cicero’s De Oratore, all of which seem to say exactly the same thing: it’s too long by far, and not philosophical enough; in fact, it’s just plain too rhetorical. Which is, apparently, unexpected in a rhetorical treatise. Fun stuff, though, and only two were in German. Afternoon reading What […]
It’s Academic
Reflections on orientalism. And, unrelated: ‘They’re hopelessly vulgar,’ said Mrs. Costello. ‘Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being ‘bad’ is a question for the metaphysicians. They’re bad enough to blush for, at any rate; and for this short life that’s quite enough.’ – Henry James, Daisy Miller
Objections
The Resurrected Lavender Plant Monday afternoon after the rain. Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. ‘And if she goes again and does the very same?’ ‘The very same— ?’ Waterlow thought. ‘I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear.’ ‘Well,’ said Waterlow, ‘you’ll at least […]
Crambe repetita (5)
Henry James, Madame de Mauves.
The Sacred Font
and other puzzles
modern moral life
A new way of making and accumulating money, a dizzying new form of social mobility tied to this new economy, a new culture obsessively dedicated to work and financial success, consumerism, a cult of celebrity and fame, a mass culture based on journalism and advertising, a new conception of individuals as untrustworthy centers of self-interest, […]
spoiler
The houses between which the action uncertainly scuttles have the ungenial impersonality of the re-used backdrop, and at the corner of the garden one feels the outlines of a gazebo, lattice white, meant to suggest gentility to less subtle minds. Finally, it is shocking – so to fall off as precisely to say that this […]
exposure
A book, June 2002. There is the fear of exposure (as if one would be exposed as, really, nothing), or the general theme of exposing (the debutante ritual, or the pretense of initiating someone into ‘something’ that isn’t really ‘there’). There is the anxiety of being out of place (an ‘American in Europe’) especially and […]
Swann’s Way
A few notes on Swann’s Way:1 ‘Combray’ is high-modernist fancy, a lush novella of remembered childhood within the the clear framework of our narrator trying to fall asleep. Interesting in not being tied to a particular bout of insomnia – though still tightly bound with insomnia at Combray as a child. How is this going […]
Citation (44)
a writer’s notebook
terra incognita
Charles Reade, under the banner of imagination, departs from everyday life to parts unknown.1 Charles Reade shows up in Jean Strouse’s biography of Alice James: Her improving health allowed Alice to enjoy a greater range of intellectual life than before. She went to the theater […] and she was reading a great deal, particularly the […]
Citation (49)
melodramatic laocoon attitudes…