January 30, 2020 From the aphorisms of Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort: “All that I’ve learned I’ve forgotten; the little that I still know, I’ve guessed.” ❦ Marcel Proust on anticipation, from Within a Budding Grove: “I continued to wait, alone or with Swann, and often with Gilberte, come in to keep us company. The arrival of […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Snow Prayer
A Poem The eye, benighted by electric switches,Is caught by a window where snow bewitchesThe weary melancholy that nerved the week. I stop for a moment on my way to bedTo view the framed landscape, which snow has bledOf every discretion assumed by sight. How meekly the soul’s imperfect tenseSurrenders to snow’s soft violence,Letting go […]
Face to Face with John Singer Sargent
An intimate viewing at the Morgan Library. I was in the Cleveland airport a couple of months ago when I got a call from one of my oldest friends. Being old enough now that most of my old friends are in fact old, picking up an unexpected call is always shadowed with a little trepidation, […]
Some Words on Walls
A walk in the woods. Is a stone the earth’s utterance? I’ve been pondering stone walls quite a bit recently, and the thought that stones are akin to words keeps coming back to me. For stones rest embedded in the enduring culture of their geology in the same way that words wait quietly in the […]
8 More Books Nobody’s Talking About
Fiction of far-flung truths and close-to-home consequences: a holiday gift list for off-the-beaten track readers. Making a gift of a book speaks of our desire for significant conversation, something beyond the daily round of “What’s new?” It’s an emblem of respect, and often special affection, between giver and recipient. By my lights, at least, such […]
Charles Dickens: Destiny by the Word
Charles Dickens may well be the most ingenious author in English literature. The energy of his inventiveness gave birth to a gallery of characters — from Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge — whose lives have overflowed the boundaries of his books to become permanent fixtures in the collective imagination. So strong is the shadow cast […]
The Death of the Author
A memorial gallery of seven writers who died in 2019: Diana Athill, Russell Baker, Ernest J. Gaines, Clive James, Robert K. Massie, Edmund Morris, and Toni Morrison. Last year, I published 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die; this year saw the death of several authors whose achievements are celebrated therein. As 2019 draws to […]