by jkvincent | Dec 2, 2023 | novels |
We reached the end of The Fugitive. The same stories and desires repeat, but now in a pale, world-weary register. My friend Janine said it reminded her of the end of the Tale of Genji, when, after hundreds of pages of pursuing Ukifune, Kaoru is still at it. Still...
by jkvincent | Nov 6, 2023 | novels |
Louis Martin-Chauffier (1894-1980) I just read the most delightful letter from Marcel Proust. [1] He wrote it two years before his death, in January of 1920, to the twenty-five-year-old archivist, paleographer, and aspiring novelist Louis Martin-Chauffier....
by jkvincent | Nov 5, 2023 | novels |
Suzuki Shintarō in 1925, age 30, just before his departure for France. As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, last summer I paid a long-overdue visit to J. Theodore Johnson, Jr. a favorite professor...
by jkvincent | Nov 3, 2023 | novels |
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Untitled (Cathedral) Irregularly shaped blue and white tie-dyed paper, with text from Proust, against blue textile backing. 15 x 25. Date unknown. Photo by Kevin Ryan) Posted by permission of Hal Sedgwick. It’s a straight shot north from Tulsa,...
by jkvincent | Sep 9, 2022 | novels |
In my Proust reading group we are reading the translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and I’m so glad. I know some readers find Moncrieff’s prose too ornate or outdated. Roger Shattuck finds “annoying bloomers and occasional excesses of style.”[1] Lydia Davis, who has a...
