Wuthering
Expectations

he theme is tricky colonial literature.  If I have doubts about Bernardo Atxaga, I am sure about Kipling – there is the text, the subtext, a...

What is Bernardo Atxaga up to in his Belgian Congo novel Seven Houses in France ?  What patterns should an attentive reader see? Friendly,...

Maybe someone can help me out with this novel.  I had the idea that Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga was a tricky post-modernist , and I though...

Leaving fictional essay “The Lord Chandos Letter” aside, I believe that the 1898 “Cavalry Story” is Hofmannsthal’s most famous story.  It ap...

In his fiction, Hugo von Hofmannsthal is a ghost.  His invisibility amazes me.  Arthur Schnitzler for decades obsessively rearranged the sam...

The early verse plays of Hugo von Hofmannsthal could easily be staged along the lines of a Noh drama.  The characters, such as they are, mig...

Tony’s Reading List has nothing but Japanese literature all month .  I am joining in by reading the little anthology The Classic Noh Theatr...

The earliest Arthur Schnitzler work I have found in English is the 1893 play Anatol , a comic, poignant, insightful, etc. investigation in s...

Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Dying reminded me of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych in its insightful depiction of the thoughts over time o...

Another pleasant Pushkin Press book today, their edition of the 1895 Arthur Schnitzler novella cheerily and accurately title Dying .  A youn...

Yesterday I wrote about Stefan Zweig, who was loathed by his writerly peers like Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann.  Today, Peter Altenb...

The Austrian miscellany continues with some Stefan Zweig period pieces.  If I am looking for masterpieces, these ain't them; if I am try...

On the Razzle , a 1981 Tom Stoppard play, is efficient.  We are only fifteen pages in, a half hour at most, when Stoppard clears the stage o...

So, sitting at the dear little piano, Beth softly touched the keys, and in the sweet voice they had never thought to hear again, sang to her...

There are other ways to read Little Women .  As a temperance tract, for example.  Take a look at Chapter 25, “The First Wedding,” which is r...

Chapter 9 of Little Women , “Meg Goes to Vanity Fair,” that is where I want to spend my time today.  Bunyan describes Vanity Fair as the pla...

Structure.  I thought the most interesting thing in Little Women – I mean in One – was the layer of structures Louisa May Alcott used to c...

Some groundwork for Louisa May Alcott’s   Little Women .  It is actually or at least once was two books, Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and...

Alternatives, expansions, appendices, problems, and ignorance.  Or:  What about…? 1.  Austria as an empire, Austrian literature beyond Aus...

That cheerful thought is courtesy of Peter Altenberg, the archetypal Viennese coffeehouse Bohemian, who spent his life wandering from café t...