Wuthering
Expectations

I’ll race through the 18th century.   I think I have read just one 18th century text in French.   The issues are: 1.   The French classics...

The French 17th century was an age of novels, a heap of novels that nobody reads anymore and one that everyone reads.   “Nobody” and “everyo...

I have one point I want to make here about French literature of the 17th century. Molière and his company played in Paris for only fifteen...

In practice, for French readers, French literature begins in the 17th century.   Two works, really, that are not exactly children’s books bu...

Charles Dantzig , author of the Selfish Dictionary of French Literature, gives the impression that he has read everything, but not quite.  ...

More from the difficult French 16th century. I won’t get to Montaigne. 3.   French classical theater, this is just what I mean when I say ...

In the 16th century, the Renaissance arrives in French literature.   Everyone is absorbing and imitating the great new discoveries in Greek ...

The foundation of French literature, as with English literature, lies in the 16th and 17th centuries.   French literature is perhaps even mo...

What I want to do is to stroll, wander, and hike through my French reading of the last couple of years, as it relates to my study of French ...

I present another beautiful literary artifact I brought back from France, a non-mint condition second-hand paperback of Charles Dantzig’s Di...

More from the fascinating Best Extracts before the Fact, Jack! , the little collection of the beginning of forthcoming French novels.   No, ...

I’m beginning my promenade through my last two years of reading in French.   There are many bad ideas built into this project.   I am going...

The multiple translations of Andrey Platonov’s The Foundation Pit and Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Hārabārta fall along a continuum of the domes...

A review-like bit first.   The book at hand is Nabarun Bhattacharya’s short, crazy 1994 (or 1993? ) Bengali novel Hārabārta in the New Dire...

France, this summer, was pleasant, but I did not want to write about it.   I do want to write about some French books, lots of them really, ...

Since I am going to Norway for a little vacation and am reading around in the 1920s, I read the first volume of Sigrid Undset’s beloved Kris...

Wrapping up Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis .   He ends with three chapters on the modern novel, mostly French, but covering a lot of territory. ...

I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person tellin...