Surge in sales of “difficult” books during worldwide lockdowns
A few months ago… no, weeks? Last week?! Are you kidding me, last week, a meme went around reminding everyone that Shakespeare (probably, maybe) wrote King Lear while in the 16th-century equivalent of lockdown, from… Read more »
Proust the Envious, Hugo the Spiritualist, Flaubert the Obscene: canonical French authors’ lesser literary letters go to auction
Good news, wealthy book lovers! Jean Bonna, the Geneva-based antiquarian book collector known by those in the know for possessing the greatest goddamn collection of French literature in the world… Read more »
The Art of the Novella Challenge 50: The Lemoine Affair
Title: The Lemoine Affair Author: Marcel Proust First published: 1904-8 Page count: 100 First line: In one of the last months of the year 1907, at one of those “routs”… Read more »
Are review-bots the only way to avoid conflicts of interest in book reviewing?
In a wonderful review of two books on automation in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, the writer Barbara Ehrenreich wondered how well robots would be able to handle… Read more »
Revelations from Proust’s questionnaire
In the mid-nineteenth century, filling out confession albums was a popular pastime in English households and French salons. In 1886, at age 14, Marcel Proust filled out answers to an… Read more »
Who says Morrissey can’t write a classic?
As you’ve probably heard by now, last week saw the publication of Morrissey’s Autobiography by Penguin Classics in the UK. The book’s release met no shortage of hand-wringing online and… Read more »
Morrissey joins the Classics
Yesterday in Britain Morrissey joined the literary canon as his autobiography, Autobiography, was published as a Penguin Classic. Some seemed to mock this move, taunting the writer and his book for… Read more »
Proust’s first poem, and manly mockery
As 2013 is the 100th anniversary of Swann’s Way, there’s a little Proust mania in the air. The Morgan Library is hosting an exhibit with Proust’s early drafts, Anne Carson… Read more »
Proust exhibit at the Morgan Library
Swann’s Way, the first in Marcel Proust’s seven book volume In Search of Lost Time, was first published in 1913. Beginning today, The Morgan Library & Museum is commemorating the… Read more »
Massive Proust audiobook coming this fall
Naxos AudioBooks has finished recording the audio for Marcel Proust’s notriously long novel, Remembrance of Things Past. Originally published in France between 1913-1927 in seven volumes as A la recherche… 1 / Read more »