The subject of the Tolstoy marriage came up in this thread, in the context of a discussion about Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. In that book, Tolstoy presents a thinly-disguised more idealized version of his own marriage to his wife Sonya, … Continue reading →
Another person connected with the arts has died. This time it’s WSJ drama critic and playwright Terry Teachout, who died unexpectedly at the age of sixty-five. Teachout wasn’t just a drama critic and playwright, either; he was “an acclaimed author, … Continue reading →
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was the first book I ever read by Milan Kundera back when it was first published in 1980, and it probably is still my favorite work of his. It’s a very strange but wonderful … Continue reading →
[NOTE: The topic of the two-volume graphic novel Maus came up in a recent thread, and I’ve decided to republish a review that I first wrote in 2009. So here it is.] I recently reread the two-volume graphic novel Maus, … Continue reading →
RIP. Didion specialized in the non-fiction essay, one of my favorite genres. I read her 1968 work Slouching Towards Bethlehem (title taken from Yeats’ wonderful poem “The Second Coming”) a couple of years after it came out and admired it … Continue reading →
From The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera: Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise– the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and … Continue reading →
Recently a friend of mine mentioned that her book group had been reading the 1975 Anne Tyler novel Searching For Caleb, and after she’d read the copy that she’d found in her bookshelf, she noticed that my name was written … Continue reading →
The name of Jan Morris came up in yesterdays trans thread. For example, commenter “PA Cat” wrote this: Jan Morris (born James Morris; served in the British Army in the last years of WWII, and was the journalist who accompanied … Continue reading →
I bet a lot of you remember blogger Pat Santy, otherwise known as Dr. Sanity. She was a member of the Sanity Squad, back when we did podcasts for PJ Media long, long ago. Even though Pat hasn’t been blogging … Continue reading →
Last night I was thinking how the Mamas and Papas song “California Dreamin’,” with its very 60s idealization of California as a magical place for which a person might yearn, could not possibly be written now. That segued into thoughts … Continue reading →
H. L. Mencken was a famous pundit in the first half of the 20th Century, known for caustic wit. I’ve never been a Mencken fan, and I don’t share his contempt for people in general and for Americans in particular. … Continue reading →
I’ve already said a few things earlier today. But I’ll reiterate that this COVID mandate business is being done in order to change the subject from the horror show in Afghanistan to a topic that Biden and his aides think … Continue reading →