Underbelly

...but I think we need to see other people. No, no, dear, of course I'm not breaking up with you, it's just that I need...some...t...

I'm sure that this makes no difference to anybody--and I'm sure any number of people have noticed it before--but I just picked up ...

I apologize for my current obsession to those who come here looking for a more scattered and slapdash approach. Next week when I gear up fo...

You know the joke that ends "no, I'd just forgotten to put on my trunks."  It's a classic example of what I will choose t...

This is going to be another post about Proust, but bear with me a moment, dear reader, while I say a word about Edward Gibbon, he of The De...

This may be no more than a quibble--and anyway, I suppose there is a vast literature on the topic with which I am vastly unacquainted--bu...

I was going to write something about fe ar and loathing in the  Duck Dynasty and the wingnuts' rediscovery of the fairness doctrine . ...

The other day  I was nattering on about seeing my favorite Caravaggio "f or the first time ."  Count on Proust to remind me that...

Reading Proust, I've always had a soft spot for Old Norpois, the shrewd, some would say cynical and sardonic, master of affairs and sta...

I suppose somebody has made this point somewhere but I haven't seen it so I'll give it a try. The subject is Proust and love  O...

I seem to be yielding to the lazy temptation to clog the blog with gobs of Proust.  I will try to avoid the standard stuff ( petites madele...

I suppose it is some kind of irony that I am beginning my reading of Proust just as the rest of the world is finishing its . Fine, big de...

Forget about Thanksgiving.  Here is Sunday lunch with Marcel's family at Combray under the ministrations of  Françoise, the family'...

Proust, quoting.  A footnote to the Lydia Davis translation identifies it as Corneille, La Mort de Pompée, act III, scene 4.  But to gets m...

Now let me see--shall I go surf my Feedly or shall I settle down with some Proust?  Oh, I have it--let's ask M. Swann: Ce que je repr...

Reflecting yesterday on French "face," in particular as represented by Marcel Proust, I found myself remembering what is surely f...

In his indispensable Reader's Guide to Remembrance of Things Past ((1984) translator Terence Kilmartin devotes a 12-line entry to the t...

I don't buy a lot of art books; I tend not to look at them a second time, and they are inconvenient to store. But here's a gem: Eric...

My 73d birthday today. As Saul Bellow used to say, I don't need to visit cemeteries; the ghosts come and visit me. Now this: Quand nou...

Research Digest asks: what do you do to stay sane? Tyler Cowen rounds up some plausible suspects: surprise hugs (watch it there, big guy...