Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 Flaubert's contemporaries praised Sentimental Education for taking the moral pulse of his generation. Reading it at this radical and reactionary time, I think it takes the moral pulse of my own generation. Here are the fanatical ideologues on the left and right, the cynical opportunists, the pure-hearted idealists, the private egos, the public facades, the loves, the lusts, the confusions, the contusions. After Frederic Moreau and his friend Deslauriers have gone through so much personal and social upheaval, how does one read the ending of this highly ironic yet deeply passionate novel? It's not simply nostalgic, that's for sure: They told one another the story at great length, each supplementing the other's recollections; and when they had finished:  'That was the best time we ever had,' said Frederic. 'Yes, perhaps you're right. That was the best time we ever had,' said Deslauriers. (translated by Robert Baldick and Geoffrey Wall)

Spanish Composition 3: Me gustan los libros de Julian Barnes. Escribe muy bien para los lectores en Inglaterra y por todas partes, pero a los lectores en Francia les gusta más. ¿Por que los lectores francéses lo quieren mucho? El tiene una sensibilidad francésa. Es gracioso cuando escribe sobre las cosas serias y serio cuando escribe sobre las cosas graciosas. Su mejor libro es “El papagayo de Flaubert.” En este libro, una hombre enamorado con la escritura de Flaubert quiere encontrar el papagayo que se sentó en el escritoria de Flaubert por los dias último de su vida. El hombre se preocupa por la sobrevivencia de la papagayo aunque el pájaro es un criatura disecada. Le importa que el papagayo no cae en el olvido. Por suerte, porque es fan de Flaubert no pierde las esperanzas, el papagayo disecado vive.

from Robert Irwin's review of Ken Jacobson's Odalisques and Arabesques : …Jacobson shows that the history of Orientalist photography begins weeks afer the invention of photography itself. The secrets of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s method of trapping light were revealed to a joint session of the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux-Arts on August 19, 1839. Eighty days later, the Orientalist painter Horace Vernet made a daguerreotype of the entrance to the Harem of Muhammad Ali in Alexandria. From the first, the history of Orientalist photography developed in parallel with that of Orientalist painting. ***** from Matthew Peters' review of Peter Brooks' Henry James Goes To Paris : In an interview published in 1994, Brooks spoke of the "temptation" of writing a biograpy of a literary figure. Biography, he believed, was "one of the few forms that a literary critic can use, in our culture, to reach a large audience." * Brooks contrasts the c...