Take a second look …
The yellow eyes of the Saw-whet Owl are so startling, their gaze so steady, that we tend to ignore everything else. It’s easy to miss the trace of blood just below the owl’s bill, a smear of something that changes the way we look at the bird, that deepens our understanding of it. What discoveries might we make if we took that second look more often, if we trained ourselves to see?
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Further Notes on The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Opening Idyll
What I’m Reading Further Notes on The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James: The Opening Idyll Of all the ways to begin a novel, one of the most dependable is with an epigram. Perhaps the most famous example is the first sentence from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Tolstoy employed the same technique to start Ann Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So Henry James is in good … Read more
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Notes on The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James: The unity of sight and sound
What I’m Reading There is a strangely melancholy scene early in this novel, when the heroine, a young American named Isabel Archer, is staying at an English country estate. Late one afternoon, she hears music coming from the drawing-room; someone is playing Beethoven on the piano. Isabel enters the room and sees that the player is a middle-aged woman she has not met before. The woman plays with great skill, and when she is finished, Isabel compliments her. They have a brief conversation. Isabel takes a seat near the piano and begs the woman to play something more. What follows … Read more
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La librairie Gallimard
What I’m Reading I have been ordering books from Librairie Gallimard in Montreal for about ten years. My last order consisted of the books shown in the photograph. I list them below with brief comments, and will return to each as I finish reading it. Three novels and one biography, or, I should say, a combination biography and autobiography. The two 19th-century works are tomes: the novel by Zola weighs in at 500 pages, and Balzac’s, which is actually three novels under one heading, at a hefty 800. The contemporary works seem skimpy in comparison. Modiano’s novel, typically for him, … Read more
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