Podcasts about proust

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

S7 E9: Reading and the Brain w/ Dr. Maryanne WolfIn this episode, Alexis and Gerald were honored to be joined by Dr. Maryanne Wolf, one of the leading experts on the science of reading. Dr. Wolf shares a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom from her extensive career and experiences, as she continues to advocate for the needs of all students as it pertains to their development of and appreciation for reading.This discussion raises so many questions about our relationship with reading. We address topics such as the evolutionary nature of reading, the impact of technology on our reading brains, the interconnectivity of brain areas related to reading, progressive and effective modes of reading instruction, Dyslexia, and how reading relates to humanity and our relationship with one another.SummaryEvolutionary nature of readingUnderstanding of how reading is learnedImpact of technology on our reading brainsThe interconnectivity of brain areas related to readingEffective modes of reading instructionConnections between reading, empathy, & humanityDr. Maryanna Wolf is a scholar, a teacher, and an advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the Director of the newly created Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Previously, she was the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. Dr. Wolf obtained her doctoral degree in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University. She is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2007, HarperCollins), Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain (Edited; York, 2001), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century (2016, Oxford University Press), and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (August, 2018, HarperCollins). Welcome to the Reid Connect-ED podcast, we are honored to have you join us today.The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings Alexis Reid, M.A. and Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com).*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.Show notes & Transcripts: https://reidconnect.com/reid-connect-ed-podcastFollow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast and X @ReidConnectEdStreaming everywhere (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)Be Curious. Be Open. Be Well.

durée : 01:58:40 - Le Bach du dimanche du dimanche 01 mars 2026 - par : Corinne Schneider - Au programme de cette 373e émission : les 10 ans de la disparition de Nikolaus Harnoncourt et les 75 ans de Scott Ross, à l'écoute d'enregistrements de légende et d'archives INA dont le Questionnaire de Proust (2009) de Nikolaus Harnoncourt et un Cours d'interprétation (1975) de Scott Ross. - réalisé par : Anne-Lise Assada Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

Christiane ist da und darf einfach nicht das Filmquiz spielen. Stattdessen machen wir freundliche englisch Plattenladenbesitzer mit schlechten Zähnen nach und erraten die Top 10. Natürlich gibt es auch ein nicht erratenes Filmzitat, Christiane besucht Proust und stellt einen Negativrekord auf. Ihr müsst euch die Skala von Spätfilm bis Wendeltreppe von außen ansehen.

Jo takes us on a whirlwind tour of their recent reading, including Mary Helen Washington's Paule Marshall: A Writer's Life, and Charlotte explains why Susanna Moore's In the Cut is one of the most thrilling novels she's ever encountered. Then, the profoundly thoughtful Jamie Hood joins to explore the many boyfriends and political disappointments of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Jamie Hood is the author, most recently, of Trauma Plot: A Life, the hybrid pandemic diary how to be a good girl, the semi-monthly, Proust-infused newsletter, regards, marcel, and a book of love poems, forthcoming in 2026. She has written extensively on books, feminism, #MeToo, and other political matters for many publications, some of them even prestigious. She lives in Brooklyn.Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.Charlotte Shane's most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane.  Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

C'est le destin de trois femmes. Leur effacement par leur compagnon. L'une des trois est toujours en vie. Mais pendant plus de six ans, elle a fait face à ce qu'elle appelle le terrorisme intime, c'est-à-dire la violence conjugale. Aujourd'hui, Nathacha Appanah raconte l'angle mort de sa vie et les vies détruites de deux autres femmes victimes de féminicides. Avec La Nuit au cœur (Gallimard), a remporté le prix Femina et le Goncourt des lycéens. Pourquoi aimons-nous nous reconnecter à des sons ou des scènes du passé ? Dans son billet « À quoi tu penses ? », le journaliste et prof de philo Simon Brunfaut interroge le sens de la célèbre madeleine de Proust. Enfin, dans « En toutes lettres ! », alors qu'Elon Musk a lancé Grokipedia, le poète et écrivain Karim Kattan s'adresse aux contributeur·ice·s de Wikipédia. Ce numéro vous avait déjà été proposé en novembre 2025. Merci pour votre écoute Dans quel Monde on vit, c'est également en direct tous les samedi de 10h à 11h sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes de Dans quel Monde on vit sur notre plateforme Auvio.be : https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/8524 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Pourquoi aimons-nous nous reconnecter à des sons ou des scènes du passé ? Dans son billet « À quoi tu penses ? », le journaliste et prof de philo Simon Brunfaut se confie sur le concert de punk qu'il a vu récemment (The Offspring) et interroge le sens de la célèbre madeleine de Proust. Merci pour votre écoute Dans quel Monde on vit, c'est également en direct tous les samedi de 10h à 11h sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes de Dans quel Monde on vit sur notre plateforme Auvio.be : https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/8524 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

durée : 00:03:49 - "Les Eaux de Mars", de Tom Jobim à Moustaki - C'est un poème étrange. C'est une des chansons les plus célèbres du monde. C'est une succession de madeleines de Proust sans couplets ni refrain. Une suite d'images sans âges où la tristesse se mêle à l'espoir. C'est un des chefs-d'œuvre d'Antonio Carlos Jobim. Ce sont les Eaux de Mars. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comMichael is quite simply one of the best nonfiction writers out the planet: a real role model. He's been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987, and he's the bestselling author of many books, including How to Change Your Mind — which I reviewed in 2018 — and its sequel, This Is Your Mind on Plants, which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2021. This week we covered his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.For two clips of our convo — on the magic of spontaneous thoughts, and the consciousness of kids — head to our YouTube page.Other topics: toasters and other things that don't have consciousness; Thomas Nagel's bat; panpsychism; Francis Crick trying to solve consciousness; the global neuronal workspace theory; how brains are not like computers; AI and consciousness; Proust; James Joyce; Wordsworth and the Romantics; William James and stream of consciousness; Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport; words on the tip of your tongue; phenomenology; letting your mind wander; Addison's Walk at Oxford; how smartphones distract from thinking; Trump taking up our headspace; Oakeshott and “the deadliness of doing”; AI and UBI; Allison Gopnik's lantern vs spotlight consciousness; how a child's brain resembles an adult's on psychedelics; ego death; the default mode network; meditation; the flow state of deep reading; the benefits of boredom; habit and ritual; my 10-day silent meditation retreat; the sentience of plants; Buddhism and Matthieu Ricard; the soul; the film Into Great Silence; and the disenchantment of the Enlightenment.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Matt Goodwin on the earthquake in UK politics, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity, and Kathryn Paige Harden on the genetics of vice and virtue. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

In this week's episode photographer Pete Souza takes on our 'Proust Photo Quiz'... The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album, a form of parlour game popular at the end of the 1890s. The album, titled An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. was found in 1924 and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. Our 'Proust Photo Quiz' is an adaption of the original text. Pete Souza is a best-selling author, speaker and freelance photographer. He started his career working for two small newspapers in Kansas. From there, he worked as a staff photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times;  an Official Photographer for President Reagan; a freelancer for National Geographic  and other publications; the national photographer for the Chicago Tribune based in their Washington, D.C. bureau; and an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University. While at the Tribune, Souza was part of the staff awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. After 9/11, he was among the first journalists to cover the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan. In 1992, Souza published, Unguarded Moments: Behind-the-Scenes Photographs of President Reagan, based on his 5 1/2 years in the Reagan White House. Souza was also the official photographer for the 2004 funeral of President Reagan. His 2008 book, The Rise of Barack Obama, includes exclusive photographs of Obama's rise to power. For all eight years of the Obama administration, Souza was the Chief Official White House Photographer and the Director of the White House photo office. His book, Obama: An Intimate Portrait, was published in 2017. His 2018 book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, tells the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations. In 2021, Souza was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. In 2022, he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Professional Photographers of America. Based on his best-selling books, Souza became the subject of a documentary film in 2020, The Way I See It. The film was nominated for an Emmy. Souza's most recent photography book, The West Wing and Beyond: What I Saw Inside the Presidency, was published in 2022. He has won numerous photojournalism awards and had solo exhibits of his photographs at numerous galleries. He is also Professor Emeritus of Visual Communication at Ohio University. www.petesouza.com Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby's, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England. © Grant Scott 2026

Jean Dytar est un auteur à part, qui se réinvente à chaque album pour mieux interroger le fond et la forme du neuvième art, et la manière dont l'un nourrit l'autre. Dans son dernier livre, Les Sentiers d'Anahuac, il s'associe à l'historien Romain Bertrand. Ensemble, ils racontent comment les derniers Aztèques se sont battus pour coucher par écrit et préserver leurs traditions au cœur de la conquête menée par les conquistadors. Un récit passionnant qui questionne le rôle des sources dans l'écriture de l'histoire, mais aussi la circulation de l'information et la notion de « fake news ». Jean Dytar n'en est pas à son coup d'essai. Dans #J'accuse, il imaginait l'affaire Dreyfus à l'ère des réseaux sociaux, tandis que Florida revenait sur la désastreuse tentative d'implantation d'une colonie huguenote française en Floride. L'occasion de recevoir Jean Dytar dans ce podcast pour parler d'histoire, de bande dessinée, de représentations, d'appropriation culturelle, et bien sûr de création. L'auteur se prête également à notre questionnaire de Proust, version bande dessinée. Bonne écoute !Photo © Chloé Vollmer-LoHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Cette semaine, nous avons le plaisir d'accueillir la chercheuse en sociologie Lorraine Gehl dans Silence on joue. Dans le cadre de son doctorat, elle travaille sur le jeu vidéo et la précarité et ce sera très logiquement le sujet de notre entretien qui sera publié demain dans le flux du podcast. Mais, c'est la tradition quand on y pense, elle a aussi accepté de répondre au questionnaire de Silence on joue, sorte de questionnaire de Proust en 60 FPS.Pour commenter cette émission, donner votre avis ou simplement discuter avec notre communauté, connectez-vous au serveur Discord de Silence on joue!Soutenez Silence on joue en vous abonnant à Libération avec notre offre spéciale à 5€ par mois : https://offre.liberation.fr/soj/CRÉDITSSilence on joue ! est un podcast de Libération animé par Erwan Cario. Cette bande annonce a été enregistrée le 3 février 2026. Réalisation : Erwan Cario. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Don Asensio, el hombre que lo mismo te cuenta un libro en una hora que en un minuto, ha dejado a sus empleados una carretilla para mover los libros entre los estantes. Una carretilla que le ha regalado un autor, Bruno Galindo, que ha contado la hazaña del vasco de la carretilla, un hombre que cruzó Argentina de sur a norte empujando una con todos sus enseres, 6000 kilómetros caminando y empujando. Pero el problema es que la rueda de la carretilla que ha traído Don Asensio chirría mucho, está poco engrasada y el empleado Sergio está de los nervios. No puede concentrarse para leer a Proust. Una locura

A apărut ultima carte a lui Julian Barnes. Din păcate, „Plecare, plecări” e chiar ultima, ne spune autorul însuși în paginile cărții. În limba română a fost tradusă de Radu Paraschivescu și a apărut la Editura Nemira. Nu e tocmai un memoir, nu e tocmai un roman, e un gen hibrid, alimentat și cu date reale dar și cu ficțiune, cu notații eseistice și reflecții despre literatură și memorie, îmbătrînire și moarte dar și despre viață și iubire. Din care nu lipsesc ironia și autoironia lui Barnes, acest „pesimist vesel”, după cum se descrie el însuși. „Plecare, plecări” ne spune și o poveste de iubire – a unor prieteni din tinerețe ai autorului, care se regăsesc la 60 de ani și decid să-și dea o nouă șansă  –, ne spune și povestea bolii scriitorului – „incurabilă dar gestionabilă” –, ne spune și cum vede Julian Barnes relația lui cu cititorii – „...nu sînt un scriitor didactic. Nu vă spun ce să credeți sau cum să trăiți.” Am vorbit cu traducătorul Radu Paraschivescu despre „Plecare, plecări” de Julian Barnes.Radu Paraschivescu: „E o carte mai greu de dus decît de tradus, pentru că știi că e ultima. (...) E o carte despre memorie. Barnes simte nevoia de a vorbi despre depozitarul ăsta intim, despre silozul ăsta în care se păstrează de-a valma amintiri plăcute cu șocuri, cu traume, cu bucurii, cu revelații, cu surprize neplăcute, cu dezamăgiri, cu imagini ale unor stîngăcii de tinerețe sau chiar din copilărie. Și da, există trimiteri la madlena lui Proust, pe de altă parte să nu uităm că în „Bărbatul cu haină roșie”, o altă carte foarte frumoasă a lui Barnes, pe care am tradus-o, Proust este prezent, este chiar un personaj din carte. Toate aceste lucruri fac din „Plecare, plecări” un soi de poem, care a fost încadrat nedrept drept roman. Scrie pe el novel în edițiile englezești, dar e o împletire de roman, eseu filozofic, scriere despre memorie, autobiografie.”Julian Barnes ne spune în final cum vede relația dintre el și cititorul lui: doi oameni pe o terasă, vara, cu o băutură rece în față, privind lumea și comentînd. O imagine emoționantă și plină de modestie. Ce spune asta despre el?Radu Paraschivescu: „Spune în primul rînd că are percepția exactă a publicului și a ideii de public. El nu scrie în gol și nu scrie pentru că a coborît muza de undeva de sus și i-a dictat ceva sau pentru că a simțit o sfîșiere atît de mare înăuntru lui încît a avut nevoie să erupă magmatic, cum fac unii romancieri, și să toarne absolut totul din el în experiențe cataclismice. Nu. El știe că are un public, știe că acel public îi așteaptă cărțile, știe că acel public este în general instruit și avizat și în materie de artă, și în materie de muzică și că e bine să ai un comerț cu el. Sigur, cuvîntul comerț e vulgar în contextul ăsta, dar Julian Barnes cred că scrie în egală măsură pentru el și pentru public. Scriind își răspunde la niște întrebări, dar ia martor publicul la aceste întrebări și i le pune și publicului. De genul: voi ce-ați face în situația asta? Voi cum vă descurcați știind că vă apropiați de sfîrșit? Voi cum ați procedat cînd v-ați pierdut omul la care țineați ca la ochii din cap? Vouă ce vă trezește un om care este la limita geniului, dar nu poate să se exprime? Și așa mai departe. Imaginea asta e splendidă, cu cititorul și scriitorul care stau la o terasă și sînt pe picior de egalitate, fiecare trăiește și în funcție de celălalt. Asta e bine să nu uităm atunci cînd ne credem niște inspirați de sorginte divină: să nu uităm că cei mai mulți dintre noi nu sînt așa ceva, sînt niște meșteșugari și că publicul nu este nimic altceva decît egalul tău, care te cumpără.”Apasă PLAY pentru a asculta întreaga discuție!O emisiune de Adela GreceanuUn produs Radio România Cultural

I veckans avsnitt: ✔ Procter & Gambles udda sponsring under vinter-OS. ✔ Resumés reporter Madeleine Nilsson får svara på Proust-formuläret. ✔ Obegripliga Tiktok-trenden: ”House burping”. ✔ Hajpen kring delikatesserna i OS-byn. Medverkande: Amanda Törner, Samuel Eriksson och Madeleine Nilsson Producent: Julia SiwertzAnsvarig utgivare: Andreas Rågsjö Thorell Podden görs av: Resumé och Bonnier News

Nous sommes le 24 décembre 1898. En feuilletant « Le Figaro », sous la plume de Gustave Larroumet, historien d'art, écrivain et haut fonctionnaire, on peut lire ceci : « Hier matin, au premier coup d'œil jeté sur le journal, j'éprouvais cette secousse de surprise et de douleur, si fréquent, dans la vie de Paris, où l'on apprend la mort de ses amis avant de les savoir malades. Georges Rodenbach vient d'être enlevé, brusquement, en pleine force, à quarante-trois ans. Il y a quelques jours, il me parlait de son dernier livre et, sachant en quelle estime je tenais son talent, il me quittait sur ces mots : « Parlerez-vous de moi ? » Je lui promis, et je tiens ma promesse avec ces lignes qu'il ne lira pas. Georges Rodenbach avait reçu l'adoption des lettres françaises, grâce au Figaro. Il n'était connu que dans les cénacles, lorsque la publication de « Bruges-la-morte », dans ce journal, vint apprendre son nom au grand public. La poésie de la mort lui ouvrait la vie littéraire. Il contractait ainsi une dette envers l'impitoyable créancière, une dette qu'il paye à bien courte échéance. » Larroumet revient dans la suite de son article sur le parcours et les qualités littéraires de son ami et conclut ainsi : « Il s'est endormi, loin de Bruges, le soir de Noël, à l'heure où le cloches tintent pour la dernière fois, avant le repos de la nuit. Qu'il soit couché dans la terre de France ou que la Belgique réclame son enfant mort, il ne sera pas exilé. Il avait deux patries, celle de son berceau et de celle de sa tombe. » C'est dix ans avant sa disparition que Georges Rodenbach monte à la capitale française. Il devient un parfait dandy, noue des amitiés avec Mallarmé, Mirbeau, Rodin, le jeune Proust et beaucoup d'autres. Chroniqueur de la Belle Epoque, il était un personnage complexe et paradoxal. Tentons d'en percer les secrets … Invité : Marc Quaghebeur, docteur en Philosophie et Lettres Sujets traités : Georges Rodenbach, Figaro, Paris, symbolisme, poésie , dandy, Mallarmé, Mirbeau, Rodin, Proust, Belle Epoque Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 14h30 sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : L'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Carlo Ginzburg"Il vincolo della vergogna"Letture obliqueAdelphi www.adelphi.it«Il paese al quale apparteniamo non è, come vuole la retorica, quello che si ama, ma quello di cui ci si vergogna, o di cui ci si può vergognare»: questa frase, tratta dal saggio che dà il titolo al nuovo libro di Carlo Ginzburg, ha suscitato, dopo un attimo di sconcerto, il consenso delle persone più diverse, anche se il peso della vergogna cambia a seconda dei tempi, e da paese a paese. Ma il vincolo che deriva dalla vergogna ci invita a riflettere sui limiti della nozione stessa di individuo: il filo conduttore dei saggi qui raccolti, che affrontano in maniera obliqua un autore, un libro, un'immagine, una frase, addirittura una parola. L'analisi approfondita di casi particolari apre la strada a una serie di generalizzazioni, a risposte che provocano altre domande. Parlare di microstoria, a proposito di questa strategia cognitiva, sembra legittimo: ma i risultati sono più importanti delle etichette. Chi legge è invitato a condividere la gioia della ricerca, e l'incontro con l'inaspettato.Carlo Ginzburg (1939) ha insegnato all'Università di Bologna, a UCLA, alla Scuola Normale di Pisa. Tra i suoi libri, tradotti in più di venti lingue: I benandanti (1966, nuova ed. 2020); Il formaggio e i vermi (1976, nuova ed. 2019); Miti emblemi spie (1986); Storia notturna (1989, nuova ed. 2015); Il giudice e lo storico (1991); Rapporti di forza (1990); Occhiacci di legno (1998, nuova ed. 2019); Nessuna isola è un'isola (2002); Il filo e le tracce. Vero falso finto (2006), Paura reverenza terrore (2015); Nondimanco. Machiavelli, Pascal (2018); La lettera uccide (2021). Apparso nel 1981 e arricchito di quattro Appendici nel 1994, Indagini su Piero è uscito ora presso Adelphi, accompagnato da un'inedita Postfazione, I formaggi e i vermi (2019), I benandanti (2020), Miti emblemi spie (2023).Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

In this episode, host Victoria Barlow interviews Lionel Arsac about the recent exhibition at the Palace of Versailles: The Grand Dauphin (1661-1711). Son of a king, father of a king and never king. This exhibition shines a light on the relatively unknown life and career of Louis of France (son and heir of the famous Louis XIV). Their discussion outlines the importance of remembering this interesting figure and explores the organisation of such an extraordinary exhibition. Guest Bio:Lionel Arsac has been curator of sculptures at the Palace of Versailles since 2017 and, since 2019, head of preventive conservation of the collections. In addition to numerous articles on the sculptures of Versailles, Lionel has taken an interest in subjects as diverse as the uses of oriental carpets at Court, Proust and Versailles, and, more recently, the sculpture collections of Ange Laurent La Live de Jully. Lionel has curated several exhibitions at the Palace of Versailles: Rediscovered Masterpieces. Zephyr and Flora and Abundance (2022), Louis XIV by Bernini, Genius and Majesty (2025) and, recently, The Grand Dauphin. Son of a king, father of a king and never king. Follow Lionel on Instagram: @lionelarsac 

I veckans avsnitt: ✔ Resumés nya reporter Jonathan Bylund får svara på Proust-formuläret. ✔ Redaktionens favorit ur årets Super Bowl-kampanjer. ✔ Så tog Bad Bunny tillvara på megautrymmet som är Super Bowls halvtidsshow. ✔ Det säger Sydney Sweeneys nya underklädesvarumärke om samtiden. ✔ Därför pratar alla helt plötsligt om klimakteriet. Medverkande: Amanda Törner, Alicia Price och Jonathan Bylund. Producent: Julia Siwertz. Ansvarig utgivare: Andreas Rågsjö Thorell. Podden görs av: Resumé och Bonnier News.

Aujourd'hui une émission encadrée par le bon son analogique des 70' mais avec aussi  pas mal de nouveautés notamment "made in France"  !  Mais d'abord la Suède et l'un de ses groupes majeurs, j'ai nommé KAIPA, à une époque où la formation dont le membre le plus représentatif (même s'il n'en est pas fondateur), le guitariste et chanteur Roine Stolt , s'exprimait dans sa langue maternelle. Le groupe a depuis adopté le langage universel anglais mais peu importe puisque je vous ai choisi un petit instrumental extrait de l'album "Solo" paru  en 1978... En revanche et pour la première nouveauté de l'émission, voici une formation qui s'exprime en langue maternelle mais rencontre un meilleur succès à l'étranger. Nul n'est prophète dans son pays, en l'occurrence le nôtre puisqu'il s'agit de LAZULI. C'est étonnant car les frères Léonetti et leurs amis produisent régulièrement de véritables perles tout à  fait accessible avec des textes magnifiques et in french in the texte, please !!…. Alors pour les voir en concert, mieux vaut aimer voyager… Ah si tout de même, j'ai une date en France : "Chez Paulette" à Pagney (54) le 03 avril prochain ! Dans ce numéro un extrait d' "Etre ou Ne Plus Etre", le tout nouvel album ! Pseudo nouvelle sortie avec YES… Je m'explique : l'album mythique "Tales From Topographic Ocean" est daté de 1973. Mais à l'instar des productions précédentes, Steve Howe (seul rescapé de cette époque bénie) fait recettes en ressortant ces grands albums du groupe en éditions "Super Deluxe"... Et pour le dernier qui vient de se voir offrir une cure de jeunesse, ce n'est pas rien : 4 vinyles - 12CD - 1 blu-ray audio (dont un mixage 5.1). Le tout livré dans un somptueux coffret avec un joli livret et plein de photos...Il faut dire qu'à sa sortie originelle, l'album faisait déjà parler de lui…. Mais pour ceux qui n'aimaient pas le rock progressif (et oui il yen avait déjà

GRATIS el libro "Escritor de éxito" ➡️https://www.letraminuscula.com/suscribirse-lista-de-correo/ SI deseas PUBLICAR escríbenos : contacto@letraminuscula.com Lláma☎ o WhatsApp: +34640667855 RESUMEN: Recorremos los siete libros más largos de la historia, desde el monumental Artamène hasta Clarissa, pasando por Proust, Jayamohan y L. Ron Hubbard. Analizamos su extensión, contexto, impacto cultural y por qué resultan tan difíciles de terminar. Un viaje por obras descomunales que desafiaron los límites de la narrativa y la resistencia de los lectores. ⏲MARCAS DE TIEMPO: ▶️00:00 "Artamané" y libros eternos ▶️01:48 Autoría real de "Artamané" ▶️03:28 "Benarasu" y Jayamohan ▶️05:02 "En busca del tiempo perdido" ▶️06:37 "Zettel's Traum" experimental ▶️08:14 "Sironia" y "Misión Tierra" ▶️09:39 "Clarissa" y despedida final

Matt and Andy dissect the late works of Proust.Merch Link: https://snack-spot-se.creator-spring.comTITC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twointhecooler/?hl=enInstacart Link: https://instacart.oloiyb.net/vAWXSupport the show

The AMAZING Rescue by Chase ProustBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/missing-persons-mysteries--5624803/support.

Niko Witko vient de publier chez Expé Éditions La Loi du zinc, un album de récits courts, dont certains ont d'abord été prépubliés dans Fluide Glacial. Un livre qui nous emmène au comptoir : celui des bars, des habitués, des piliers, des laissés-pour-compte, des grandes discussions inutiles et des petites tragédies ordinaires. Auteur de bande dessinée, dessinateur et scénariste, figure de la BD indépendante depuis les années 1990, Niko Witko a navigué entre collectifs, revues et éditeurs indés, avant de publier aussi bien dans Psikopat, Fluide Glacial ou Métal Hurlant, que chez Les Requins Marteaux, Carabas ou Delcourt.Un parcours libre, singulier et farouchement indépendant, dont on prend le temps de discuter avec lui dans ce podcast. Niko Witko se prête également au jeu de notre questionnaire de Proust version BD. Bonne écoute !Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Matt and Andy dissect the early works of Proust.Merch Link: https://snack-spot-se.creator-spring.comTITC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twointhecooler/?hl=enInstacart Link: https://instacart.oloiyb.net/vAWXSupport the show

Si l'acte de manger répond d'abord à un besoin physiologique, c'est aussi un geste culturel. Porter des aliments à sa bouche n'a en effet rien d'anodin. Notre pays, notre région ou notre milieu d'origine façonnent nos habitudes alimentaires, nos goûts et avec nos identités.  C'est ainsi que des harengs fermentés ou une sauce gluante feront saliver une partie du globe tandis que l'autre en sera dégoûtée. Certes la mondialisation et les réseaux sociaux sont passés par là pour nous faire goûter la diversité culinaire et faire évoluer notre relation à la nourriture. Geste domestique du quotidien quand il se limite à la sphère du foyer, l'acte de manger se transforme tout à coup en expérience gastronomique à la table d'un restaurant. Tout comme se nourrir en amoureux, en famille ou seul devant son ordinateur ne procurera pas la même émotion. Derrière une seule et même fonction, une multitude de sensations et de questions : que raconte le contenu de notre assiette ? Un repas partagé est-il forcément meilleur ? Avec : • Emilie Laystary, journaliste spécialiste des sujets de société et d'alimentation. Autrice de Passer à table, ce que l'acte de manger dit de nous (Éditions Divergences, 2025)  • Christy Shields Argeles, anthropologue, ethnographe sensorielle à l'Université américaine de Paris. Elle participe au Colloque de la Chaire Unesco Alimentations du Monde de l'Institut Agro Montpellier et du Cirad «Manger - Que d'émotions» qui se déroule le 6 février 2026 à l'Institut Agro Montpellier.  • Clémence Denavit, journaliste et présentatrice de l'émission Le goût du monde, diffusée le samedi à 21h30 TU et le dimanche à 11h30 TU sur RFI. Créatrice du podcast original Recette de poche dont la saison 2 avec la cheffe Georgiana Viou est disponible depuis fin 2025.  En fin d'émission, un nouveau rendez-vous sur l'interculturel sur les campus. Avec un reportage de Charlie Dupiot. Programmation musicale :  ► Inglés en Miami - Rawayana & Manuel Turizo  ► SORE LOSER - tg.blk  Pour aller plus loin : ► Le lien pour suivre le colloque «Manger - Que d'émotions» en direct. ► Le lien vers Madeleine Shorts, un projet de films courts autour de la fameuse « Madeleine de Proust », et ce que la nourriture procure comme émotions. Le projet est encadré par Christy Shields Argelès et Beth Grannis. Il est possible de postuler pour apporter sa contribution. À retrouver également les films réalisés par les élèves de 6ème du Collège Maurice Ravel à Paris.

Si l'acte de manger répond d'abord à un besoin physiologique, c'est aussi un geste culturel. Porter des aliments à sa bouche n'a en effet rien d'anodin. Notre pays, notre région ou notre milieu d'origine façonnent nos habitudes alimentaires, nos goûts et avec nos identités.  C'est ainsi que des harengs fermentés ou une sauce gluante feront saliver une partie du globe tandis que l'autre en sera dégoûtée. Certes la mondialisation et les réseaux sociaux sont passés par là pour nous faire goûter la diversité culinaire et faire évoluer notre relation à la nourriture. Geste domestique du quotidien quand il se limite à la sphère du foyer, l'acte de manger se transforme tout à coup en expérience gastronomique à la table d'un restaurant. Tout comme se nourrir en amoureux, en famille ou seul devant son ordinateur ne procurera pas la même émotion. Derrière une seule et même fonction, une multitude de sensations et de questions : que raconte le contenu de notre assiette ? Un repas partagé est-il forcément meilleur ? Avec : • Emilie Laystary, journaliste spécialiste des sujets de société et d'alimentation. Autrice de Passer à table, ce que l'acte de manger dit de nous (Éditions Divergences, 2025)  • Christy Shields Argeles, anthropologue, ethnographe sensorielle à l'Université américaine de Paris. Elle participe au Colloque de la Chaire Unesco Alimentations du Monde de l'Institut Agro Montpellier et du Cirad «Manger - Que d'émotions» qui se déroule le 6 février 2026 à l'Institut Agro Montpellier.  • Clémence Denavit, journaliste et présentatrice de l'émission Le goût du monde, diffusée le samedi à 21h30 TU et le dimanche à 11h30 TU sur RFI. Créatrice du podcast original Recette de poche dont la saison 2 avec la cheffe Georgiana Viou est disponible depuis fin 2025.  En fin d'émission, un nouveau rendez-vous sur l'interculturel sur les campus. Avec un reportage de Charlie Dupiot. Programmation musicale :  ► Inglés en Miami - Rawayana & Manuel Turizo  ► SORE LOSER - tg.blk  Pour aller plus loin : ► Le lien pour suivre le colloque «Manger - Que d'émotions» en direct. ► Le lien vers Madeleine Shorts, un projet de films courts autour de la fameuse « Madeleine de Proust », et ce que la nourriture procure comme émotions. Le projet est encadré par Christy Shields Argelès et Beth Grannis. Il est possible de postuler pour apporter sa contribution. À retrouver également les films réalisés par les élèves de 6ème du Collège Maurice Ravel à Paris.

Madame de Sévigné föddes den 5 februari 1626 och hennes klassiska brev har påverkat författare som Marcel Proust mycket. Men hur ska man förstå den idealiska bild hon målar upp av sin älskade dotter? Emi-Simone Zawall undersöker saken. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. Ursprungligen publicerad 2018-09-03.Av alla himlakroppar i vårt planetsystem är solen tyngst. Ändå blir solen hela tiden lite lättare. De väteatomer i stjärnans mittpunkt som förenas med helium, förvandlas nämligen också till helium, som i sin tur är lättare än väte, och följden av det livsljus som uppstår är att solen förtär sig själv med fyra miljoner ton per sekund.Är ett älskande människohjärta som solen?När Madame de Sévigné talar om kärlek i mitten av 1600-talet vänder hon återkommande blicken mot sitt eget hjärta. I ett brev från den 1 juni 1669 beskriver hon det som ett hjärta med resurser som den älskade inte kan förstå. Den 18 september 1679 skriver hon: ”Mitt hjärta är nu en gång skapat så, i förhållande till dig, att jag må vara överkänslig när det gäller allt som har med dig att göra, men det räcker med ett ord, minsta tecken på tillgivenhet, en kram, ett ömhetsbevis för att jag ska falla till föga. Jag blir genast botad, det är nästan övernaturligt, mitt hjärta återfår genast all den ömma känsla som aldrig minskar utan bara fogar sig efter omständigheterna. Det har jag sagt till dig åtskilliga gånger och jag säger det igen för det är ju sant. Jag kan inte tro att du skulle missbruka detta. Säkert är att du är den som sätter mitt hjärta i rörelse, på vilket sätt det vara må.”Den 12 januari 1676 funderar hon, inte helt olikt kartografen som står under sin stjärnhimmel, på vilken färg hennes kärleksfulla hjärta skulle kunna ha. Hon skriver: ”Jag glömde säga dig att jag, som du, har tänkt på olika sätt att framställa människohjärtat, några i vitt, andra i svartaste svart. Mitt för dig har en vacker färg.”Vem var det som gjorde Madames hjärta så antänt?Madame de Sévigne föddes som Marie de Rabutin Chantal i Paris 1626 i en av Frankrikes förnämaste familjer. Redan som barn förlorade hon sina föräldrar och togs därför omhand av sina morföräldrar och sin morbror som såg till att ge henne en fin utbildning. 18 år gammal gifte hon sig med markis Henri de Sévigné och fick två barn, François-Marguerite och Charles. I övrigt var äktenskapet en katastrof. Maken var slösaktig och otrogen – dödades till slut i en duell om en älskarinna – och gjorde Madame till änka vid 25 års ålder. Därefter var intresset för män ett avslutat kapitel för hennes del. Hon gifte sig aldrig igen och hade inga älskare heller, även om hon var beundrad av många. All den kärlekskraft hon var i stånd att uppbåda koncentrerade hon istället till dottern; inte ens sonen Charles kom i närheten av hennes beundran.hennes första svenska översättare, Stig Ahlgren, konstaterar att Madames kyskhet var ”sensationell” för att sedan fråga sig: ”Var Madame de Sévigné frigid?”När dottern flyttade till Provence 1671 där hennes make, greve de Grignan, blivit utsedd till guvernör, sammanfattade Madame sin skilsmässa från henne med orden: ”Jag grät och det kändes som om jag skulle dö.” En månad senare skrev hon till dottern: ”Varenda fläck i detta hus angriper mig; hela ditt rum tar död på mig. Jag har ställt en skärm mitt i för att rubba perspektivet; jag vill slippa se det fönster varifrån jag såg dig stiga upp i d'Hacquevilles vagn och försökte ropa dig tillbaka. Jag blir ju rädd när jag tänker på att jag kunde ha kastat mig ut genom fönstret, ibland blir jag ju som galen.” Ett år senare, den 12 februari 1672, skrev hon: ”Tycker du inte att vi varit ifrån varandra väldigt länge nu? Det smärtar mig och skulle vara outhärdligt om jag inte älskade att älska dig som jag gör, hur många bedrövelser det än måtte medföra.”Sedan dess, eller åtminstone sedan 1745 när ett första urval av hennes brev gavs ut, har Madames livslånga lidelse för sin dotter ekat genom litteraturen. Virginia Woolf liknar henne i en av sina essäer vid en äldre man som har en ung älskarinna som bara plågar honom, medan hennes första svenska översättare, Stig Ahlgren, konstaterar att Madames kyskhet var ”sensationell” för att sedan fråga sig: ”Var Madame de Sévigné frigid?”I Marcel Prousts "På spaning efter den tid som flytt" är hon inte bara den författare som nämns flest gånger. Hon får också fungera som estetiskt föredöme och en påminnelse om faran i att dra för snäva gränser kring livet och kärleken. Ska man tro den amerikanska litteraturprofessorn Elizabeth Ladenson är hon till och med en nyckel till romanens själva kärleksideal. Det visar sig genom att Proust ständigt låter huvudpersonens mormor gå omkring med en volym av Madames brev i sin ficka. Efter mormoderns död blir det istället huvudpersonens mor som alltid vill ha breven tillhands och det band som Sévigné upprättar mellan mormodern och hennes dotter, håller huvudpersonen Marcel utestängd från en gemenskap han inte kan återfinna ens i sina egna kärleksrelationer. På samma sätt, menar Ladenson, visar flera av romanens kvinnor att kärleksrelationer faktiskt kan vara lyckliga, så länge som de äger rum mellan likar, bortom svartsjuka och erotiska maktspel, kort sagt: mellan kvinnor som älskar kvinnor.Det kan hända att Madames så kallade ”frigiditet” och kärlek till sin dotter var ett sätt att slippa älska män. Men det ligger närmare till hands att tro något annat. Man vet helt enkelt för lite om dottern François-Marguerite de Grignan. Visserligen brände hennes egen dotter, Pauline, alla brev som François-Marguerite skrev till Madame, och visserligen har en samtida författare beskrivit henne som fåfäng och kallsinnig. Men det som mest av allt borde utgöra källan till ett närgånget porträtt av henne – Madames alla brev och kärleksförklaringar – låter henne egentligen aldrig framträda som person. Alla omdömen som Madame fäller om henne – som att hennes skrivkonst är ”gudomlig” och att hon är ”vackrare än en ängel” – är så idealiserade att de blir meningslösa.Är Madame de Sévignés brev i själva verket ett narcissistiskt monument?I ”Kärlekens samtal” skriver Roland Barthes om hur kärleksbrevet utmärker sig från andra brev genom att vara uttryckt på ett ”hängivenhetens språk” som saknar alla biavsikter, och Madames brev till sin dotter liknar i det hänseendet en älskandes brev till sin älskade. Men lika mycket som Madame älskade sin dotter, älskade hon att älska sin dotter, och man kan tänka sig att hon älskade sig själv som älskande eftersom det i förlängningen gjorde henne älskansvärd.”Jag skulle ju bli bedrövad om du inte älskade mig lika mycket som jag älskar dig”, skriver hon den 6 april 1672. Istället för att betrakta sin dotter som en människa i egen rätt verkar det alltså som om hon förblev ett objekt för Madames eviga tillbedjan, en idol, och ytterst ett redskap för Madames kärlek till sig själv.”Detta behov av att vara två för att kunna etablera en öm dialog med sig själv”, skriver Simone de Beauvoir i ”Det andra könet” när hon kartlägger den kvinnliga narcissistens behov av att rikta kärleken till en annan mot sig själv för att uppleva sig själv som älskad. Är Madame de Sévignés brev i själva verket ett narcissistiskt monument?Nej, att betrakta Madame som en människa blind för allt och alla andra än sig själv är att gå för hårt åt henne. Trots allt finns det ingen som är som solen, fullkomligt självförbrännande och oegennyttig. Det är det som är älskandets paradox: att man inte kan ge utan att samtidigt ta något.Då är det bättre att läsa Madames brev som betraktelser över alla de uttryck en passion kan ha, och låta henne vara precis det hon är: en kärlekens uppenbarelse.Emi-Simone Zawall, litteraturkritiker och översättareSamtliga citat ur breven är hämtade ur ”Madame de Sévignés brev” i urval och översättning av Arne Melberg, Atlantis 2018.

Jo takes us on a whirlwind tour of their recent reading, including Mary Helen Washington's Paule Marshall: A Writer's Life, and Charlotte explains why Susanna Moore's In the Cut is one of the most thrilling novels she's ever encountered. Then, the profoundly thoughtful Jamie Hood joins to explore the many boyfriends and political disappointments of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Jamie Hood is the author, most recently, of Trauma Plot: A Life, the hybrid pandemic diary how to be a good girl, the semi-monthly, Proust-infused newsletter, regards, marcel, and a book of love poems, forthcoming in 2026. She has written extensively on books, feminism, #MeToo, and other political matters for many publications, some of them even prestigious. She lives in Brooklyn.Please consider supporting our work on Patreon, where you can access additional materials and send us your guest and book coverage requests! Questions and comments can be directed to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Outro music by Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle.Charlotte Shane's most recent book is An Honest Woman. Her essay newsletter, Meant For You, can be subscribed to or read online for free, and her social media handle is @charoshane. Jo Livingstone is a writer who teaches at Pratt Institute. To support the show, navigate to https://www.patreon.com/ReadingWriters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acabo de leer el último libro de Julian Barnes, último hasta la fecha pero también último en el sentido definitivo, pues con él cuelga los hábitos. El libro, que lleva el revelador título de 'Despedidas', se ocupa -como tantos de los suyos- de la memoria. Y se inicia hablando de un fenómeno neurológico, que responde a las siglas de IAM, y que consiste en que, en determinadas circunstancias, una sensación activa un recuerdo, y este recuerdo activa otro, disparando una reacción en cadena que despierta una cascada de recuerdos similares. Imagina que hueles en café de la mañana y, de pronto, se te encadenan los miles de cafés de máquina aguachirlados que te has embaulado a lo largo tu vida. El fenómeno es bonito si pensamos en Proust, ya de mayor, que mordisquea una magdalena y eso abre una esclusa de recuerdos, desplegando ante sus ojos todas las magdalenas que comió en su vida hasta alcanzar esa primera magdalena que probó siendo un niño. Pero también puede ser odioso: imagina que oyes por la calle una canción de verano y, de repente, se te vienen a las mientes King Africa, Georgie Dann, la Macarena y el Tiburón, todo de golpe.Leyendo a Barnes, me preguntaba qué pasaría si experimentáramos un IAM y nos pasaran por la cabeza todas las versiones que se han ido dando a cuento del accidente ferroviario durante los últimos días: primero renovación integral, luego renovación por tramos, que si avisó Adif, luego que si avisó Renfe… Si me dan a elegir, más que una magdalena de Proust, preferiría una magdalena tratada con sedantes que hiciera borrar la memoria de estos días.A veces, como dice Dante en la Divina comedia, la memoria sucumbe a tanto exceso, así que recordemos lo justo.

In this weeks episode we launch the new 'Proust Photo Quiz'. Friend of the podcast photographer Harry Borden is the first to take the questions on... The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album, titled An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. The album was found in 1924 and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. Our 'Proust Photo Quiz' is an adaption of the original text. Harry Borden was born in New York and brought up on a farm in Devon in the South West of England. He studied photography at Plymouth College of Art and Design. Borden moved to London after graduation, where he worked as an assistant for the photographer Lester Bookbinder. He received his first commission from The Observer in 1994 and continued to work for the title until the present day photographing celebrities, musicians, creatives and politicians. Examples of Borden's work are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London and National Portrait Gallery, Australia and appeared regularly in Harpers & Queen, Vogue and The New Yorker. In June 2005, he had his first solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London titled Harry Borden: On Business which included 30 portraits of leading business leaders. In 2017 his book Survivor, A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust was published having been shortlisted for the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2014. It was later judged among the 10 best photography books of 2018 by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. In 2021 his second book Single Dad was published by Hoxton Mini Press. He continues to work on a commissioned basis and on personal work, whilst also lecturing on the MA Professional Photography at Oxford Brookes University. Borden's YouTube channel which contains films made with his son Fred can be found at www.youtube.com/@fredandharryborden his photography at www.harryborden.com Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby's, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England. Scott's book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale. © Grant Scott 2026

March 2026 marks the release of perhaps Sarah's most personal book to date, drawing from childhood love, family influence, and the evolution of one's own gardening tastes.In this week's ‘grow, cook, eat, arrange' Milli Proust joins us to discuss Sarah's new book, ‘A Year of Cut Flowers', blending the memoir and the method to trace her family's historic love of flora, and how it drew Sarah into the world of cut flowers.In this episode, discover:How childhood wildflower hunts with Sarah's father and her life with Adam shaped her lifetime love of cut flowersHow even a small, carefully planned patch of cut flowers can fill your home with abundant, seasonal bloomsThe surprisingly powerful impact of spacing and pinching on plant health, vase life and stem productionWhy gardening, and especially growing for the vase, can become such a life‑enhancing practice which evolves with youProducts mentioned:Abelia x grandiflorahttps://www.sarahraven.com/products/abelia-x-grandifloraCerinthe major 'Purpurascens'https://www.sarahraven.com/products/cerinthe-major-purpurascensEuphorbia oblongatahttps://www.sarahraven.com/products/euphorbia-oblongataSalvia viridis 'Blue Monday'https://www.sarahraven.com/products/salvia-viridis-blueHelianthus annuus 'ProCut Plum' (Sunflower)https://www.sarahraven.com/products/helianthus-annuus-procut-plumAmmi majushttps://www.sarahraven.com/products/ammi-majusPhlox drummondii 'Blushing Bride'https://www.sarahraven.com/products/phlox-drummondii-blushing-brideFollow Sarah: https://www.instagram.com/sarahravenperchhill/Get in touch: info@sarahraven.comShop on the Sarah Raven Website: http://bit.ly/3jvbaeuFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahravensgarden/Order Sarah's latest books: https://www.sarahraven.com/gifts/gardening-books?sort=newest

Laure Murats Essay erkundet die eigene Familie mithilfe von Proust, und Proust mithilfe der eigenen Familie. Die persönliche Selbstvergewisserung einer Frau, die mit ihrer Herkunft bricht.

Laure Murats Essay erkundet die eigene Familie mithilfe von Proust, und Proust mithilfe der eigenen Familie. Die persönliche Selbstvergewisserung einer Frau, die mit ihrer Herkunft bricht.

¿Cual es la relación del vino con la literatura? ¿Es difícil enfrentarse a la hoja en blanco? ¿Cómo se pasa de escribir hilos en twitter a escribir novelas? ¿Hay machismo en el mundo editorial? Hablamos con la escritora Nagore Suárez sobre su trayectoria profesional, su relación con el vino, su anti magdalena de Proust y le hacemos maridar vinos y libros Rocío nos recomienda cuatro libros y cuatro vinos para beberse leyéndolos Rosa nos trae una receta de "Inés y la alegría" de Almudena Grandes ✒️ Y Ramón nos hable de "El Quijote", de Hemingway y de Pérez-Reverte.

Jean-Michel Proust est le créateur et directeur du Montrouge Paris Guitar Festival (parisguitarfestival.com) qui se déroulera du 3 au 6 mars 2026. Voilà son interview pour tout savoir de cette nouvelle édition. Comme toujours Jean-Michel Proust a mitonné avec son équipe un magnifique programme de concerts à retrouver sur le site web. La Chaîne Guitare L'article Montrouge Paris Guitar Festival 2026, interview Jean-Michel Proust est apparu en premier sur La Chaîne Guitare.

Stepping inside an Impressionist painting? Yes, please.Week 41 of Ted Gioia's Immersive Humanities Course made me realize something startling: these books weren't picked for my enjoyment--and yet I loved them anyway. This week's readings, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton and the “Overture” to Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, carry us right into the early twentieth century.I approached James with dread, expecting a slow narrative, but instead I found a moody, infinitely readable novel built around obsession, property, and desire. With a small cast and dialogue-driven scenes, it feels almost theatrical, no surprise since James briefly wrote plays. But it's also chilling in its fixation on “stuff” and ownership. This one was a winner.Proust, meanwhile, surprised me with prose that felt dreamlike, luminous, and unexpectedly funny. I had expected dense, boring, and pointless--Proust was none of those. The famous madeleine scene becomes a meditation on memory that expands from a sensation as small as a crumb into an entire world.Though radically different on the surface, James and Proust share a similar impressionistic quality, finding vast meaning in subtle gestures. A brilliant pairing--and a week I adored, even if Ted doesn't care.The Housekeeping:LINKTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)CONNECTThe complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2rTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm

Denis Olivennes « Dictionnaire amoureux des Juifs de France » (Plon)Dans ce " Dictionnaire amoureux ", à l'encontre des idées complaisamment entretenues, Denis Olivennes révèle tout ce que la France a apporté aux Juifs de France et tout ce que ces Juifs ont apporté à notre histoire nationale.L'auteur montre comment les Juifs, présents sur le sol de France depuis deux mille ans, ont entretenu avec la Nation, et la Nation avec eux, des liens inouïs d'amitié réciproque. Mais il fait aussi le constat que ni les non-Juifs ni les Juifs ne se souviennent désormais de cet héritage fertile.Sont ici évoqués, à travers une panoplie de notices originales et souvent inattendues, les événements forts de l'Histoire (l'Affaire Dreyfus, la collaboration du régime de Vichy...) et les grandes figures qui furent juives, d'origine juives ou demi-juives : Nostradamus, Montaigne, Bergson, Proust, André Citroën... Et de grands personnages chrétiens qui les protégèrent : d'Abélard à Charles de Gaulle en passant par Bernard de Clairvaux ou Pascal, dans un pays qui a aussi admiré sans réserve Sarah Bernhardt, Barbara ou Gérard Oury, et confié le pouvoir à des hommes d'État comme Léon Blum, Georges Mandel ou Pierre Mendès France. À travers des artistes ou des penseurs comme André Maurois, Emmanuel Berl ou Raymond Aron par exemple, on voit comment s'est constitué le berceau de ce que les historiens ont nommé le franco-judaïsme.Musique : « On ne se guérit pas de son enfance » Jean FerratHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Today's author (and neuropsychologist) shows us how and why the human brain has adapted in order to read and write. Join Mike & Cory as they examine the past and consider the future of the reading brain.Support the showNew Bookworm websiteMike's Live Practical PKM CohortSublimeProust and The Squid by Maryanne WolfReader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf#196: Focus & The Reading Life, with Maryanne WolfBandersnatch by Diana GlyerHow to Read a Book by Mortimer AdlerThe Veldt by Ray BradburyHacking the Human Mind by Richard Shotton and MichaelAaron FlickerIntentional by Chris BaileyReady Player One by Ernest ClineMike's Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Cory's Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

durée : 00:03:43 - Le Pourquoi du comment : philo - par : Frédéric Worms - "Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure." (À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust) / "Quelqu'un avait dû calomnier Joseph K, car il fut arrêté un matin sans avoir rien fait de mal." (Le Procès, Kafka) : la fracture du XXᵉ siècle en dialogue - réalisation : Luc-Jean Reynaud

Maryanne Wolf is a UCLA professor and the renowned author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain" and "Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World." She says deep reading makes you a better thinker, communicator, and citizen. But what happens if you lose the ability to read slowly, patiently, and critically? Is there anything you can do to get it back? Sponsored By: GoDaddy - Get a domain for pennies at godaddy.com/nbi The Next Big Idea Club - Get 20% a membership when you use code PODCAST at nextbigideaclub.com (This episode first aired in March 2023.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with poet, translator and critic Ian Patterson about Books: A Manifesto, his passionate defence of reading in all its forms. What begins with the construction of a personal library in a converted coach house opens into a wide-ranging meditation on memory, loss, vulnerability and the profound role books play in shaping a life. Patterson discusses the anguish of parting with thousands of volumes, the intimacy of marked-up, well-lived-in books, and the politics of reading slowly in a culture addicted to speed. The conversation moves through genre snobbery, guilty pleasures, poetry's complex rewards, the porous borders of contemporary literature, and Patterson's experience translating the final volume of Proust—an immersion so deep it altered his own prose. It's a warm, generous exploration of why books matter, how they remake us, and why defending them feels more urgent than ever.Buy Books: A Manifesto: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/books-a-manifesto*Ian Patterson is a widely published poet and translator, and a former academic. The translator of Finding Time Again, the final volume of the Penguin Proust, he is also the author of Guernica and Total War and Nemo's Almanac. He won the Forward Prize for Best Poem in 2017, with an elegy for his late wife, Jenny Diski. He worked in Further Education between 1970 and 1984, had a second-hand bookselling business for ten years after that, and from 1995 until 2018 was an academic, teaching English Literature at the University of Cambridge. Many of his students have gone on to shape the world of publishing and writing, both in the UK and the US.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, for Christmas, a heart-warming festive treat full of joy, goodwill and Peter Sellers at his cuddliest. ONLY JOKING.Actually, it's Carol for Another Christmas, Rod Serling's bleak, angry, Cold War reworking of A Christmas Carol . Conceived as the opening salvo in a run of UN-friendly TV specials, the film is a full-throated warning against isolationism, nuclear brinkmanship and the idea that minding your own business ever ends well. Xerox paid for it, ABC aired it ad-free on 28 December 1964, viewers and critics were divided about it, and it then disappeared for nearly 50 years.Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Cleopatra) in his only television outing, the film stars Sterling Hayden as Daniel Grudge, a wealthy American industrialist who hates foreign aid, diplomacy and the United Nations in equal measure. On Christmas Eve he clashes with his liberal nephew Fred (Ben Gazzara) and is hauled through a series of visions featuring war dead, nuclear devastation and, most memorably, Peter Sellers as “Imperial Me” – a cowboy-Santa demagogue preaching radical individualism. It was Sellers' first screen appearance after his near-fatal heart attack earlier that year.Also featuring Eva Marie Saint, Robert Shaw, Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle, Britt Ekland and music by Henry Mancini, the film is verbose, didactic and relentlessly grim – and all the more fascinating for it.Joining Tyler is Tilt Araiza (The Sitcom Club / Jaffa Cakes for Proust), drawing parallels with Planet of the Apes, The Prisoner and unpacking Serling and the social and political climate just one year after after the assassination of JFK... looking at how things came together to produce this Christmas curio.

Merry Christmas! In between looking at houses to rent and packing up the Granger house in Oklahoma City, Nick and John put together this yuletide conversation about perhaps the most neglected of Rowling's influences, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. John was a reluctant reader, but, while listening to the audio book, reading the Gutenberg.com file on his computer, and digging the codex out of his packed boxes of books, the author of Harry Potter's Bookshelf was totally won over to Nick's enthusiasm for Castle.In fact, John now argues that, even if Rowling didn't read it until she was writing Goblet of Fire as some have claimed, I Capture the Castle may be the best single book to understand what it is that Rowling-Galbraith attempts to do in her fiction. Just as Dodie Smith has her characters explain overtly and the story itself delivers covertly, When Rowling writes a story, like Smith it is inevitably one that is a marriage of Bronte and Austen, wonderfully accessible and engaging, but with important touches in the ‘Enigmatist' style of Joyce and Nabokov, full of puzzles and twists in the fashion of God's creative work (from the Estecean logos within every man [John 1:9] continuous with the Logos) rather than a portrait of creation per se. Can you say ‘non liturgical Sacred Art'?And if you accept, per Nick's cogent argument, that Rowling read Castle many times as a young wannabe writer? Then this book becomes a touchstone of both Lake and Shed readings of Rowling's work — and Smith one of the the most important influences on The Presence.Merry Christmas, again, to all our faithful readers and listeners! Thank you for your prayers and notes of support and encouragement to John and for making 2025 a benchmark year at Hogwarts Professor. And just you wait for the exciting surprises we have in hand for 2026!Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The Twelve Questions and ‘Links Down Below' Referred to in Nick and John's I Capture the Castle Conversation:Question 1. So, Nick, we spoke during our Aurora Leigh recording about your long term project to read all the books that Rowling has admitted to have read (link down below!), first question why? and secondly how is that going?Rowling's Admitted Literary InfluencesWhat I want is a single internet page reference, frankly, of ‘Rowling's Admitted Literary Influences' or ‘Confessed Favorites' or just ‘Books I have Read and Liked' for my thesis writing so I needn't do an information dump that will add fifty-plus citations to my Works Cited pages and do nothing for the argument I'm making.Here, then, is my best attempt at a collection, one in alphabetical order by last name of author cited, with a link to at least one source or interview in which Rowling is quoted as liking that writer. It is not meant as anything like a comprehensive gathering of Rowling's comments about any author; the Austen entry alone would be longer than the whole list should be if I went that route. Each author gets one, maybe two notes just to justify their entry on the list.‘A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh' Nick Jeffery Talking about ‘A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh' Question 2. ... which has led me to three works that she has read from the point of view of writers starting out, and growing in their craft. Which leads us to this series of three chats covering Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and the Little Women series by Louisa May Alcott. I read Castle during the summer. Amid all the disruptions at Granger Towers, have you managed to read it yet? How did you find it?Capturing Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle: Elizabeth Baird-Hardy (October 2011)Certain elements of the story will certainly resonate with those of us who have been to Hogwarts a fair few times: a castle with an odd combination of ancient and modern elements, but no electricity; eccentric family members who are all loved despite their individual oddities (including Topaz's resemblance to Fleur Delacour); travel by train; a character named Rose who may have been one of the reasons Rowling chose the name for Ron and Hermione's daughter; descriptions of food that make even somewhat questionable British cuisine sound tasty; and inanimate objects that have their own personalities (the old dress frame, which Rose and Cassandra call Miss Blossom, is voiced by Cassandra and sounds much like the talking mirror in Harry's room at the Leaky Caldron).But far more than some similar pieces, I Capture the Castle lends something less tangible to Rowling's writing. The novel has a tone that, like the Hogwarts adventures, seamlessly winds together the comic and the crushing in a way that is reflective of life, particularly life as we see it when we are younger. Cassandra's voice is, indeed, engaging, and readers will no doubt see how the narrative voice of Harry's story has some of the same features.A J. K. Rowling Reading of I Capture the Castle: Nick Jeffery (December 2025)Parallels abound for Potter fans. The Mortmain's eccentric household mirrors the Weasleys' chaotic warmth: loved despite quirks, from Topaz's nude communing with nature (evoking a less veiled Fleur Delacour) to Mortmain's intellectual withdrawal. Food descriptions—meagre yet tantalising—prefigure Hogwarts feasts, turning humble meals into sensory delights. Inanimate objects gain voice: the family dress-frame “Miss Blossom” offers advice, akin to the chatty mirrors or portraits in Rowling's world. Even names resonate—Rose Mortmain perhaps inspiring Ron and Hermione's daughter—and train journeys punctuate the plot.The Blocked Writer: James Mortmain, a father who spent his fame early and now reads detective novels in an irritable stupor, mirrors the “faded glory” or “lost genius” archetypes seen in Rowling's secondary characters, such as Xenophilius Lovegood and Jasper Chiswell.The Bohemian Stepmother: Topaz, who strides through the countryside in only wellington boots, shares the whimsical, slightly unhinged energy of a character like Luna Lovegood or Fleur Delacour.Material Yearning: The desperate desire of Cassandra's sister, Rose, to marry into wealth reflects the very real, non-magical pressures of class and poverty that Rowling weaves into Harry Potter, Casual Vacancy, Strike and The Ickabog.Leda Strike parallels: Leda Fox-Cotton the bohemian London photographer, adopts Stephen, the working-class orphan, and saves him from both unrequited love and the responsibility that comes with the Mortmain family.Question 3. [story of finishing the book last night by candle light in my electricity free castle] So, in short Nick, I thought it astonishing! I didn't read your piece until I'd finished reading Capture, of course, but I see there is some dispute about when Rowling first read it and its consequent influence on her as a writer. Can you bring us up to speed on the subject and where you land on this controversy?* She First Read It on her Prisoner of Azkaban Tour of United States?tom saysOctober 21, 2011 at 4:00 amIf I recall correctly, Rowling did not encounter this book until 1999 (between PoA & Goblet) when, on a book tour, a fan gave her a copy. This is pertinent to any speculation about how ‘Castle' might have influenced the Potter series.* Rowling Website: “Books I Read and Re-Read as a Child”Question 4. Which, when you consider the other books on that virtual bookshelf -- works by Colette, Austen, Shakespeare, Goudge, Nesbit, and Sewell's Black Beauty, something of a ‘Rowling's Favorite Books and Authors as a Young Reader' collection, I think we have to assume she is saying, “I read this book as a child or adolescent and loved it.” Taking that as our jumping off place, John, and having read my piece, do you wish you had read it before writing Harry Potter's Bookshelf?Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books behind the Hogwarts Adventures John Granger 2009Literary Allusion in Harry Potter Beatrice Groves 2017Question 5. So, yes, I certainly do think it belongs -- with Aurora Leigh and Little Women -- on the ‘Rowling Reader Essential Reading List.' The part I thought most interesting in your piece was, of course, the Shed elements I missed. Rowling famously said that she loved Jo Marsh in Little Women because, in addition to the shared name and the character being a wannabe writer, she was plain, a characteristic with which the young, plain Jane Rowling easily identified. What correspondences do you think Little Jo would have found between her life and Cassandra Mortmain's?* Nick Jeffery's Kanreki discussion of Rowling's House on Edge of Estate with Two Children, Bad Dad ‘Golden Thread' (Lethal White)Question 6. Have I missed any, John?* Rockefeller Chapel, University of ChicagoQuestion 7. Forgive me for thinking, Nick, that Cassandra's time in church taking in the silence there with all her senses may be the biggest take-away for the young Rowling; if the Church of England left their chapel doors open in the 70s as churches I grew up in did in the US, it's hard to imagine Jo the Reader not running next door to see what she felt there after reading that passage. (Chapter 13, conversation with vicar, pp 234-238). The correspondence with Beatrice Groves' favorite scene in the Strike novels was fairly plain, no? What other scenes and characters do you see in Rowling's work that echo those in Castle?* Chapter 13, I Capture the Castle: Cassandra's Conversation with the Vicar and time in the Chapel vis a vis Strike in the Chapel after Charlotte's Death* Beatrice Groves on Running Grave's Chapel Scene: ‘Strike's Church Going'Question 8. I'm guessing, John, you found some I have overlooked?Question 9. The Mortmain, Colly, and Cotton cryptonyms as well as Topaz and Cassandra, the embedded text complete with intratextuual references (Simon on psycho-analysis), the angelic servant-orphan living under the stairs (or Dobby's lair!) an orphan with a secret power he cannot see in himself, the great Transformation spell the children cast on their father, an experiment in psychomachia a la the Shrieking Shack or Chamber of Secrets, the hand-kiss we see at story's end from Smith, love delayed but expressed (Silkworm finish?), the haunting sense of the supernatural everywhere especially in the invocation that Rose makes to the gargoyle and Cassandra's Midsummer Night's Eve ritual with Simon, the parallels abound. Ghosts!* Please note that John gave “cotton” a different idiomatic meaning than it has; the correct meaning is at least as interesting given the Cotton family's remarkable fondness for all of the Mortmains!* Kanreki ‘Embedded Text' Golden Thread discussion 1: Crimes of Grindelwald* Kanreki ‘Embedded Text' Golden Thread discussion 2: Golden Thread Survey, Part II* Rose makes an elevated Faustian prayer to a Gargoyle Devil: Chapter IV, pp 43-46* Cassandra and Simon celebrate Midsummer Night's Eve: Chapter XII, pp 199-224Let's talk about the intersection of Lake and Shed, though, the shared space of Rowling's bibliography, works that shaped her core beliefs and act as springs in her Lake of inspiration and which give her many, even most of the tools of intentional artistry she deploys in the Shed. What did you make of the Bronte-Austen challenge that Rose makes explicitly in the story to her sister, the writer and avid reader?“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel.” [said Rose]I said I'd rather be in a Charlotte Bronte.“Which would be nicest—Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?”This is the kind of discussion I like very much but I wanted to get on with my journal, so I just said: “Fifty percent each way would be perfect,” and started to write determinedly.Question 10. So, I'm deferring to both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and J. K Rowling. Elizabeth Barrett Browning valued intense emotion, social commentary, and a grand scope in literature, which led her to favour the passionate depth of the Brontës over the more restrained, ironical style of Jane Austen. Rowling about her two dogs: “Emma? She's a bundle of love and joy. Her sister, Bronte, is a bundle of opinions, stubbornness and hard boundaries.”Set in the 30s, written in the early 40s, but it seems astonishingly modern. Because her father is a writer, a literary novelist of the modern school, do you think there are other more contemporary novelists Dodie Smith was engaging than Austen and Bronte?Question 11. Mortmain is definitely Joyce, then, though Proust gets the call-out, and perhaps the most important possible take-away Rowling the attentive young reader would have made would have been Smith's embedded admiration for Joyce the “Enigmatist” she puts in Simon's mouth at story's end (Chapter XVI, pp 336-337) and her implicit criticism of literary novels and correction of that failing. Rowling's re-invention of the Schoolboy novel with its hidden alchemical, chiastic, soul-in-crisis-allegories and embedded Christian symbolism can all be seen as her brilliant interpretation of Simon's explanation of art to Cassandra and her dedication to writing a book like I Capture the Castle.* Reference to James Joyce by Simon Cotton, Chapter IX, p 139:* The Simon and Cassandra conversation about her father's novels, call it ‘The Writer as Enigmatist imitating God in His Work:' Chapter XVI, pp 331-334* On Imagination as Transpersonal Faculty and Non-Liturgical Sacred ArtSacred art differs from modern and postmodern conceptions of art most specifically, though, in what it is representing. Sacred art is not representing the natural world as the senses perceive it or abstractions of what the individual and subjective mind “sees,” but is an imitation of the Divine art of creation. The artist “therefore imitates nature not in its external forms but in its manner of operation as asserted so categorically by St. Thomas Aquinas [who] insists that the artist must not imitate nature but must be accomplished in ‘imitating nature in her manner of operation'” (Nasr 2007, 206, cf. “Art is the imitation of Nature in her manner of operation: Art is the principle of manufacture” (Summa Theologia Q. 117, a. I). Schuon described naturalist art which imitates God's creation in nature by faithful depiction of it, consequently, as “clearly luciferian.” “Man must imitate the creative act, not the thing created,” Aquinas' “manner of operation” rather than God's operation manifested in created things in order to produce ‘creations'which are not would-be duplications of those of God, but rather a reflection of them according to a real analogy, revealing the transcendental aspect of things; and this revelation is the only sufficient reason of art, apart from any practical uses such and such objects may serve. There is here a metaphysical inversion of relation [the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders in consequence of which the highest realities are manifested in their remotest reflections[1]]: for God, His creature is a reflection or an ‘exteriorized' aspect of Himself; for the artist, on the contrary, the work is a reflection of an inner reality of which he himself is only an outward aspect; God creates His own image, while man, so to speak, fashions his own essence, at least symbolically. On the principial plane, the inner manifests the outer, but on the manifested plane, the outer fashions the inner (Schuon 1953, 81, 96).The traditional artist, then, in imitation of God's “exteriorizing” His interior Logos in the manifested space-time plane, that is, nature, instead of depicting imitations of nature in his craft, submits to creating within the revealed forms of his craft, which forms qua intellections correspond to his inner essence or logos.[2] The work produced in imitation of God's “manner of operation” then resembles the symbolic or iconographic quality of everything existent in being a transparency whose allegorical and anagogical content within its traditional forms is relatively easy to access and a consequent support and edifying shock-reminder to man on his spiritual journey. The spiritual function of art is that “it exteriorizes truths and beauties in view of our interiorization… or simply, so that the human soul might, through given phenomena, make contact with the heavenly archetypes, and thereby with its own archetype” (Schuon 1995a, 45-46).Rowling in her novels, crafted with tools all taken from the chest of a traditional Sacred Artist, is writing non-liturgical Sacred Art. Films and all the story experiences derived of adaptations of imaginative literature to screened images, are by necessity Profane Art, which is to say per the meaning of “profane,” outside the temple or not edifying spiritually. Film making is the depiction of how human beings encounter the time-space world through the senses, not an imitation of how God creates and a depiction of the spiritual aspect of the world, a liminal point of entry to its spiritual dimension. Whence my describing it as a “neo-iconoclasm.”I want to close this off with our sharing our favorite scene or conversation in Castle with the hope that our Serious Reader audience will read Capture and share their favorites. You go first, Nick.* Cassandra and Rose Mortmain, country hicks in the Big City of London: Chapter VI, pp 76-77Question 12. And yours, John?* Cassandra Mortmain ‘Moat Swimming' with Neil Cotton, Chapter X, 170-174* Cassandra seeing her dead mother (think Harry before the Mirror of Erised at Christmas time?): Chapter XV, pp 306-308Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Sanatta ilham gerçekten var mı? “Deha” dediğimiz şey doğuştan mı gelir, yoksa masa başında emekle mi oluşur? Spekülatif'in bu bölümünde kültür üretimi, yaratıcılık ve ilham kavramını tarihten örneklerle ele alıyoruz. Emre Dündar, Michelangelo'nun 24 yaşında yaptığı La Pieta'dan Beethoven'ın eskiz defterlerine, Pascal Dussapin'in ilham reddine, Dostoyevski'den Proust'a kadar yaratıcı süreçlerin arkasındaki gerçekleri konuşuyor. Sanat ilhamla mı yapılır? Sanatta romantik mitler neden hâlâ güçlü? Yoksa üretimin ana gücü irade, çalışma ve tasarım mıdır? Sanat, kültür ve felsefeye meraklıysanız Spekülatifin bu bölümünü kaçırmayın. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"AI should do your laundry and dishes so you can do art and writing." This week, Tim sits down with Matt Bradley (Partnership Manager at WhyFire and editor of The Fire Time Magazine) to discuss the thoughtful use of AI in business—and the critical distinction between tools that enhance our humanity versus those that erode it. In this episode, Tim and Matt discuss: Why kale, cold showers, and AI all triggered the same stubborn response—and what changed Matt's mind about it Where AI can be used within every hearth business to save time and free up capacity for other things. What to understand about training AI to give you the results you need. How AI is turning us into "pancake people" who are wide but shallow—and what one activity actually prevents it Don't miss this conversation that balances practical AI application with philosophical warning about what we risk losing if we outsource our thinking to artificial intelligence. ------ Links from this episode: Is Google Making Us Stupid? Proust and the Squid The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains Become a supporter of The Fire Time Network and get access to awesome rewards: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://itsfiretime.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the Fire Time Magazine for free: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.itsfiretime.com/subscribe Read The Fire Time Magazine online: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://magazine.itsfiretime.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

"The Story and Science of the Reading Brain"

durée : 00:20:24 - Lectures du soir - "Bonnes nouvelles, grands comédiens " : parmi ces émissions proposées par Patrice Galbeau de 1970 à 1982, nous vous invitons à (re)découvrir cinq nouvelles d'écrivains français du XIXe siècle – de Gérard de Nerval à Marcel Proust -, lues par des grandes voix de ces années.

Teatime with Miss LizDecember 16th, 3 PM ESTGuest: Russell G. Little — “Murder for Me, Courtroom Truths & Stories of the Human Heart” Russell G. Little Truth, Fiction & the Stories Born From a Lifetime in the Courtroom. Where law meets literature and real lives spark unforgettable fiction. Miss Liz doesn't serve a beverage; she serves real-life changemakers.On December 16th, she serves Russell G. Little, Houston-based writer, seasoned divorce attorney, and the author of Murder for Me, a gripping fictionalized blend drawn from the unforgettable characters, cases, and human complexities he witnessed in his 40-year legal career. Born in Amarillo, Texas, where the land is flat, the wind never stops, and the federal government builds bombs, Russell grew up surrounded by grit and resilience. After law school, he married a Houston girl and moved to Houston, where he practiced law for four decades, raised three children, and remained married to his wife, Melinda, for 32 years, a fact that surprises many, given his specialty in divorce law. His work in Family Law and Criminal Law brought him face-to-face with situations both wild and unbelievable, the kind that live quietly in the soul but loudly on the page. Russell has tried over one hundred jury trials, handled hundreds more before a judge, and witnessed the rawest layers of human truth. His upcoming novel, Murder by Storm (October release), continues the battle of pursuit and deception in a hurricane-shaken Houston, a story every reader will want to experience from the safety of their chair. Russell also writes children's books inspired by his granddaughter Vivi, blending adventure with messages of animal care and conservation. Miss Liz will pour a cup of courtroom grit, Texas storytelling, and literary honesty with Russell G. Little, a practicing attorney of four decades and the author of Murder for Me, a crime novel born from real experiences, unforgettable characters, and the emotional residue of hundreds of cases. Born in Amarillo and settled in Houston, Russell has lived a life shaped by wide-open landscapes, courtroom battles, human complexity, and the kind of stories you carry long after the verdict. With more than one hundred jury trials behind him, he has seen the best and worst of people,e and he channels that truth into fiction with depth, empathy, and a sharp eye for detail. Inspired by literary giants like Proust, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Hemingway, Russell writes with classic influence, modern grit, and a soul shaped by decades inside the legal arena. His upcoming novel, Murder by Storm, dives into pursuit, deception, and survival as Houston is battered by a hurricane. Outside of crime fiction, his heart shows in the children's books he co-wrote with his wife, stories inspired by his granddaughter Vivi and focused on protecting Africa's remarkable wildlife. Today, we explore law, humanity, writing, truth, tension, family, and the stories that stay with us forever. What an engaging and richly layered Teatime with Russell G. Little, a conversation filled with humanity, humour, honesty, and hard-earned wisdom. Russell will remind us that behind every case is a person, behind every verdict is a story, and behind every courtroom door are truths that can shape a writer forever. His seamless weaving of legal experience into fiction, his love for classic literature, and his heartfelt family stories made today's Teatime unforgettable. Miss Liz will thank Russell for sharing your world, your work, and your wit. And thank you to everyone who joined live or on replay. Your support continues the ripple of storytelling, truth, and transformation. Author of Murder for Me and the upcoming Murder by Storm, he blends courtroom insight with storytelling. He also co-writes children's books inspired by his granddaughter, Vivi. #TeatimeWithMissLiz#RussellGLittle#CrimeFiction#TexasAuthors#CourtroomStories

durée : 00:58:22 - Mauvais genres - par : François Angelier - Au travers de deux fictions biographiques et fantastiques, Xavier Mauméjean et Julien Leschiera rêvent les mondes de Proust et d'Anaïs Nin. - réalisation : Laurent Paulré - invités : Xavier Mauméjean Ecrivain, membre du Collège de ‘Pataphysique et auteur de pièces radiophoniques pour France Culture; Julien Leschiera Ecrivain, libraire