Would anyone happen to know if there is any discussion around about the ways in which Cervantes' writing might have influenced Victor Hugo? Because I'm thinking that surely this is something people have to discuss.

(Now I have to go and find out how commonly read Don Quixote was in nineteenth-century France ( Read more... )

The Scarlet Letter really is shockingly theatrical in its construction.

Is it just me, or is Nabokov's writing the most tremendously and wonderfully sensual prose in existence?

(I just read Mary. Which is amazing, and I find it incredibly impressive that someone's first novel could ever show that level of linguistic and emotional control, as well as that amount of empathy. And all this in traslation!)

Sometimes I do wonder why practically every novelist in the eighteenth century appears to have decided that it was absolutely essential for them to write a parody of Samuel Richardson's Pamela.

I'm reading Leslie S. Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula (which, by the way, is absolutely brilliant, particularly for fan fiction writers), and taking the opportunity to do a thorough rereading of the novel at the same time, and I realized, though everyone who takes it upon themselves to write Dracula/Jonathan 'missing scene' fan fiction always ( Read more... )

I'm not sure I understand why everything finds James Joyce's Ulysses so intimidating. I'm about halfway through, and I'm finding it wonderfully engrossing and engaging, as long as I don't look for any sort of conventionally communicated plotline. Is this just me?

I am drowning in Madame Bovary. It is a good sort of drowning, but it is still drowning, and I cannot breathe.

I'm in Cape cod now, as I generally am in the beginning of July. Those of you who have been reading this journal for some time may know that I rather dislike the time I spend at Cape Cod, on the whole - I'm a New Yorker by nature, and in the quiet town of West Falmouth, iwth its yacht clubs and golden retrievers, I feel like Hedda Gabler - but I've ( Read more... )

I have the good fortune to be a member of several fandoms (most obviously Arthurian legend, Greek mythology, and Dracula, though many other of my fandoms fits this) of which there are many adaptations, of the 'published fan fiction' nature, readily avaliable. However, this means that I feel rather obliged to read all of them, and while this can ( Read more... )

Beginning this book, I was skeptical. It examines the firsthand accounts of various individuals who have been classified as insane throughout history, and that's a touchy and difficult subject. I find that, when discussing insanity, people tend to romanticize either the treatment or the illness - accounts have a tendency to read either as drugs/ ( Read more... )