Love, Vengeance, Purple Blood, etc.

I suppose I ought to consider this an education in [Classic] Gothic Literature—a movement whose influence I’ve always only encountered in books, though mostly as tone or a small plot detour. But I don’t think I’ve ever really read something that was so solidly Gothic. So. For this installment of the ever-enlightening Classics Circuit, the parameters [...]

Truly, Romantic Constancy?

We don’t quite get along, Jane Austen and I. I’ve all but renounced her much-loved Pride and Prejudice, and not because I enjoy being contrary [though I occasionally do] but because it simply isn’t the story—love, social-niceties, of-the-era—I am looking for, or even want. Austen and I, we do not suit. I have accepted that—although [...]

“I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.”

#45 of 2011 • This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I admit to having less than pure intentions for reading Fitzgerald’s first novel. I was crazy in love for his The Great Gatsby—and I can’t wait to read it again and reach that calm whiskey feel of that last line. Boats, ya know. [...]

“Why does tragedy exist?” – On Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides; translated and with an introduction by Anne Carson

The Ancient Greeks intimidate me. As they should, I suppose. I have an endless fascination with mythology, and, sadly, what feats of human spirit I encountered were mere brushes against the immortals. And so, very young, I learned of Odysseus and Theseus and Herakles and Helen and a host of other fated humans, and they, [...]

marginalia || Excerpted from “What Is Art?” [from Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy]

I have read Leo Tolstoy. Granted, I only read a snippet of his -- and, granted, the initial elation eventually shattered upon learning that the What Is Art? that I read was a mere excerpt -- but I've read Leo Tolstoy. More disclaimers, I suppose: It's not his fiction, and am I not "supposed to" [...]

marginalia || Arabella, by Georgette Heyer

I’ve been seeing Georgette Heyer’s name everywhere, usually in connection to them good ol’ days of romance. I’ve never wanted to read her—until I read The Fiction Class by Susan Breen, in which the narrator is named after a heroine of a Heyer novel. And so I immediately put Arabella on my To-Read list. Ah, [...]