The little white attic

As I’m enjoying  Les Liaisons dangereuses or  Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (translated by Helen Constantine), I’ve bee...

Perfect Days (2023):  I have never been fond of films in which nothing happens. It’s got a critics’ score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and aud...

Every time I revisit a Shakespeare play or read a new piece of criticism, I see something new. His plays are so rich, so complex, so endless...

Here are two questions: 1/ What makes a film rewatchable, or not rewatchable?  2/ If a film is not rewatchable, does it mean it’s not truly ...

Yesterday I watched The Mad Fox , which turned out to be one of the most arresting and beautiful films I’d ever seen. Don’t you just love it...

This is the Edith Grossman translation of Novelas ejemplares (my post on the first 4 stories ).  5/ “The Novel of the Glass Lawyer”:  Ah, a ...

 Some photos of me in a lavender field outside York yesterday. 

Nabokov says in Strong Opinions :  “The word “genius” is passed around rather generously, isn’t it? At least in English, because its Russian...

When people talk about Chekhov, they usually talk about him as a subtle writer, depicting with sensitivity and compassion ordinary people’s ...

As a little break from Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels , I’ve been reading Chekhov (who can be a better companion when one’s got the morbs?).  ...