What We've Been Reading—12.4.15

In a recent address in New York, Martin Mosebach, winner of the Georg Büchner Prize, Germany's most prestigious literary award, described the metaphysical outlook of his countrymen: “In Germany we like to distinguish between the glistening surface and the deeper values.

What We've Been Reading

As I rode the train to DC for Yuval Levin’s lecture last week, I read Haunted Castles, a volume of gothic stories by Ray Russell. The volume includes his famous sibilant tales, Sardonicus, Sagittarius, and Sanguinarius, as well as Comet Wine, the story of the world’s greatest unknown composer. All are memorable and finely wrought (one of Russell’s characters says “my preferences, as you know, have always been for the baroque”; so too with the author).

 

What We've Been Reading—11.6.15

Mark Bauerlein I am half-way through Anna Karenina. Everyone knows the basics of the story, but I've never read it before. It was a favorite of F. R. Leavis and Lionel Trilling, who drew large implications about humanity and the novel from it.  But for me at this point, at the end of an . . . . Continue Reading »