How a septuagenarian friend taught critic Daniel Mendelsohn to see the world as a writer.
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The Countess and the Schoolboy
Daniel Mendelsohn’s writing career started with the help of septuagenarian French dancer whose embrace of simple pleasures helped teach him to engage with the world differently.
Proust as Antidote for Smartphone-Induced Attention Deficit
Confession: I have never read Proust. Not one word, let alone the 4,300 pages of them in the English translation of his seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past). On the occasion of the French author’s 145th birthday, LitHub invited six authors to sing his praises, and explain why his work […]
Six Writers on the Genius of Marcel Proust
On the occasion of the French author’s 145th birthday, LitHub invites six authors to sing his praises, and explain why his work remains essential reading. Siri Hustvedt, Edmund White, André Aciman, Francine Prose, Aleksandar Hemon, and Daniel Mendelsohn all weigh in.
What the Greek Tragedy Told Us About Modern Life
“What’s so interesting about tragedy is even as it confirms what we sort of think is true about life, which is most of us just want to have a medium life, without attracting the ire—or the jealousy—of the Gods, it nonetheless is crucial to look at stories about people who go to the extremes, because […]
New York Magazine's Ben Williams: My Top Longreads of 2011
Ben Williams is the online editorial director at New York Magazine. ••• 1. Celebrity profiles are the hardest genre to make fresh. So props to GQ for doing it not once but three times, with Jessica Pressler on Channing Tatum, Edith Zimmerman on Chris Evans, and Will Leitch on Michael Vick. With Pressler and Zimmerman, […]
