Sublime

Weirdly, Mark has his San Francisco house not too far from ours. When I ask him why we never see him in the neighborhood, he explains it’s because he can’t get planning permission for a place to park his helicopter so he rarely uses the house. We might live in similar places, but we are living completely different lives.

You know the parties are vapid and maybe even evil, but you still want to be invited. And so in bad times, Gatsby feels like a condemnation of the American idea, and in good times it feels like a celebration of that same idea. David Denby has written that the book has “become a kind of national scripture, recited happily or mournfully, as the

If only he were more successful, she reflected. He was a Catholic and a gentleman, and her grandfather, at least, believed that his talents as a poet were considerable. His suit might one day be worth a good deal. But she shrank from the thought. Such an odd man, subject to headache and ill-humor; writing his poems and talking about Virgil, with no

Quand j’eus fini ma lecture, je savais une chose : quoi que Scott fît et de quelque façon qu’il le fît, il me faudrait le traiter comme un malade et l’aider dans la mesure du possible et essayer d’être son ami. Il avait déjà beaucoup de bons, de très bons amis, plus que personne à ma connaissance, mais je me tins désormais pour l’un d’eux, moi