By Bergotte The series has moved, so far, through poets who held clear philosophical positions: Homer’s unflinching mortality, Ovid’s philosophy of change, Dante’s architecture of love. William Shakespeare holds no clear philosophical position. He holds all of them. He is the writer who most completely refused the consolation of a settled view, who gave theContinue reading “The Human Condition According to Shakespeare”
Category Archives: Aesthetics
Chapter 58: Night-Blooming Jasmine
I am discovering that having a job isn’t something I actually enjoy. “I adore Mr Woolf, I really do,” I tell Cary over breakfast one morning at his house. “But it’s all the… actual labouring…” I sigh. Betsy gives me a look that says spoiled. “If you want to go places, you have to putContinue reading “Chapter 58: Night-Blooming Jasmine”
The Secret History
Essay · Literature & Ideas Beauty Will Save Us, or It Will Destroy Us First Donna Tartt published The Secret History in 1991, at twenty-eight, and it arrived as something the literary culture had not quite seen before: a novel that was simultaneously a page-turner and a meditation on moral philosophy, that took seriously bothContinue reading “The Secret History”
Chapter 57 : Indian Summer
We are in Newport in September. With no urgent business anywhere else, we’ve stayed on until the very end of summer. Jack wants Topper to come work for him in the Senate. “Do you want to?” I ask as we sit down to dinner on our first night back. “I told him I’d think aboutContinue reading “Chapter 57 : Indian Summer”
The Beatles
Essay · Music & Ideas Four Men and the Thing They Were Saying The Beatles did not set out to have a message. They set out to make girls scream, to get out of Liverpool, to be bigger than Elvis, and they achieved all three with a speed and a completeness that left them, byContinue reading “The Beatles”
Chapter 56: Graceland Revisited
At the last minute, I decide to go home for my birthday. I tell Topper I miss Miss Mary, which is true enough. He says he understands. “I think you should go alone,” he says. “I think you need quality time down there, and not have to entertain me.” He’s standing by the desk, facingContinue reading “Chapter 56: Graceland Revisited”
Nobody Home: Cindy Sherman and the Self That Isn’t There
She has been a clown, a centrefold, a society matron, a fairy-tale victim, a film noir ingénue, a Renaissance duchess, a party guest, a disaster. She has never, in fifty years of making photographs, been herself. This is not evasion. It is the most radical position in contemporary art. By Bergotte There is no portraitContinue reading “Nobody Home: Cindy Sherman and the Self That Isn’t There”
Chapter 55: Got a Lot of Livin’ to Do!
Tilly and Buddy are married on the last Saturday of July at Grace Church in the City. The bride wears a loose-fitted dress, for obvious reasons. No one comments, not even the catty social pages, whom Tilly’s father has quietly bribed into discretion. The reception is a tasteful affair at The Pierre, the guest listContinue reading “Chapter 55: Got a Lot of Livin’ to Do!”
Carrie Fisher
Essay · Literature & Lives The Princess Who Wrote Her Way Out Carrie Fisher was a movie star who became a writer, which is the reverse of the usual trajectory and considerably the more interesting one. The writing she produced — the novels, the memoirs, the one-woman shows, the screenplay work, the wit deployed inContinue reading “Carrie Fisher”
Chapter 54: My Baby Left Me
I’m at the Ritz in Paris with Tilly and Cornelia. We’re here for the final fittings of Tilly’s wedding dress. It’s July, and Paris is sweltering, humid and close, the kind of heat that makes me regret coming at all. Every time I step outside, I feel coated in the city’s ever-present soot, sticky andContinue reading “Chapter 54: My Baby Left Me”
My World of Interiors 