Well, I was going to try to post this week, but I know I need a break and I know I wouldn’t get much done in the coming long weekend anyway. So we’ll go dark here for a nice Thanksgiving break. Make sure to get your pumpkin before it runs out.

I’m feeling very productive this weekend. For the past two weeks I’ve been on a bit of an “autumn cleaning” kick, cleaning out cabinets, organizing closets, purging old and ill-fitting clothes. And also finishing off some lingering books. Which...

After reading, ages ago now, Sunflower by Gyula Krúdy, I wanted to read some more Hungarian literature, and now I have. Embers is a very different novel, and Sándor Márai is clearly a very different novelist, but this too is an elegy for a...

Now here are some believable letters. For all I say I don’t like Jane Austen, she is good, and really knows how to use even an unusual-for-her form. We dive right into the letters of Lady Susan—splash!—without any frame or explanation, and right...

I want to start out this post by saying, “There is no reason for Evelina to be an epistolary novel.” But I know that’s not true. There are reasons. I just don’t think it should have been one, or, if it is, it should have been done...