In this novella, a young man is more or less obsessed with an older man (in a friendly slash mentorly kind of way). He is pained when the older man’s wife yells at his object of obsession, but he slowly starts to realize he doesn’t know as much about the man as he once thought. But this is comedic story, so it’s not a dark secret. Instead, he finds out that this older man had fought in the Civil War, a fact that shocks him […]
Where are our Old Masters?
“Where is our Byron–our Scott–our Shakespeare? And in painting it is the same. Where are our Old Masters? We are not without contemporary talent; but for works of genius we must still look to the past; we must, in most cases, content ourselves with copies…” This sort of lays the groundwork for the anxiety held within this novella. Written in the 1920s, there’s still a kind of irony that Wharton also has missed some of the greats of American literature. While she was a huge […]
The Awakening, but with less water
As a Louisiana native, English major, and self-proclaimed avid reader, I have read and studied “The Awakening” many times over. For the unfamiliar, it is about a woman who struggles against the bonds of her marriage, and the confines of society in Louisiana at the turn of the century. Here is the first line of the Goodreads synopsis. When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. I was not a fan of The Awakening initially. As a teenager […]
The wonder of free Kindle books
Recently I found myself finishing my last book. With no more library books waiting for me, I browsed through the free Kindle books I’d found on Amazon months ago. Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913) stuck out. I’ve always been incredibly impressed by Edith Wharton’s writing, and I almost immediately started reading. I’m kind of ashamed by how long I let this classic languish on my Kindle while I’ve been distracted by the new and the shiny. To be honest, when I began […]