Chantal Joffe: Emily with Sugar I, 2016 How to read well amidst infinite streams of information and data? Arriving at the closing pages of a long book, Anna Karenina, in my case, feels like more of an achievement than it should, but it is all too easy to get distracted. Paradoxically, inhabiting the world of a long book is one of my favourite ways of spending time on this planet. This year I’d like to embrace the resilience found in the pages of long stories like War and Peace and Moby Dick. Slowly journeying between the extended anchor points of the opening and closing pages of long books ..read more

At the beginning of Chapter XI in the second volume of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy he writes, “Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.” I’ve derived much satisfaction in reading Tristram Shandy this year with a growing sense of wondering admiration. Though I’ve restarted the book three times I don’t expect to reach the end this year. Some part of me does not wish to finish. I appear to be acquiring multiple copies of the book, less defensible than giving precious shelf space to multiple translations of Homer, Dante or ..read more

Herodotus’s distinctive voice shines through, regardless of the translator. His hesitant tone shows in qualified judgments and outright refutations. It comes through more strongly than in his predecessor Homer’s work. With Homer, different translators obscure the narrative voice. After reading Book 1 in Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation, Book 2 in Robin Waterfield’s, and switching to George Rawlinson’s Victorian rendering for Book 3, I’ve settled on Rawlinson. His word choices and phrasing evoke an appealing archaic flair. I intended to read contemporary books between each of Herodotus’s boo ..read more

Each monk at this monastery constantly has a lamp burning. I was told that when an abbot dies his lamp is extinguished. To elect another abbot a lamp lights itself, which, by the grace of God, belongs to the one who is most worthy of being the next abbot. As I said, each of them has his own lamp and when one of them is about to die they know by his lamp, for the light of the lamp will weaken close to the time he is to die. —John Mandeville, (Book of Marvels and Travels ..read more

Reading the entire works of ancient authors, attuning our ears to their way of thinking and speaking, we are given entry into worlds which, but for these writers and their works, would have been lost forever; we are made to leave the prison-house of ourselves and are touched by the world. —Gabriel Josipovici, (Vibrant Spaces, from The Singer on the Shore) It is not the sentences alone that trace out for us the forms of the ancient soul. Between the sentences – and I have in mind those very ancient books that were originally recited . . . Often in St. Luke’s Gospel, meeting with the colons tha ..read more

In an interview that eludes my current search, Pascal Quignard once proclaimed, “I am a Baroque artist. I seek intensity of emotion by any means necessary. I am not a classicist, I do not seek perfection. Baroque artists seek intensity, not beauty. If we can make people cry, we are happy.” This reflection frequently occupies my thoughts and serves as a guiding principle when approaching Quignard’s works. I have long believed that within the writings of any serious author lies a manual on how to read their work. Quignard’s prose is reminiscent of painting—fluid, unstable, occupying a space bet ..read more