Tag Archives: failure
True Condition/Tinged with Doom
I return to Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave as I do to my favorite drink: I know what to expect, and I have probably had one too many encounters with it, but I always come away pleased, refreshed, consoled–and maybe even … Continue reading
Every Semester
As I nervously prepare for another first day of teaching, I am reminded of Michel Houellebecq’s spiritually-exhausted, andropausal, soon-to-be-Muslim convert, Francois, in Submission. As a Huysmans’s scholar who cares only for his research (and online porn and TV dinners), he admits, … Continue reading
The Entrance of Suffering
“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.” ~Leon Bloy In Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, the first of The Alexandrian Quartet tetralogy, the narrator recalls having once been told, … Continue reading
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