July 5, 2007

Stackpole

Maud Newton has pointed me toward Marilynne Robinson’s review of The Maytrees. Katie Roiphe shows that a literary allusion can make self-reflexiveness much more interesting. Outsider top tens (though they missed the obvious choice).

Still reading Portrait of a Lady, and enjoying it, but then my twenty-first century sensibilities makes the nineteenth century read at a dilatory pace. But no, it’s a rich book. I like the American/English dynamic, which I believe would have gone over my head the first time. And Henrietta Stackpole is not so much an inspiration as absolutely absurd, but perhaps that was always the point.