Eric Rohmer understands better than most the geometry of desire; he comprehends well the rules of the game when seduction is a combination of the head and the heart. He has never had much interest in amour fou, the sort of mad passion of Last Tango in Paris, Betty Blue, Noce Blanche and Breaking the Waves. He is intrigued instead by amour rationel, without quite possessing the cynicism that one fi…
It is the rare writer who doesn’t give interviews and rarer still the writer who remains reclusive. Rarer again is the writer who remains anonymous. What is unusual about Elena Ferrante isn’t only that she remains a figure hiding under a nom de plume but that she gives interviews as a writer who exists beyond the page but who at the same time doesn’t have a biography. As she says…
1 Five years ago, when seeing someone from Paris, I visited her at Christmas. She was between flats and staying for a few months at her parents’ place while looking for another apartment. Her friend was in Barcelona for the festivities, knew I was visiting, and suggested to Marianne that we take her apartment for the ten days of my stay. The flat was near Belleville, on the third floor. On t…
Of course, US literature is rich, a pun playing on the idea that the country is prosperous and the literature is manifold. But we offer it not only as a pun but as a causal relation. The literature is rich partly because the country happens to be also. Few would be likely to claim that 19th century American literature could be seen as so significant as English, French or Russian fiction, but in th…