Forgive the extended quotation in this post, but the opening of Chapter 49 captured so much of what makes The Way We Live Now enjoyable. Trollope has created a wonderful villain in Mr. Melmotte yet that character is rarely on the stage (so far). Watching how others respond to him is the delicious part. “As […]
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Year-end brings out the list-makers—I’m hoping to use this post to help focus on where I want to go with my reading. In addition, any comments on specific works or the direction I’m going are always appreciated. I’ve mentioned that I have some general plans on what I want to read but I try to […]
Paul Montague, a likeable enough fellow but a moral weakling, goes to visit the American widow Mrs. Hurtle with whom he has tried to break off their engagement. Mrs. Hurtle represents herself as the fiancée of Paul when taking a room in London. Here is Paul upon entering the house where Mrs. Hurtle is staying: […]
What follows are a few thoughts on Trollope’s world in The Way We Live Now…or at least through Chapter 24. ReligionTrollope clearly takes aim at religion, but it is more how he does it as well as his issue (or target) that interested me. We are introduced to two men of the church in the […]
The Leo Strauss Center at The University of Chicago has begun to make available audio files from some of the courses Strauss taught and will add transcripts starting next year. The first course released is “Plato’s Political Philosophy: Apology and Crito”. From the page noting the release of this course: The Leo Strauss Center is […]
Mr Longestaffe was a tall, heavy man, about fifty, with hair and whiskers carefully dyed, whose clothes were made with great care, though they always seemed to fit him too tightly, and who thought very much of his personal appearance. It was not that he considered himself handsome, but that he was specially proud of […]
Having run through most of what our local library had available in audiobooks, I took the plunge and joined Audible.com. So now I’m like a kid in the candystore…I want this. And this. And all of that. Like Earl in the movie Diner, I feel like ordering the entire left side of the menu. I […]
Lionel G. Fawkes, Chapter 37: ‘The Board-Room”, The Way We Live Now “My Lords and Gentlemen,” said Melmotte. “I hope that you trust me.” This is part of The Classics Circuit, which is currently reading and posting on Anthony Trollope’s novels. Never having read anything by Trollope, I thought I would take the plunge with […]
The Truth about the Savolta Case by Eduardo Mendoza Translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam, Pantheon Books, 1992 Mendoza’s novel, released in 1975, is set in Barcelona at the end of World War I amid political, economic and social turmoil. When reading about the political movements during the early part of last century, […]
The dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that […]