Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist and essayist whose work transformed modern literature. He is celebrated for his monumental seven-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, which probes the mechanics of involuntary memory, the fluidity of time, and the psychological complexities of high-society France.
J. M. Coetzee and the Art of Slow Reading
I talk to Jan Wilm about the Nobel winner. He shares his approach to Coetzee’s writing, and the first two novels that sparked his enthusiasm
When did you first encounter the works of J. M. Coetzee?
There seem to me to exist two very common encounters with the literary texts that change one’s life in one’s salad days. Encounter one is raw, perhaps pure, immediate and emotional, when one feels the literary text entering very deeply into what used to be called one’s soul. There, it seizes one, lifts one up and sets one on a course that will retrospectively seem like the right path. Encounter two is marked by bewilderment, lack of understanding, a sense of loss even, being shaken at the feeling that one has failed to taste from the greatness one was sure to find. (more…)
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