retrospect | The Smart Set

Town and Country

Richard Klin — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Some time ago, I embarked on a personal reading project: An informal survey of books that once had been widely read — so widely read, in fact, that they had earned their place in the literary lexicon. The criteria for my project did have certain strictures. The operative word was once. The contents of these […]

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In Search of Proust’s Genius

Paula Marantz Cohen — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 12:30:00 +0000

Can a work of art be deeply flawed and still be great? One of the reasons that some once-revered works in the Western canon have been treated so shabbily in recent years is that, once a new lens is introduced that illuminates their flaws, critics have been exceptionally severe. But great things need a certain […]

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Agatha Christie Redux

Laura Berlinsky-Schine — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000

I was 11 years old when I first broke the spine of And Then There Were None. That was my introduction to Agatha Christie, and what an introduction it was. Arguably the Queen of Crime’s most famous work — although there is some stiff competition — it hooked me. I devoured it in hours. I […]

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