For fifty yrs I claimed that THE RED AND THE BLACK was about ’Politics’.
Around p.427 of 627 pp including notes, I felt extreme chagrin not eased by the dustCover’s ’...Stendhal’s great novel of Julien Sorel’s quest for love and advancement in Restoration France - and his inevitable fall’. Shame aside, THE RED AND is prob still about politics (small ’p’).
For more of the same there’s MADMEN and Charlie Rose’s interview w its two actors and the writer. Or try a reRead of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. Regards to all - - and families, T

Stendhal (Henri M. Beyle) 1783-1842
THE RED AND THE BLACK transl by E.P. Robins - - revisions by C.Miller
The first few pages offputting, one grabs onto (short) chapter lengths; swallows their explanatory ’epigraphs’: Except that the Konemann version describes Stendhal as "bureaucrat, cavalry officer, dilettante, plagiarist, diplomat and litterateur’
His pseudonym "Stendhal" (amongst over 100 others) pairs with chapter headings ’often of his own composition the author to whom they are attributed chosen to impart a certain ’tonality’...’.
Many have been taken in by Julien Sorel - - I too found Stendhal’s ’analysis of characters’ psychology to be acute’ and stepworthy: We’re in their heads, are told what Julien, Mme de Renal, M. Renal think they ought to do. And they do it. Action, good. Post mortems after nearly 200 yrs, satisfactorily contemp to a reader’s own interiority.
Stendhal is considered one of the ’earliest foremost practitioners of realism’ in Le Rouge et le Noir 1830 and La Chartreuse de Parme (Charterhouse...) 1839.
Intriguing that translator Margaret R.B. Shaw - - her SCARLET AND BLACK - - is said to be better.

Who wd’ve thought this blogger having read the novel in her early twenties, wd be so happily re-reading it at age 78 - -

(what worries me about people giving up their automobiles)
- - old women and their cars

Raymond Carver and his boat
’Carver’s writing style and themes are often identified with Hemingway, Chekhov, and Kafka. Carver also referred to Isaac Babel, Frank O’Connor, and V. S. Pritchett as influences. Chekhov, however, seems the greatest influence, motivating him to write Errand, one of his final stories, about the Russian writer’s final hours . . . . . Minimalism is generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver’s work.’
. . . . . . . . . Wikipedia

The Walrus and the Carpenter (Lewis Carroll)

’...clever observatn and dialogue with intimate, explicit style
’for a while in long life was in world of modern poetry/ paintings centered around Jean Cocteau
’...published approx 50 novels ... ’themes roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. ... most popular novel was made into a Broadway play then movie Gigi - - starring Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, and Leslie Caron.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wikipedia

’Slowly she wd descend, swinging limply to and fro like a big bead, and grasping the edge of the cup with all her eight legs, she wd bend over head foremost and drink to satiety. Then she wd draw herself ceilingwards again, heavy w creamy chocolate, her ascent punctuated by the pauses and meditations imposed by an overloaded stomach, and wd resume her post in the centre of her silken rigging.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . translated by E.McLeod and U.Troubridge

- by writer, Colette
(Colette was 16): Kept on ceiling by her mother ’...handsome garden spider... belly like a clove of garlic emblazoned with an ornate cross.In the daytime she slept, or hunted in the web she had spun across the bedroom ceiling. But during the night towards three o-clock in the morning, at the moment when her chronic insomnia caused my mother to relight the lamp and open her bedside book, the great spider would also wake, and after a careful survey wd lower herself from the ceiling by a thread, directly above the little oil lamp upon which a bowl of chocolate simmered through the night....

’Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanislaw Lem 1965, translated 1977

Chapter 7.
’The two large moles were on the right cheek, and the right eyebrow was extraordinarily long. The far end drew an arc over the eyelid, and reached even to the line of the closed eye. Why should the camera have made it seem so long? The eyebrow and the two moles seemed to add a gently pleasing melancholy to the dead face.
’The long eyebrow brought twinges of sorrow. That was the reason.’

Yasunari Kawabata1 1899-1972; born in Osaka. Hoped to become a painter (NB: lighting in the following excerpt).
THE MASTER OF GO p.23
’The absence of a pillow was the mark of death...
(AS PHOTOGRAPHER) ’I had knelt at the side of the dead Master who lay on his back, and so I was looking up at him from an angle.
..’.the face was tilted ever so slightly upward, so the strong jaw and the large mouth, just perceptibly open, stood out even more prominently. The powerful nose seemed almost oppressively large. There was profound sorrow in the wrinkles at the closed eyes and the heavily shaded forehead.
’The light through the half-opened night doors came from the feet, and the light from the ceiling struck the lower part of the face; and...
AFTER MY OMITTED LINES (PASSAGE TOO LONG), A BREAK - - AUTHOR-CHOSEN?

S: ’So the secret language of the ptg had nothing to do with what people were taking from it....(Then again) take Seurat...a real hinge/ real lynchpin, you can still see that there are people hanging out on this beach.’

C: ’(there was an intermediate of that with Rembrandt, his Night Watch) ...daytime scene...burgers’ group wanted its portraits ptd.Rembrandt took forever... and it wasn’t anything they wanted at all. But he was happy...( - - intermediate betw turning it into incoherency).’

Interview: S/Groth/Cavalieri/Mouly (Spiegelman’s wife) p.58 slight paraphrase
S: ’(Others were painting to fulfill a specific need by the audience.) ’Vermeer’s work had something in it there was no real audience for.’
G: ’.. content (however) was understandable....Now, works of art have no meaning whatsoever to the general audience.’
M: ’...in Vermeer... still a surface thing recognizable to gen’l audiences, ... now that’s been gotten rid of.’
G: ...you don’t find people looking at, shaking heads in bewilderment.’

’...early evidence of what seems to have bn V’s reg practice - when he moved to a new place, he needed to draw his immed environment as a means of coming to terms with it. I think he prob drew or painted the view from the window of every room he ever lived in’ . . . . . .. . . . . Arts Council, England

...mom writing to Theo: ’Vincent made many a nice drawing; he drew the bedroom window and the front door, all that part of the house and also a large sketch of the houses in London which his window looks out on; it is a delightful talent which can be of great value to him’