Parce Que C’était Lui
The little phrase I’m about to read comes from a famous passage in Sodom and Gomorrah when Marcel the narrator is suddenly reminded of his grandmother. He had stayed… More
Blues to Be there
I have a prepared statement, and then there’ll be an improvisation. I hate to do a fully prepared speech in New York, because you never know. This is called… More
Unwearied Blues
Langston Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when he was eighteen years of age and published it when he was nineteen—in 1921, in W. E. B. Du Bois’s… More
The Day I Finally Met Baldwin
The 1960s opened propitiously for me, and for my country, Nigeria. In 1960 Nigeria freed itself, at last, from British colonial rule. I published my second novel, and proved… More
James Baldwin’s Grand Tour
In America I’m not really a private person. No, I’m a public person. And a public person cannot write. Writers always have to find a way to do their… More
Proust Regained
And now a translation of the opening passage composed for this occasion. Those of you who have tried to translate the first sentence will know that it is impossible.… More
Borges Beyond Words
Borges used to tell an endearing story that continues to haunt me. When he was a child, his paternal grandmother lived in the house with his family. She was English;… More
Time After Time
In his 1978 lecture “Immortality,” Jorge Luis Borges makes the typically astute observation that “Immortality is in the memory of others and in the work we leave behind.” He… More
Virginia Woolf’s Forgetful Selves
Readers either worship or denigrate Virginia Woolf’s use of stream of consciousness. I will admit that there are times when her characters’ mental ambling can seem frustratingly opaque, and… More
Invigorating Life
A Room of One’s Own must be the most popular book title that any author has ever written. Since its publication in 1929, Virginia Woolf’s witty manifesto has not… More
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