Articles by Kevin Hartnett
February 28, 2009
Live-Blogging The Red and the Black 0
I took Stendhal’s The Red and the Black along on a recent trip to Paris. It’s only now though that I’m back in Philadelphia that young Julien Sorel has finally arrived in La Ville-Lumiere. It took me awhile to get into the book. I began it hoping for the same pleasures I recently found in [...]
February 26, 2009
Appearing Elsewhere 0
I ran a piece in last week’s New York Observer reviewing William Goetzmann’s intellectual history, Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. A dry title, I know, and somewhat dry inside the cover, too. Goetzmann is near the end of a long academic career and the book felt a little [...]
February 17, 2009
Literature in Lieu of the Tour Guide: Fiction (and Non) to Take on Vacation 21
On the last Sunday in November, book critic Adam Begley scooped Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd for the top spot in the New York Times most emailed list. Not with a review though. Instead, he wrote an excellent piece about Florence for the travel section, in which he recommended E.M. Forster’s Room with a View [...]
January 26, 2009
Willa Cather, the Greatest American Novelist? 4
I’ve sampled Willa Cather recently after a knowledgeable friend suggested she might be a sleeper candidate for the greatest American novelist. Well, after reading My Antonia and The Professor’s House I have to say, I don’t see it. There are particular things about both books that did not grab me, but to sum up my [...]
January 12, 2009
Middlemarch: The Fraught Lives of Women and Men 6
It sells Middlemarch short to call it a novel of manners, although if viewed from just one angle it is. The novel describes the precisely ordered life of the eponymous village in feudal England, where every resident can be placed on a grid according to his annual income and the quality of his lineage. There [...]
December 23, 2008
A Year in Reading: Kevin Hartnett 0
Kevin Hartnett is a regular contributor to The Millions. 2008 was a year in which the country was looking for a story, and the same impulse directed my reading. On the campaign trail “narrative” was the analytic frame of choice. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy failed because she could never establish one. John McCain’s failed in part [...]