Activity

During the first phases of my rise to fortune and glory, I had occasionally tasted the joys of consumption, by which our epoch shows itself so superior to those that preceded it. You could quibble forever over whether men were more or less happy in past centuries. You could comment on the disappear…

[...] There were also, of course, the honest folk, those who work, who ensure the effective production of wealth, also those who make sacrifices for their children—in a manner that is rather comic or, if you like, pathetic (but I was, above all, a comedian); those who have neither beauty in their y…

Undoubtedly there used to be a form of demotic happiness, connected to the functioning of the whole, which we are no longer able to understand

She spent quite a lot of time thinking about which particular project would give her a real sense of achievement. What she finally decided was that this was the ideal opportunity to read Proust’s masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu, in French. The amount of time lightning rods were typically…