Nearly 80 book, music and culture lovers gathered this past July for our annual “salon in the sun,” Toronto Pursuits. At our longtime oasis, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, we read and looked and listened, ate and drank, laughed and debated, greeted friends old and new. Most of […]
Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, “There is no there there” is often understood as a slight, a pronouncement that a place has no substance. Nothing to see here. Stein was writing about returning to her childhood home in Oakland, California, in her 1937 book Everybody’s Autobiography. One reason her observation has […]
You undoubtedly have a mental picture of a “mad scientist.” If you visited a costume shop and saw that label on a package, you could predict the contents: likely a white lab coat, a bushy fright wig, some thick-framed eyeglasses or goggles, and some test tubes or other instruments. We […]
[Editor’s note: Learn more about Wendy’s work in our free April 20 webinar.] I live in wonder. Okay, I know that sounds like a strange thing for someone who considers themselves to be a “serious academic” to say. But when asked what it is that I do, it’s true. See, […]
I just came back from my first trip to Japan but still have yet to come back down to earth. Wow! My husband Ben and I spent two weeks visiting my sister Carolyn in lush, laid-back Okinawa. She’s in the Navy and has been living in Okinawa for almost two […]
[Editor’s note: Join Ann at our informal online open house February 24 at 2 p.m. Eastern. RSVP here.] On many Classical Pursuits trips, we are reliant on the written word, and messages we can glean from mute buildings, streets, and monuments, to help us understand pivotal happenings in human history. […]
[Editor’s note: Only a few spaces remain for our Venice trip in March 2023. You can contact our travel partner Worldwide Quest to learn more.] Act I: Love at First Sight I was nineteen, a student and an aspiring artist, when I walked into the Frari church in Venice and […]
He’s been described as the most famous author of his day, as “literature’s greatest whistleblower.” His influence on French, American, and world literature is undisputedly huge. And his books, as the title of this post suggests, are full of three things people love to read about, even if they don’t […]
What comes to mind when you think of Quebec City? If you didn’t say “revolution,” you would not be alone. With its dramatic clifftop location overlooking the mighty St. Lawrence River, its fortification walls, narrow winding streets and wealth of historic buildings, Quebec City charms visitors with its picturesque views […]
[Editor’s note: Nella Cotrupi talks about the very special seminar she has planned on three women Italian novelists. The first, Elena Ferrante, needs no introduction. Grazia Deledda and Elsa Morante, both important influences on Ferrante, also write with keen psychological insight about their characters’ interior and exterior lives. This is […]