Had Balzac been a less masterful novelist, the disreputably profligate fraud in him might have overwhelmed his artistry. Still, the other Balzac, the artist, is tainted by his well-earned reputation for what has been called artistic license or dishonesty...
The French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was the first writer to use fiction to convey the total social scene prevailing within one country at a particular period in its history. Commonly regarded as the founder of social realism, he also...
One of Kipling's finest and most enigmatic short stories, "The Gardener" (1926), has long teased readers with its ambiguities, especially the cryptic conclusion of the tale. Just who is the shadowy gardener glimpsed on the final page? Is he, as many commentators have assumed,...
Flanders dir. Bruno Dumont Against the gunmetal-gray landscape of rural France, childhood friends André (Samuel Boidin, a thick-torsoed man with Neanderthal physiognomy) and Barbe (another nonactor, the pretty Adélaïde Leroux) keep each other company. Their relationship is explained in a few furtive...
