As every writer knows, home the key to our personal mythology. The name Rosebud emblazoned on a sled—a rich man’s vivid memory of childhood. Gatsby’s mansion in West Egg, a symbol of his endless striving for acceptance. Mrs. Dalloway’s musings on her soulless marriage, as she sets the table for
From Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home In this interview from the book, Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home, award-winning writer, filmmaker, travel guide, and storyteller Phil Cousineau talks about the joys and challenges of homecoming — the oldest tale in the world, repeated from The Odyssey to The
By Sara Evans A wallboard at this summer’s blockbuster John Singer Sargent exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum posed an intriguing question: “Do you have to be French to be a Parisienne?” For the countless young American women artists who flocked to the City of Light in the early 1900’s
What is home without a familiar shadow at our feet? At Reinventing Home, we can’t get enough of cats and dogs, so we were very pleased to receive two inspired anthologies from Notting Hill Editions. On Cats, compiled by Margaret Atwood, and On Dogs curated by Tracey Ullman, feature delightful paeans to our pets by those with literary pedigrees. These books explore what we learn from our animal familiars—and why it helps, sometimes, to view the world from a four-legged point of view. And they also reminds us why pet lovers, in general, are healthier, more creative, and have more fun. But who knew reading about them could be so enjoyable?
The qualities of the flâneur are not achieved overnight, if they can ever be today. But if the historical flâneur is missing from the physical streets of Paris, he’s increasingly present in spirit, as a metaphor for the kind of unrushed, intellectually rich and creative life we long for. And we can channel the spirit if we try. Paris showers its special magic on those who submit most fully to its siren call. That’s the mission of today’s flâneur and his contemporary partner, the flâneuse.
While strolling through a park in Berlin, Franz Kafka met a young girl bereft because she’d lost her doll. To console her, Kafka explained that the doll was off on an adventure and had even sent him a letter! When the child demanded to see it, Kafka went home and composed it. Over time Kafka sent many letters from the doll, taking great care to fill in her back story—how she had grown tired of living with the same family, wished to travel, then became engaged and married.
In the last few years, we’ve learned a lot more about the writer and psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé, friend of Nietzsche, lover of Rilke, colleague of Freud. There’s a new bio-pic that focuses on her independent spirit, and now the first English translation of her novel, Das Haus, by Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger. A recent annotated edition, titled Anneliese’s House, will soon be released in paperback. In the meantime, the book is gaining the attention of literary critics, feminists, and followers of depth psychology.
Close on the heels of an exhibition in 2020 about the Ephrussi family at the Jewish Museum Vienna, the Jewish Museum in New York was confronted with a question: “Why tell a story that has already been told?” The answer is simple. Some stories are so compelling that they merit endless recounting. Edmund de Waal’s family tale, The Hare with Amber Eyes, is one of fortunes made and plundered, of homes made and lost, of disaster, dispersal, and reunion.
What happens when the wallpaper seems carnivorous, the furniture instills a sense of dread, and home–the one place we count upon to protect and nourish us–turns sinister? In ghost stories, rooms are hostile and houses are taken over by spirits with the power to destroy our souls. When did these bone-chilling stories first become popular and why do they continue to captivate? In short, what hold does horror have on us?