A World of Endless Diversion and Victor Hugo’s Art

Arbre couché par le vent

While reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast last year, I began to seriously ponder the amount of time the Internet sucks from my life. Learning about this great American author’s early days as a starving artist in Paris, I was struck by the simplicity of his existence. With a bare minimum…

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The Fanciful and Poignant “French Collection” of Faith Ringgold

Picasso's Studio

This Sunday marks exactly one year since I learned of the American artist Faith Ringgold while roving around Paris. After returning home, I wrote about the special exhibit at Le Musée Picasso that introduced me to her work. She died last week at age 93. So this week, I thought…

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Chance and One Author’s Exploration of Extremism and Corruption

Jerusalem

A skeptic at heart, I’m not one to believe in providence or good luck but whenever I’m in Paris, the number of happy coincidences I experience seems improbably high. For example, last December, after visiting an exhibit of Honoré Daumier’s 19th-century farcical Parisian caricatures, I failed to find a book…

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Video of My Japanese Odyssey and How to Raise a Japanophile

Hanging Orchids

This summer I had the rather surreal and surprising experience of traveling in Japan. The surreal aspect of my trip might well have something to do with the 13-hour time difference coupled with Japan’s near-futuristic embrace of technology. I say surprising because my expedition to the land of the rising…

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Mutation of a Famous Fable: ChatGPT Meets La Fontaine

The Crow and the Fox

You’ve probably heard about the artificial intelligence chat robot called ChatGPT. Since its debut at the end of 2022, millions of people have used it to create documents, cull data, or simply talk with a new “friend”. ChatGPT’s language processing software is so conversational that the program seems to have…

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