last night i finished tess of the d’urbervilles—i thought i had about 100 pages to go but it was all editor’s notes. the ending of tess truly surprised me, i expected the ending to be more like jane eyre and less like sister carrie.

now i am on to written lives by javier marias. i learned about marias at the paul auster reading at the 92nd street y a few months ago. the organizers of the readings at the 92y do a fantastic job of pairing complementary writers for their readings, i always come home from them and head straight to amazon to stock up on the previously unheard of writer’s books.

written lives is a collection of vignettes on twenty five writers, cataloging quirky behavior, writing habits, and other oddities of the creative lifestyle. it is translated from spanish and so far parts of it have felt a little clumsy on that account, but overall the meat of the stories on writers such as vladimir nabokov, james joyce, william faulkner, and oscar wilde distract from any deficiencies in the translation.