Art historian’s dissection of famous work is as much about the painting as his decades-long obsession with it.

Most people think originality comes from endless freedom. The role playing game Dungeons & Dragons suggests the opposite. It gives players a small number of races, classes and backgrounds and somehow ...

BALZAC—Rene Benjamin—Knopf ($5). Fiction could be, has been defined as imaginary biography. Biography in its latest form could be defined as imaginary fiction. Into this definition fits the work ...

French writer Honore De Balzac warned that our worst misfortunes rarely happen, with most misery stemming from anticipation.

Fueled by endless cups of coffee, French author Honoré de Balzac produced more than 90 novels and short stories peopled by 2,400-plus characters during his lifetime (1799-1850). “Balzac’s Lives,” a ...

Today, the Quote of the Day is by Honoré de Balzac, the 19th-century French writer known for his sharp observations on society, ambition, and human behaviour. The quote says: “It is easy to sit up and ...

In our era of boxed-set, television bingeing, it’s astonishing there hasn’t been a revival of Honoré de Balzac’s “Human Comedy.” Did the conclusion of “The Wire” leave you bereft? Here’s a serial that ...

Splendors and Miseries, adapted from Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac, is presented in the Cour de la Grande Écurie on June ...

No adequate biography of Honoré de Balzac has yet been written ; a fact somewhat strange, considering the interest and attractiveness of the subject and the abundance of the material available. Of ...