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article culture schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 6 link 9 artists

Two of Modernism’s Lesbian Icons Get the Novel Treatment

Deborah Levy's novel "My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein" follows an unnamed narrator who travels to Paris to write an essay about Gertrude Stein, struggling with the weight of Stein's legacy while visiting her grave at Père Lachaise cemetery. The book explores Stein's life as a modernist icon, her relationship with Alice B. Toklas, and her role as a host to figures like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, while the narrator grapples with Stein's defiant personality and literary style.

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article culture schedule Apr 26, 2026 visibility 21 link 3 artists

An Art Historian’s Riotous Novel Melds Medieval Art with Monica Lewinsky

Julia Langbein's new novel *Dear Monica Lewinsky*, published by Doubleday, follows translator Jean Dornan as she revisits a traumatic relationship with a professor from her youth, set against the backdrop of the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal. The story interweaves medieval art, particularly the 13th-century *Golden Legend*, with Lewinsky's public shaming, as Jean prays to Lewinsky for guidance and is visited by a haloed version of her. Langbein, an art historian with a PhD from the University of Chicago, draws on her expertise to explore themes of humiliation, self-estrangement, and collective experience.

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rate_review review schedule May 11, 2026 visibility 17 link 2 artists

‘My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein’ by Deborah Levy, Reviewed

Deborah Levy’s latest novel, *My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein*, follows a first-person narrator who travels to Paris to research the American writer and collector Gertrude Stein. The narrative slips between the early twentieth century and the autumn of Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, using stream-of-consciousness prose and liquid metaphors to blur past and present. The narrator’s research into Stein’s role in shaping modernity becomes a vehicle for exploring her own sense of helplessness and lack of agency in a hyperconnected, war-weary present.

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