Robert Zaretsky

Robert Zaretsky teaches in the Honors College at the University of Houston. He is the author most recently of Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague.

Thought Experimenters

Making sense of a broken world

by Robert Zaretsky | Monday, November 27, 2023

Putting the Story Back in History

Hayden White on truth, facts, and the allure of a well-told tale

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, June 01, 2023

The Decreationist

Simone Weil’s thoughts on the unmaking of the self

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, August 24, 2023

Just Imagine

Adam Smith on the faculty that makes us human

by Robert Zaretsky | Monday, June 05, 2023

The Friend Zone

Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on what makes a marriage tick were downright radical for their time

by Robert Zaretsky | Sunday, February 19, 2023

Words, Words, Words

What does the advent of ChatGPT mean for already beleaguered teachers?

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, January 12, 2023

The Affair Rekindled

Remembering the plight of Dreyfus and the effect it had on a young Marcel Proust

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, August 11, 2022

The Bloom Has Faded

Reforming the Western canon may not go far enough

by Robert Zaretsky | Monday, June 22, 2020

Meditations on Marcus

The philosopher-emperor who reigned during an age of pandemic and war

by Robert Zaretsky | Saturday, August 08, 2020

Love in the Time of Camus

What the French writer can teach us about surviving a pandemic

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, May 14, 2020

The Long 20th Century of Terror

A history in ten books

by Robert Zaretsky | Thursday, August 18, 2016

The Fabulist

A literary critic’s ugly deception

by Robert Zaretsky | Tuesday, March 11, 2014

My Life as a Door

Not exactly Yeats, but noteworthy nonetheless

by Robert Zaretsky | Friday, June 01, 2012

Plunging to Earth

Once the sport of daredevils, skydiving now offers it existential thrills to grandmothers, pudgy geeks, and even the occasional college professor

by Robert Zaretsky | Friday, June 03, 2011

Giving Absurdity Its Due

In the Panthéon, Albert Camus joins a kindred soul

by Robert Zaretsky | Monday, March 01, 2010