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.

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

Meditations on Marcus

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

By Robert Zaretsky | Saturday August 8, 2020

The Bloom Has Faded

Reforming the Western canon may not go far enough

By Robert Zaretsky | Monday June 22, 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 1, 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 3, 2011

Giving Absurdity Its Due

In the Panthéon, Albert Camus joins a kindred soul

By Robert Zaretsky | Monday March 1, 2010

Silent Partner

By Robert Zaretsky | Tuesday September 3, 2024

Nights at the Opera

By Robert Zaretsky | Thursday August 15, 2024

Iris as Pupil

By Robert Zaretsky | Friday March 1, 2024

A State of Perpetual Unease

By Robert Zaretsky | Friday December 15, 2023

Thought Experimenters

By Robert Zaretsky | Monday November 27, 2023

The Decreationist

By Robert Zaretsky | Thursday August 24, 2023

Just Imagine

By Robert Zaretsky | Monday June 5, 2023

The Friend Zone

By Robert Zaretsky | Sunday February 19, 2023

Words, Words, Words

By Robert Zaretsky | Thursday January 12, 2023

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