In my college days I remember a few close encounters with the Nouveau Roman, a postwar French literary genre created by French authors who wanted to score with as many chicks as film directors did. My memory now glazes over a lot of the texts, but I do remember the books dispensed with plot and linear time in favor of the repetition of small details - a set of blinds, …

Many months ago I found myself exploring a website with the collected works of Alexander Pushkin, and taking inspiration from the Samuel Pepys blog, I thought it might be fun to import Pushkin's letters into an email client. Apart from the novelty value, the mail client provides all kinds of very useful sear…