Yann Hellier's video: Daniel Mendelsohn reading at the Village Voice Bookshop in Paris

Daniel Mendelsohn discusses being a critic, blogging, Tennessee Williams and sentimentality at The Village Voice Bookshop in Paris, France, for the launch of his collection of essays; How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken. Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960) is an American memoirist, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator. Mendelsohn was born on Long Island and raised in the town of Old Bethpage, New York. He attended the University of Virginia from 1978 to 1982 as an Echols Scholar, graduating with a B.A. summa cum laude in Classics. From 1982 to 1985, he resided in New York City, working as an assistant to an opera impresario, Joseph A. Scuro. The following year he began graduate studies at Princeton University, receiving his M.A. in 1989 and his Ph.D. in 1994. His dissertation, later published as a scholarly monograph by Oxford University Press, was on Euripidean tragedy. Mendelsohn began contributing reviews, Op-Eds, and essays to such publications as QW, OUT, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Village Voice while still a graduate student; after completing his Ph.D., he moved to New York City and began writing full-time. Since then his review-essays on books, films, theater and television have appeared frequently in a number of major publications, most often in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Harpers magazine, where he is a culture columnist. Others include The New York Times Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Newsweek, Esquire, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. Between 2000 and 2002 he was the weekly book critic for New York Magazine, and between 1996 and 2006 his reviews appeared frequently in The New York Times Book Review, where, from 2013 to 2014, he was also a columnist for the "Bookends" page. Mendelsohn has been the recipient of numerous prizes and honors both in the United States and abroad. Apart from awards for individual books, these include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Harold D. Vursell Memorial Prize for Prose Style (2014); the American Philological Association President's Award for service to the Classics (2014); the George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism (2002); and the National Book Critics Circle Award Citation for Excellence in Book Reviewing (2000). Mendelsohn's academic speciality was Greek (especially Euripidean) tragedy; he also published scholarly articles about Roman poetry and Greek religion. From 1994 to 2002, he was a part-time Lecturer in the Classics department at Princeton University. Currently, he holds the Charles Ranlett Flint Chair in Humanities at Bard College, where he teaches one course each semester on literary subjects. In April 2008, he was the Richard Holbrooke Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. In the Spring of 2010, he was a Critic-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome, and in April 2014 was a visiting writer at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Mendelsohn is one of five siblings. His brothers include film director Eric Mendelsohn and Matt Mendelsohn, a photographer; his sister, Jennifer Mendelsohn, is also a journalist. Other links of interests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzE8OfP72iQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAB3939dudY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VInBE9RZQNw