Pierre Loti exhibit

       There's an exhibit, Pierre Loti, l'ambigu exotique, at the Musée du quai Branly, and in Al-Ahram Weekly David Tresilian looks at this exhibit about this "quintessentially orientalist author", in Phantom of the Orient.
       I like this:

Brooding in his house, according to the exhibition curators eventually a tomb erected on the ruins of a vanished life, Loti collected, packaged and labeled items testifying to his past experience, creating a kind of museum of lost time as he did so.

       Apparently there isn't much to these: "packages, of various shapes and sizes but always wrapped in the same brown paper", but the sheer amount must make for an impressive ... collection.