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• Cruelty, Revolution, and Deviance: Rimbaud and Artaud as Ideology Critique
  “We have faith in poison. We will give our lives completely every day. FOR THIS IS THE ASSASINS’ HOUR.” — Arthur Rimbaud, “Drunken Morning” “The revolution was in his poetry from the beginning and to the end: as a preoccupation of a technical order, namely to translate the world into a new language.” — Herbert …
• August Strindberg’s Inferno
  Alchemy, schizophrenia, witchcraft, and religious fanaticism, all leavened with a knowing wink of humor, Inferno, by Swedish author August Strindberg is an early example of the “unreliable narrator” literary device, in which the reader learns that the storyteller is seeing things from a distorted perspective. It is also deliciously macabre, if you like that sort …
• Philosophy Weekend: Heidegger on Art
  (A few weeks ago, guest blogger Tim Hawken wrote about Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory. Here’s his second Philosophy Weekend piece, on a related subject. Hawken lives in Australia and is the author of ‘I Am Satan‘ and ‘Hellbound‘.) You arrive at a contemporary art show with a friend. Excited about the new and interesting things …
• Once More to West Egg, Through the Valley of Ashes
  This is Willets Point, a sprawling center for automobile salvage located just west of Flushing Meadows Park in New York City, a place of amazing squalid beauty. CitiField, where the Mets play baseball, is visible just beyond the scrap yards. Willets Point, one of the last remaining vestiges of the Great Gatsby’s Valley of Ashes, …
• Kerouac’s Wheel
  Jack Kerouac’s poetry has just been enshrined in the prestigious Library of America series, which would have made him proud. No sooner is the book published, though, than comes the reaction. Bruce Bawer trashes Kerouac mercilessly in The New Criterion, with raw insults that go way over the top: Grimly reconciled though one may be …
• Constellation of Genius: 1922 by Kevin Jackson
  1922 was a special year for modernist literature. On February 2, James Joyce was the shy guest of honor at a small publication party for Ulysses in Paris. Sylvia Beach showed Joyce the book for the first time that day, thus establishing 2/2/22 as its Joycily pleasing official publication date. Ulysses is one of two …
• Timothy Spall as J. M. W. Turner as Mike Leigh
  As Mike Leigh’s majestic new movie Mr. Turner begins, the famous British artist J. M. W. Turner’s father buys pigments for his son in a dusty London shop. The vast psychedelic arrays of glass jars filled with powders of viridian, chrome, cobalt, barium and ultramarine seem as magical as Diagon Alley in Harry Potter or …
• First There Is A Mountain
  When I’m feeling stressed out, I head for nature. I found myself driving to Old Rag Mountain in Virginia’s Shenandoah range this weekend. I’ve done a few amazing hikes in this region: Mary’s Rock, Catoctin, Hawksbill, Big Schloss, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. The challenging eight-mile Old Rag hike has been calling out to …
• Revolt on Mount Parnassus: An Allegory in Copy/Paste
  Introduction PARIS – AUGUST, 1870 – An incorrigible, horrible genius. A fifteen year-old! disembarks at Rue de Maubeuge. A concussion of uncombed hair infested with a plague of lice. Soiled clothing. A homicidal cupid with the enormous hands of a strangler. A smarmy smirk, perfect skin, a beautiful terror with cherub lips and a pernicious …