I’m going to let other people remember David Bowie for his cultural importance — his brave and liberating embrace of sexual ambiguity, his clever shape-shifting, his sophistication as an actor, his sharp sense of pop art’s relationship to rock and roll.
He was truly great in all of these ways. … Read the rest
I was psyched when I heard that a novel about New York City in the punk rock 1970s by Garth Risk Hallberg was expected to be one of the blockbusters of 2015, and that the unproven young author had been awarded an astonishing two million dollar advance for this book. … Read the rest
What does “Beat Generation” mean today, 60 years after Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg rocked a San Francisco crowd with a world-changing poetry reading, and 46 years after Jack Kerouac’s wan and befuddled death in St. Petersburg, Florida? And what, I wonder, does it mean personally to … Read the rest
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? — Robert Browning
My first Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has been an eye-opener. We aimed for $10,000 and got 57% of the way by the end of the declared 60 day interval, which is pretty good but … Read the rest
David Shields is a puckish literary critic and Litkicks favorite whose epic 2010 book Reality Hunger proposed that creative writers may as well skip the pretense of fiction and simply write the truth, since that’s what readers value most in either fiction or non-fiction anyway. His latest book examines a … Read the rest
A great skit on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live suggested an Adele song as a cure for obnoxious and endless Thanksgiving dinner arguments about politics.
Adele is great, but here’s a more substantial (though simple) thought experiment that can produce amazing results. It works great if you’re going to be … Read the rest
Paris and Beirut were brutally attacked by ISIL terrorists on Friday, and people are talking about how France and the world should respond. French President Francois Hollande has declared that “this is an act of war”, which is a disturbing echo to anybody who remembers how eagerly US President George … Read the rest
What’s it like to be a pacifist on Veteran’s Day? Well, I can only tell you what it’s like to be a pacifist with a father who is a Korean War-era veteran who helped to turn me into a pacifist … on Veteran’s Day.
These are some pictures of my … Read the rest
A couple of days ago we talked about the need to reclaim the word “pacifism” and return it to general use. We believe the time is ripe right now — if Bernie Sanders can bring “socialism” back from the dead we’re sure pacifism can’t be far behind.
Pacifism is not … Read the rest