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 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
Our new Indiegogo project for Pacifism21.org has given me the opportunity to hear from many people who, it turns out, have widely diverse ideas about what the word “pacifism” means.
Some people have explained this to me in apologetic terms: they like me a lot, but they can’t support my … Read the rest
Henry David Thoreau and Walden came early into my life, thanks to my mother, a boldly independent career woman who must have felt oppressed by her era’s strictures of feminine married domesticity. She had a favorite quote from Walden that she would paraphrase liberally whenever the topic of housework came … Read the rest
(Please enjoy this delightful photo essay by Sherri Hoffman Hoye, who has been a friend of Litkicks for many years but has never felt inspired to contribute an article until she made a recent journey to a town called Red Cloud, Nebraska … — Levi)
I grew up in rural … Read the rest
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s long-unseen companion novel to To Kill A Mockingbird, is arriving with a shock.
Where Lee’s classic novel presents Atticus Finch as a lawyer who fights heroically for an African-American who is unjustly accused, the continuation of the story (written decades ago, but … Read the rest
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 … Read the rest
I stumbled upon our society’s most fascinating enduring metaphor by chance. Clicking around on iTunes, I noticed that I owned six different songs called “Ship of Fools”.
But these weren’t six different versions of one song. “Ship of Fools” was not a classic cover song, like “Dancing in the Streets” … Read the rest
Twenty-five centuries ago, a Hindu scholar named Panini produced an analysis of the Sanskrit language so remarkable that later language theorists such as Ferdinand de Saussure would eventually cite it as the foundation of linguistics itself. Panini shows up in Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty… Read the rest
