Nearly three years ago, I announced a new podcast called “Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera”. I truly had no idea what I was doing, and proudly said so. I’ve always been a medium-is-the-message guy, and the podcast medium just has an energy and a freshness these days that attracts … Read the rest
There’s a smell of scorched earth in the air lately, here in America.
It’s smoke from Pacific coast wildfires, and it’s something more: the warning scent of an authoritarian future we must avoid, even as our society chokes on climate change, racism, social injustice, predatory capitalism and military escalation. Scorched … Read the rest
A few days ago a friend told me she was worried about my rage. “You seem upset a lot,” she said.
Another friend told me the same thing after seeing my photos of a protest march. This friend says I need to “relax” about Donald Trump, Mike Pence, stolen seats … Read the rest
It was only six years ago — but it seems so much longer than that — that I wrote a book called Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (and Why It Matters). This book emerged from a series of blog posts I was composing (under my then-pseudonym Levi Asher) called … Read the rest
Robert Maynard Pirsig, author of the great 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died on April 24, 2017 at the age of 88. This novel was a cornerstone of the late Beat/Hippie literary era, and it continues to touch the hearts of countless readers all over … Read the rest
The audiobook of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born To Run is narrated by Bruce himself. It kicks off with a bizarre, unexpected noise: a slow thundering torrent, familiar but eerily transformed. This is the opening of the great rock anthem “Born To Run” played at half speed: booming drum roll, snaky … Read the rest
In the play called Rhinoceros by the Romanian dramatist Eugene Ionesco, two men are sitting in a cafe in a small French town when the improbable news arrives that a rhinoceros was seen in town. Soon the two men look out the window to see several rhinoceroses rampaging through the … Read the rest
(April Rose Schneider has written for Litkicks about novelist Richard Farina and Rush lyricist Neil Peart. This is by far her most personal piece. Thanks, April. —Marc)
“Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.” — Euripidies, from “Prometheus”
Einar Wegener—Europe’s best known transgender person in the … Read the rest
I look to the greatest pacifists for inspiration when answers are hard to find, and that’s why I recently pondered what Martin Luther King would say to Donald Trump if he could witness the absurd spectacle of the 2016 Republican candidate for President. It doesn’t take a genius to figure … Read the rest