Philosophy Weekend has always been about moral, social and political philosophy (I originally thought of calling the series “Ethics Weekend”, but that title just does not have any zing to it). In the past couple of years, I’ve allowed two major developments to dominate my choice of weekly topics. First, … Read the rest
The image in this week’s Litkicks Mystery Spot #7 is from a 1951 aerial map of New York City. It shows the southeast corner of Central Park, a location immortalized in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. This is where Holden Caulfield stared at ducks in a … Read the rest
The last few were kind of difficult, so I’m taking it easy on all of you with this week’s Litkicks mystery spot. In fact, it’s a goddam walk in the park. Just tell me what this is a picture of, and name the novel that this image represents.
Every single … Read the rest
In Paul Auster’s City of Glass, a mad linguist named Peter Stillman pounds through the streets of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, observed by a writer named Daniel Quinn who is impersonating a private detective named Paul Auster. Quinn tracks Stillman’s movements in a red notebook and eventually realizes that … Read the rest
These city blocks may not appear exceptional to you, but they had a very specific and urgent meaning to a character in a famous modern novel. This character walked these streets every day, secretly observed by another character. Gradually, the meaning of these walks crystallized. Where are these streets, and … Read the rest
You folks did great this time — not a single wrong guess! Indeed, the answer to yesterday’s quiz question is the La Mancha region in Central Spain, north of Toledo and south of Madrid, where Miguel de Cervantes set his great comic novel Don Quixote.
Cervantes did not live … Read the rest
A great fictional hero roamed the dry and windy plains shown in the image above. His mind was on adventure and romance, and he found his fill of both. Can you identify the novel and the place?
Here are a few clues:
• He loved a woman who was known … Read the rest
The answer to yesterday’s mystery spot question is: Dublin, Ireland, and Ulysses by James Joyce (a big Litkicks favorite, though not necessarily a favorite of everyone at Litkicks).
North of the Liffey River in the center of the city, across the street from a large hospital, you can … Read the rest
Yes, it’s time for another literary quiz inspired by Google Maps. The hero of a novel lived at a spot visible in the image above, north of the river that streams through the city. What is the name of this epic city, and what is the name of the novel? … Read the rest