Books
Robert Ingersoll is all but unknown in our time. Susan Jacoby sets out to answer why. One answer she proposes is that it was generally assumed that the reactionary expressions of religion Ingersoll contended against would simply fade away over time, to be replaced by education, broader culture and scientific reason.
“As a white atheist male I am told it is none of my business to deal with what‘s going on in the so-called de-colonized societies enforcing their religious laws on their citizens.” — Joshua Sobol
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones. — John Cage to Richard Kostelanetz, 1988
“What Sherwood Anderson knew and understood was the nature of inarticulate lives and what people do when they’re in the grip of strong feelings and words fail them.”
Consider these few notes my handing The Porcupine of Mind off to you — you read it, you write about it, then we’ll come back and talk.
Though written in 1984, The House of Jasmine’s description of widespread political corruption and social decay in the Sadat era is powerfully relevant to the uprisings of 2011 when Mubarak was ousted and that are still roiling Egypt today.
George Harrar is not really a mystery or suspense writer, per se. His work is noir and tension-filled, but there is a philosophical and psychological sub-strata that’s more reminiscent of Kafka than Robert Parker.
Literary history credits Rainer Maria Rilke with establishing European poetry’s seminal concern with the duality between inner and outer worlds. Could it be that Comtesse Anna de Noailles was his precursor in this regard? Translator Norman Shapiro and Black Widow Press should be thanked for bringing her back into the discussion.
For those who missed this evening, pick up Roz Chast’s “Theories of Everything,” which is a wonderfully huge collection of her cartoons published in “The New Yorker.”
Recent Comments