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Fuse Theater Review: “Doctor Knock” — Medicine as Flim-Flam Farce

August 18, 2011
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Anyone who has sat through a commercial for one pill or another will recognize and acknowledge the satiric thrust of this enjoyable 1920’s French farce.

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Fuse/Public Humanist Commentary — Spreading a Desire for the Good Things in Life

August 17, 2011
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I have written another commentary for the Mass Humanities blog, The Public Humanist. It is a reaction, admiring but skeptical, to John Armstrong’s recent polemic IN SEARCH OF CIVILIZATION: REMAKING A TARNISHED IDEA.

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Poetry Review: Poet Philippe Jaccottet — Teasing the Secret Out of Things

August 17, 2011
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Philppe Jaccottet is one of Europe’s most prolific and distinguished poets. This tome comprises selections from his later works, the bulk of which are prose poems whose urgency reflect a heightened awareness of death.

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Book Review: The Woman Who Killed Princess Diana?

August 15, 2011
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Perhaps the novel is not the most original read, but AN ACCIDENT IN AUGUST contributes to the growing number of literary meditations on the evolving pathology of celebrity,

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Movie Feature: What’s “The Czar of the Bizarre” Been Up To?

August 13, 2011
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Director David Lynch, “The Czar of the Bizarre,” hasn’t been working on a new, full-length film, but he’s still been busy delivering on his artistic promise to produce that which is Lynchian.

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Film Review: Should We Fear Miranda July’s “Future”?

August 12, 2011
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THE FUTURE, director/actor Miranda July’s followup to 2005’s ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW is brave, unexpectedly poignant and devastatingly sad.

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Poetry Review: Daniel Borzutzky — Killing From Too Great A Distance

August 12, 2011
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There is no question that somewhere in this collection poet Daniel Borztuzky is drawing a parallel between bureaucrats and terrorists, between politicians and increasingly dehumanized societies—both in America and abroad—but the connections are like underground cables: I can only guess at where I might dig to uncover them.

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Theater Commentary: Happy 400th Birthday to Ben Jonson’s “Catiline: His Conspiracy”

August 10, 2011
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Multiple Google searches suggest that no one is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the second of Ben Jonson’s tragedies. I don’t think I will live to see a production of CATILINE, but attention should be paid to this awkward but powerful script. Filled with moral strength, perceptive realpolitik, and rich poetry, it proffers a brilliant serio-comic meditation on political gangsterism.

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Book Review: “Deliver Us” — A Memoir of a Boy’s Life in a Small Italian Town

August 9, 2011
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Originally published in 1963, and today considered by some critics a landmark in twentieth century Italian literature, in English Luigi Meneghello’s memoir feels more like a duty than a delight to read.

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Short Fuse: Eternal Recurrence — Freud, Marx, Mao Zedong Thought

August 8, 2011
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What I do suspect though, and find evidence for in BLOODLUST is that Freud is immune to any final dispatch or disproof, and will likely, through one portal or another, go on reinserting himself into our culture.

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