literature

Lately, in my ongoing exploration of the artistic movements of the American past, I’ve noticed that, in a mere half-decade (1960-65), creative achievements in the performing arts — music, drama, film — were so outstanding as to never to be equaled again (in my opinion).  What are my criteria for such “greatness” in these art-forms?  Basically, powerfully humanistic and vigorously executed creations, works that express — often subtly and with considerable nuance — ultimate human values.  Both rational and emotional, such a work must exhibit coherent, unified structure, as well as an authenti

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By: Jay Dyer

By: Jay Dyer

Guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY Harold Bloom had made it clear many times that his investment in the Greek literary critic Dionysius Longinus, writing in the first century AD, was a way to address and revisit the fundamental encounter of the sublime in our living. Commentators have noticed a remarkable ‘agon’ being played out in … Continue reading Still Life, Aflutter – Harold Bloom and an Old Incantation: Prasanta Chakravarty →

The howls of protest emitted by the high priests of political correctness (here and here) still have not abated since the Nobel Literature Prize committee announced the 2019 winner, Austrian writer Peter Handke. The ongoing sordid affair lays bare at least two things. First, the arrogance and primitivism of the reality-challenged totalitarian commissars who have serious problems grasping the sea change in the global relationship of forces.

Juan Garcia helps the family’s youngest, Jacob, 9 months, as he fusses during a recent mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Central Oregon, Madras, where the ecosystem looks like parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua.
He introduces me and my colleague, Susy S. — both of us from Family Independence Initiative, a national non-profit now working in both Lincoln County and Jefferson County to engage families in a large social capital project – to his family and parishioners.

A brief history of books, resistance, the police and politicians. It is humanly impossible for even the most learned judge to have read every book referred to in their court. For a brief while this week, the judge conducting the trial of activist Vernon Gonsalves, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon incident of 2018, became … Continue reading Books About Wars in Your Country →

How do you explain the fact that the John Birch Society used 1984 as its main office telephone number in the 1960s? Or that both Animal Farm and 1984, are force-fed to virtually the entire western world in people’s formative years in their teens, even as Big Brother jacks up repression and surveillance, and pursues ever more cruel and senseless wars?
A look at Orwell’s weaknesses reveals how Big Brother turn the tables on him, getting the last laugh.

Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
— W. B. Yeats translation of Jonathan Swift’s Latin epitaph.

The most remarkable development during his time in Brussels was the penning down of the Communist Manifesto, which firmly established Marx as well as Engels as the intellectual leaders of the working class movement. Karl Marx Lived in Brussels from February 1845 to March 1848 He celebrated New Year’s Eve 1947/48 together with the “Deutscher … Continue reading Marx in Brussels →