Some Kind of Life
Notes on Stefan Zweig’s “The Post Office Girl”, assimilation, and shifting fortunes.
Author: Rufus F.
Year of the Scavenger, Season of the Bitch
Saul DeGraw thinks artists are too stuck in shock for the sake of shock. On the contrary, Jerry Saltz thinks the art world has become too conservative and easily-offended for the sake of taking offense. Who is right? Who will prevail?
Mexican Standoff
An update to that horrific story about the missing student teachers (normalistas) in Iguala, Mexico: the Mayor and his wife have been arrested, the Governor has resigned, a state prosecutor stepped down, a police...
Fue el Estado
In the L.A. Times, Professor Rubén Martínez offers a horrific tale from Guerrero State, Mexico, of 43 students disappeared into the abyss via “a thoroughly contaminated state, one in which the narco is the...
Very Still and Very Quiet
Today, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo received a military procession and funeral in Hamilton, Ontario. Firsthand impressions from the crowd.
Generation Exploiter
A thought experiment: could we say that this generation embraces the notion that culture workers should not be paid?
“And I Wasn’t Dead Anymore”: one story behind ‘A Farewell to Arms’
After he told my great-grandfather about dying on the battlefield, Ernest Hemingway said he’d never write about the war. Fortunately, he soon changed his mind.
From a Twitter to a Scream
If academic freedom is worth protecting for tenured professors, what about for the non-tenured majority now teaching in universities?
The Joyous Muckworm: Rereading ‘Tropic of Cancer’
Reading it again after about twenty years, the sex in Henry Miller’s book is less startling than the language.
Overheard
I’m sitting in the public library, where a volunteer is explaining the contents to a group of recent immigrants to Canada. “It’s not real. Fiction is not real,” she explains. Says you! I think.
What’s the Matter with Poetry? On ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’
What did Boethius (and Plato) have against poetry?
Whenever you’re with me, Make sure it’s still me: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
Stevenson’s story endures because we sympathize with Jekyll and identify with Hyde.
Honor
In Satrah, Punjab recently the esteem that had been cruelly stripped from one family was blissfully restored when Dilshad Bibi, acting with great dignity, honorably slashed open his daughter’s throat in front of a...
