4,647 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
There is a wonderful Ridley Scott film from 1977 called The Duellists, based on a Joseph Conrad short story, “The Duel.” It follows the exploits of two hussars in Napoleon’s Grande Armée as they traveled from 1800 Strasbourg, to 1812 Russia, and back again to France after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. Were their enemies the Prussians, or the Russians, or the British? No, their true enemies were one another — (more…)
Philip Roth
1,318 words
We hadn’t thought about Philip Roth in some years, so it was with some delight, and a few misgivings, that we ran into him recently in the pages of The New Yorker (Jan. 30 issue). Actually it was just a Philip Roth e-mail, or portions of e-mails, extracted for a Talk of the Town “casual” by Judith Thurman.
Thurman had sent a note to the 83-year-old Roth because she wanted to pick his brains on the only subject anyone wants to talk about these days, Our New President. (more…)
8,319 words
Jason Reza Jorjani
Prometheus and Atlas
London: Arktos, 2016
“A man is, whatever room he is in.”[1]
Christy Mattling: Tellin’ them innocent kids stories about the dead and their hauntings! That’s the work of the devil. You’ll pay for it. The Devil! That man is the Devil Himself!
Renee Coliveil: Oh shut up, you potentate of righteousness![2] (more…)
5,206 words
Chapter 12 of Studies in Classic American Literature
POST-MORTEM effects?
But what of Walt Whitman?
The ‘good grey poet’.
Was he a ghost, with all his physicality?
The good grey poet. (more…)
4,893 words
“We can’t go back. We can’t go back to the savages: not a stride. We can be in sympathy with them. We can take a great curve in their direction, onwards. But we cannot turn the current of our life backwards, back towards their soft warm twilight and uncreate mud. Not for a moment. If we do it for a moment, it makes us sick.
David Herbert Lawrence, 1885–1930
6,137 words
“What then is Moby Dick? He is the deepest blood-being of the white race; he is our deepest blood-nature.
“And he is hunted, hunted, hunted by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness. We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. (more…)
