Nathan DeGrave
2,915 words
Nathan DeGrave is among the peaceful January 6 demonstrators who are being kept in the Washington, DC jail for practicing their supposed right to free speech and freedom of assembly. Their situation has been dire in an unimaginable hell. I cannot describe what these people are facing any better than the man who is living it now. Here is his message. (more…)
O’Brien (Richard Burton) demonstrates that 2 + 2 doesn’t always equal 4.
2,306 words
Did the international crises of 1947 and 1948 leave their mark on the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four? I’ve spent a lot of time on this question, and so far as I can tell, the answer is – yes; but only obliquely. And George Orwell may not even have been conscious of the fact.
3,232 words
Connolly, Burnham, Orwell, & “Corner Table”
“In the torture scenes, he is merely melodramatic: he introduces those rather grotesque machines which used to appear in terror stories for boys.”
—V. S. Pritchett, The New Statesman, June 18, 1949
4,780 words
While Western expansion in the United States really started when English settlers travelled overland from Massachusetts to Connecticut in 1635, a true film of the Western genre is only set west of the 100th meridian in the years between the Confederate surrender at Appomattox and the coronation of Edward VII. While warfare has existed since time immemorial, a true War Movie is only set between 1933 and 1945, during the time of Hitler and the Second World War.
"Wicked Man" -- North Korean Poster
1,127 words
Francis Pollini’s Night
2,106 words
Brian Aldiss
Moreau’s Other Island
Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1980
Moreau’s Other Island by the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss was published over thirty years ago, but it still retains a certain “bite” in socio-biological terms.
