Caspar David Friedrich, Wall at Dusk, 1837-40.
3,000 words
My ancestors arrived in the Tidewater region of this continent around 400 years ago, and lived and died almost entirely beneath the Mason-Dixon line. As a Catholic, a Southron, and an Anglo-American, I am filled with sorrow and impotent rage at the sight of my forebears being demonized by those who are so manifestly inferior to them. Read more …
8,561 words
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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Yukio Mishima’s 1963 novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is one of his darkest works. Set in post-War Yokohama, it is the story of Fusako Kuroda, a thirty-three-year-old widow who runs a boutique selling Western luxury goods, and her thirteen-year-old son Noboru Kuroda. (See Alex Graham’s discussion of the novel here.)
Fusako’s world is entirely feminine, bourgeois, modern, and Western. She is also deeply lonely. Then she meets Ryuji Tsukazaki, the second-mate on a steamship. Read more …