The Megapolitan Flaneur: Part 3: Objects and Meaning

The Megapolitan Flâneur is a series of short travel essays. These essays will focus on my trip to Chicago – September 4 – 6, 2013 – and what I experienced. Neither chronology or inventory, the essays will be reflective, free associative, and impressionistic. Full Disclosure: I am a staff member and assistant editor for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP). While I did wander and amble throughout Chicago, this was a “working vacation” for me. “A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, … Continue reading The Megapolitan Flaneur: Part 3: Objects and Meaning

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What I’m Reading 2012 and Other Business

What I’m Reading 2012 Overview: I’m currently reading five books.  Each poses certain challenges (in some cases, self-imposed challenges) to me as a reader, reviewer, critic, historian, and aesthete.  While New Year’s Resolutions get broken seconds after they’re uttered, these challenges will form an informal backbone to my reading schedule.  As it stands, I want to increase the frequency of my blog posts from bimonthly to weekly.  (The same goes for my other blog, Coffee is for Closers.)  The positive responses from readers has really inspired me to do more. As you’ll see with these challenges, I want to “raise … Continue reading What I’m Reading 2012 and Other Business

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Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay One

Essay 1: Capital and the historical moment From commodities to citizens. O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain! “Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)”, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1866) The Civil War: Revolution in Labor Relations The Civil War ended in 1865 bringing about the cessation of hostilities between the United States and the Confederacy.  After four years and … Continue reading Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay One

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Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay Number Zero

By way of an introduction … “It is simply misleading and vulgar to say of Marx, as Edmund Wilson in To the Finland Station and many others have done, that he was really a latter-day prophet[.]” – “Piety without content,” Susan Sontag [1961] “Marx’s thought marks a watershed.  Its roots reach back to Joachim of Fiore and further, to the inspired utterances of the Old Testament prophets.” – Reasons for Our Rhymes: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of History, R. A. Herrera [2001] “Better dead than Red.” – Anti-communist saying [c. 1950s] Karl Marx is a controversial, misunderstood, and often … Continue reading Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay Number Zero

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