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God by Alexander Waugh

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The premise of God is simple: write a book about the descriptions of God.  Alexander Waugh, son of columnist Auberon and grandson of satirist Evelyn, crafts a diminutive book exploring the attributes of God.  Mining a variety of sources, including different Bible translations, Gnostic, apocryphal, visionary, Jewish, Muslim and Mormon texts, Waugh offers the reader a multitude of perspectives on the topic.  The challenge comes from the traditionally held beliefs that God is invisible and immaterial.  Waugh leaps from one religious tradition to another, comparing and contrasting, occasionally dissecting a long-held truism with a satirist’s eye. The writing is crisp … Continue reading God by Alexander Waugh

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The Last Estate by Conor Bowman

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The Last Estate by Conor Bowman is a rare miniature treat.  The book, little over 160 pages, contains multitudes.  It focuses on the story of Christian Aragon, the last surviving son of a Provençal vintner.  He is nearly seventeen in 1920 and the shadow of his older brother Eugene, killed in the Great War, looms large.  The hot summer has Christian conflicted by the opposing forces of lust and virtue, the former represented by the young geography teacher Miss Playben and the latter by the cantankerous Jesuit priest, Father Leterrier.  Fr. Leterrier tortures his students with interminable lectures about Holy … Continue reading The Last Estate by Conor Bowman

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Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam @ Joe Bob Briggs

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The United States has a lot of problems. On occasion, someone might have a bright idea on how to solve those problems. The book asserting it can fix all America’s problems is Grand New Party: How Republicans can win the working class and save the American Dream by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. The main idea of Grand New Party is for the GOP to offer an agenda that would help a pan-ethnic working class. Unfortunately, it seems that the people most in need of reading this book have not done so. Arizona attempted to solve its immigration problem in … Continue reading Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam @ Joe Bob Briggs

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A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

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Near the end of his life, Count Leo Tolstoy wrote two lengthy essays on the topic of religion.  Hesperus Press includes these two essays, “A Confession” (1879 – 1882) and “What is Religion, and What Does its Essence Consist of?” (1902).  The edition includes a foreword by novelist and Orange Prize winner Helen Dunmore with an introduction by famed Tolstoy translator Tony Briggs. Tolstoy would revisit the religious theme in “Father Sergius” (written in 1890, published in 1898), an excruciatingly introspective tale of sensual temptation, religious duty, and personal mutilation.  With “A Confession” and “What is Religion?”, Tolstoy works within … Continue reading A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part V

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Two Personal Favorites: Spook Country (2007) and Domino (2005) Spook Country The toughest challenge for any author is to follow up a big hit with an equally big hit.  Following the epic genius of Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon released the misunderstood novel Vineland.  In the case of William Gibson, he experienced career resurgence with the release of Pattern Recognition, an “empathetic thriller” about advertising, intelligence, and an elusive video.  Gibson set the novel in the present and it reads like a strange relic, an artifact set in a world after 9/11 but before YouTube. Spook Country follows the same general … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part V

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part III

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Reappropriation: Camp, Kitsch, and Sincerity “When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition.  The artist hasn’t attempted to do anything outlandish.” – “Notes on Camp” [1965], Susan Sontag “Need more clarification? To his fans Liberace was the epitome of cultured taste, but of course we know he was kitsch. However, unlike the not-quite-weird-enough musical stylings of ABBA, say, or the Village People, Liberace-style kitsch is so weird, so outré, that hipsters find it impossible to appropriate as cheese. Liberace didn’t make his work inappropriable on purpose; others, however, have. The … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part III

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Unpopularity as Popularity: or How to be a hipster. “Every aspect of hipster culture amounts to little more than an elaborate pissing contest.  …  Hipsters ignore rules because they think it will make them look like they don’t care. There is no end result, just a continuous cycle of mediocre indie rock and scruffy looking dudes. By basing their actions on avoiding the mainstream, they are in fact guided by the mainstream.” – “Cracked Topics: Hipster”, Cracked.com You’re not cool enough.  The bands you like aren’t unpopular enough. Hipsters, the annoying quasi-subculture, has its own uses and abuses of unpopularity. … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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“In place of a hermeneutrics we need an erotics of art.” – “Against Interpretation” [1964], Susan Sontag Challenges and Non-Responses The job of the critic is, by turns, tastemaker, evangelist, and champion.  The best critics harness the powers of intellection and enthusiasm to inform his or her readership on a work’s merits.  If a work receives more merits than demerits, than, in a roughly mathematical fashion, the creator obtains a “good review.”  This reviewer finds works with “mixed reviews” or polarizing reactions (see Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) most attractive, since “mixed reviews” are not sure things.  A tiny element … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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The Sticks by Andy Deane @ Joe Bob Briggs

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I review books for the Joe Bob Briggs website. For those unfamiliar with Joe Bob Briggs, he did reviews of drive-in fare on Monstervision (a staple of the TNT network in the Nineties).  Briggs is also an author and actor.  He played a small, hilarious, and pivotal role in Martin Scorsese’s Casino: The Sticks by Andy Deane In a literary marketplace still riding the wave of vampire fiction started by the Twilight series, it’s nice to see a book that focuses more on werewolves and is actually scary. If you’re horror cravings demand adult language, cleavage, firearms, blood, carnage, and … Continue reading The Sticks by Andy Deane @ Joe Bob Briggs

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Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay Number Zero

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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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