From the Vault: The Feejee Mermaid: The Milwaukee Taxidermied Treasure & Others
A look at a strange artifact from the Milwaukee Public Museum. Continue reading From the Vault: The Feejee Mermaid: The Milwaukee Taxidermied Treasure & Others
Tag: culture
Book Review: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, by C.M. Mayo
Mexico has been in the news lately. It has also been part of the literary tsunami following the publication of Roberto Bolaño’s epic 2666. In the section entitled “The Part about the Crimes,” Bolaño brings us into a world of chaotic violence against women in Santa Teresa near the US-Mexican border. The free flow of capital and drugs turns Santa Teresa into a zone of relentless murder, brutality, and violation. But to understand the violence of modern Mexico, one must also understand the violence of 19th century Mexico. C.M. Mayo’s historical romance, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, brings … Continue reading Book Review: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, by C.M. Mayo
The Cantos by Ezra Pound, A Critical Appraisal
I: The Mount Everest of Modernism “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary The Cantos. Ezra Pound. The very mention of those names send shudders down even the most well-read literary snob. T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” seems like a small indentation in comparison. The only work with comparable difficulty and lit crit caché is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Reading these works carries along serious bragging rights. “I saw the new Terrance and Philip movie. Now who wants to touch me?” Eric Cartman said in the South Park movie. As a reader … Continue reading The Cantos by Ezra Pound, A Critical Appraisal
Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad
“When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.” Antonin Artaud, “To Have Done with the Judgment of God” (1947) “The Earth is a body without organs. This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987) Malcolm Reynolds, Angel, Buffy, Joss, and River In the Whedonverse, there are the Big Damn Heroes and the Big … Continue reading Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad
Books I’m reading
FICTION *Portrait of a Lady by Henry James *The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker *The Cantos by Ezra Pound NON-FICTION *Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by John Chancellor *Rising Up and Rising Down (7-Volume Set) by William T. Vollmann Continue reading Books I’m reading
The Shadow of a Dog I Can’t Forget, by Mary Kennedy Eastham
Mary Kennedy Eastham’s book, The Shadow of a Dog I Can’t Forget, contains poetry ranging from the elegiac to the erotic. The verbal economy and stunning imagery leaves you breathless while you travel among the denizens of a very strange, very beautiful Southern California landscape. Think Six Feet Under episodes set to poetic meter. The poems confront and explore issues like nature, identity, class, and desire. For the rest of the review, click here. Continue reading The Shadow of a Dog I Can’t Forget, by Mary Kennedy Eastham
The Driftless Area Review 