Today in Karl Wolff’s CCLaP essay series “On Being Human,” it’s ‘The Culture’ novels by Iain Banks, in which humans, aliens, and machines all live in a post-scarcity utopia. Banks’s novels follow eccentrics and troublemakers in a society where humans can switch gender, become aliens, and even become machines. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: the Culture
Why is Alfred Buber an important character for modern readers? Alfred Buber’s story is a riff off several things: isolation, male loneliness, a feeling some of us may have that for others life is richer, more sensual, more rewarding than it ever will be for us. Buber is frozen by that feeling, by the sense that he is a spectator at his own life, shut out of any chance at love, at being wanted, at feeling full and satisfied. He mistakes these feelings, I think, for desire, and I believe many men do this: conflate loneliness with desire, as if … Continue reading An Interview with David Schmahmann, author of The Double Life of Alfred Buber
KUMAR(to Goldstein)Well, if you have the yellow fever tonight, there’s a rocking Asian party over at Princeton tonight. GOLDSTEIN Man, I have the yellow plague. There’s nothing sexier than a hot Asian chick…or dude for that matter… Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004), script by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867) by Karl Marx A Woman of Property David Schmahmann … Continue reading The Double Life of Alfred Buber by David Schmahmann
With inspiration taken from Arthur Mee’s turn of the century work called The Children’s Encyclopedia, “that cared nothing about alphabetization,” Chad Faries wrote The Book of Knowledge. Like The Children’s Encyclopedia, this little volume of poetry represents “a tapestry of complete knowledge,” embracing everything from cartography to sexuality to regional history (in this case, Iron County, Michigan) to animals and the avant-garde. Published by the puckish literary upstart calling itself The Vulgar Marsala Press, the Book of Knowledge has four sections with abundant illustrations peppered throughout. Faries possesses a poetic voice intellectual, eccentric, and playful. Despite his PhD in Creative … Continue reading The Book of Knowledge by Chad Faries
The representation of Hell as a cartographic region has its origins in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante adapted the imagery already present in medieval painting and sculpture to comment on his political situation and his own scientific and theological beliefs. He populated it with real people, including political heroes and villains, good popes and bad popes, adulterous princesses, and monsters human and mythological. On Dante’s spiritual journey, he traveled with the Roman poet Vergil down the various circles of Hell and then up Mount Purgatory. Finally, led by his beloved Beatrice, he journeyed through the heavenly spheres until he was in … Continue reading Critical Appraisal: The Landscape of Hell
The appreciation of a novel can occasionally come down to something as random as timing. When one reads a book too early or too late, one can miss important elements within the story. This reviewer read Lord of the Rings too late and found its cod-archaic prose akin to downing a sedative. Similarly, when reading Paradise Lost in middle school, the only thing gained was “bragging rights” since the poetry remained impenetrable. All this represents a roundabout preface for my appreciation of Georgeann Packard’s novel Fall Asleep Forgetting. In the months leading up to September 11, 2001, the inhabitants of … Continue reading Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard
Isabel at Midnight by Ken Knight offers a fascinating world of organized crime, white supremacists, and “psycho-kink.” The novel centers on Isabel Marcano, a scion of a Virginia-based Mafia family. She suffers from helios-porphyria, meaning she would get serious burns if she exposed her skin to sunlight. With this ailment, Isabel worked various night shift jobs. The novel opens with Isabel winning a wrongful termination suit thanks to the work of an arrogant lawyer named Diego Tanner. Knight throws in a few more characters. Isabel’s friend Danielle Kenyon, a successful escort, has a hidden agenda. There is the corrupt cop … Continue reading Isabel at Midnight @ Joe Bob Briggs
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
The short tragic life of Nathanael West produced four novels. Dying penniless and alone, West bequeathed a literary legacy that has reverberated in the works of Alexander Theroux and Thomas Pynchon. The two works collected here, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” a long short story, and The Day of the Locust, a novella; offer the reader a sampling of West’s scathing apocalyptic satire. In little over 180 pages, the reader encounters ferocious black humor, hard-boiled surrealism, and apocalyptic visions. Nathanael West belongs to the family of innovative literary Modernists like T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and William Faulkner. “Miss Lonelyhearts” is a story about … Continue reading Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West
“Americans love sex scandals, and nothing better tells the story of American than sex scandals.” So begins David Rosen’s Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming. Sensational title aside, Rosen charts the hidden history of America from the erotic shenanigans of the Puritans to the erotic shenanigans of Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, and Ted Haggard. Rosen does a magnificent job of placing sex scandals into a historical context. Each era derived specific things from the sex scandals. These sex scandals found use as either cautionary tales or political fodder or entertainment. Rosen remains even-handed on a topic … Continue reading Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming, by David Rosen
The Driftless Area Review 