This book proves its usefulness in its good timing. Coleman and Weaver investigate the numerous pop cultural pieces here, analyzing how specific treatments reflect attitudes of society at large. Continue reading Reviews in Brief: Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture, by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver
This week at CCLaP, Karl Wolff reviews “The Cage” by Gordon Weiss, a former UN worker who writes about the human rights disaster of Sri Lanka in its battle with the Tamil Tigers. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Cage, by Gordon Weiss
This week in the CCLaP series “On Being Human,” Karl Wolff analyses Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking “Trilogy,” where the famed avant-garde writer sought the essence of what it is to be human by stripping away the setting, plot, and characters of three small novels in a row. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: The Trilogy, by Samuel Beckett
This week’s installment of Karl Wolff’s essay series, On Being Human, examines the feminist science fiction novel “Swastika Night”, an alternate history predating Orwell’s “1984” that explores the darker regions of human behavior in a far future Europe ruled by medieval Nazi knights. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin
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
Being Human BBC Three First off, there’s the premise. A vampire and a werewolf share a flat together with the ghost of a dead woman. I admit to being skeptical when I heard about Being Human. While it sounds like a paranormal romance version of MTV’s The Real World, the BBC series Being Human presents a compelling drama about the desire to “be human.” Being Human is the brainchild of Toby Whithouse, a writer from the recently rebooted Doctor Who franchise. With this creative firepower, Being Human creates a show that possesses fantasy elements and a superior drama with complex … Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Being Human (BBC series)
My introductory essay to my series, “On Being Human” has been posted on CCLaP. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: An Introduction
I will be writing reviews and themed essays at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Continue reading Introducing CCLaP Fridays
An infrequent feature on classic books forgotten to the mists of time. The name Lawrence Durrell is not a name mentioned with any frequency these days, but his work deserves a revival. The Dark Labyrinth, published in 1947, begins with a simple enough premise: a small group of tourists visits a Cretan labyrinth. In the ensuing narrative, the group gets lost with certain members getting rescued while others never return. With this basic plot, Durrell spins a tale chock full of philosophical rumination, surgical precision social satire, and capacious character development. The foredoomed tour group includes a failed artist, … Continue reading Forgotten Classics: The Dark Labyrinth (1947) by Lawrence Durrell
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
The Driftless Area Review 