Literary Zen XII
I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. Continue reading Literary Zen XII
Category: Literary
The articles in this category make me feel bookish and astute
Literary Zen XI
There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. *Perhaps a better … Continue reading Literary Zen XI
Literary Zen X
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell. Continue reading Literary Zen X
If it’s Ungeziefer why not just call it Ungeziefer?!
Okay, admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer so please take my perplexity for what it’s worth… About a plug nickel, that’s what. But anyway, I know it’s easy for a one-language knuklehead like me to complain, but … Continue reading If it’s Ungeziefer why not just call it Ungeziefer?!
Fans of Albert Camus are so absurd
Yeah, so call me absurd…
Anyway, as happens with my other such favorite influential authors — Kafka, Vonnegut, Melville, Hemingway, London, Conrad… (I know, I know. This list is very male and very white… I’m working on that. I promise.) — I, like clockwork, begin jonesin’ for a Camus fix at least once a year.
Right now I’m in the midst of satisfying my most recent Camus craving by plowing through several of my perennial favorites of his — The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall.
However, yesterday I began reading for the first time a short story collection of his called Exile and the Kingdom, and I’m saddened and a bit embarrassed to report to you that, after three stories in, I really don’t have a clue what’s going on in any of them. They, after the first read, just don’t make any sense to me. Hopefully they will after subsequent reads.
But I gotta tell ya…
Continue reading “Fans of Albert Camus are so absurd”
Literary Zen VIII
Literary Zen VII
A Poetic Response to our Occult Relationship with the Vegetable as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs … Continue reading A Poetic Response to our Occult Relationship with the Vegetable as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Meditation on an Introduction’s Second Paragraph as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Having moved slow and steady through two readings of Nature, with nightly accompaniments of Librivox audio readings that would lull me away to sleep with visions of all the vast universal wonderments dancing in my head, it is now time … Continue reading A Meditation on an Introduction’s Second Paragraph as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Meditation on an Introduction’s Opening Passage as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation … Continue reading A Meditation on an Introduction’s Opening Passage as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Meditation on a Title and an Introductory Poem as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings; The eye reads omens where it goes; And speaks all languages of the rose; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form Continue reading A Meditation on a Title and an Introductory Poem as found in “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I Am Resolved
I am not one who dwells on the past, or, at least I try not to; for, unless one is fondly recalling, perhaps in a prayerful moment of divine gratitude, all the wonders and blessings the Begetter On High has begotten one, it is mostly a futile and potentially harmful self-flagellating exercise of ego worship in the negative. However, as hard as I try to stay securely in the now and out of the then, I still do find myself unconsciously lost back yonder from time to time reflecting on my life, and I am highly skeptical of anyone who … Continue reading I Am Resolved
Literary Zen VI
Literary Zen V
Literary Zen IV
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Literary Zen III
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Literary Zen II
Zelda…and her writer husband
Hanging out in B’more this morning. The Fitzgerald’s have an ever-present presence here, especially Zelda. It makes me happy. #wherewewritershang Continue reading Zelda…and her writer husband
Bookies on the Books
The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced next week and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the odds makers are making noise for the usual suspects. Of course we all know it’s all just a guessing-game (as most gambling is) as to who will win, a game depending on the author and scholars who make up the selection panel, and, unfortunately, the international politics at play. That said, still it’s fun to guess. Here are some of the odds: Haruki Murakami is the favorite at 5 to 1 Joyce Carol Oates is at 12 to 1 Philip Roth … Continue reading Bookies on the Books
KURT★BRINDLEY 