authors

Fans of Albert Camus are so absurd

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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…

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Slowing Down the Synapses

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Or, Speeding Up the Reviews

Not the primary reason but one of the reasons I decided back in April to take a hiatus from the web was because I wanted to give my brain a break from all the nonsensical chatter that was cluttering it so.

I have been having what I collectively call chemo brain issues for quite some time so I thought it may do me some good to lay off for a while all the hyper-clicking and attention-span deflating skim-reading that the web so sweetly and successfully induces us into doing and which studies have told us is altering our brain and its ability to focus on and process information.

To counter what seemed to me to be my lack of focus and ability to process effectively process information (perhaps less a result from all my web time and more a result from all the chemo and prednisone I used to be strung out on years ago (and, in the case of chemo, which I still take daily dose addiction of)), I decided to turned off the web for a while.

Which, for the most part, I did surprisingly enough.

To fill the time I no longer spent on the web, much of which had been dedicated to this blog, I mobilized the pen and cracked open the books pretty hard.

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KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS

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trump-gif-2

You know, in the past, regardless the president in power, it has always pretty much been a constant whine from all the many millions of gun lovers toting their many more millions of guns that their Second Amendment rights are under constant attack by a relentless blizzard of liberal, commie-shaped snowflakes… so their steady stream of bawling blather has always been received by me as nothing more than unintellig-ent/ible, self-flagellating noise.

But now, with our First Amendment rights under a for real attack by Trump and his pack of stooges, it pains me to have to assume that those same Second Amendment Peters who were constantly crying Wolf about losing their rights are now happily standing by, armed and ready, to support and even help facilitate our Wolf-in-Chief achieve his vicious autocratic goals.

Unbelievable.

Seriously.

I never could have believed, and still can’t, that we in the United States of America would ever have to be seriously concerned about seriously losing our First Amendment rights…

But, alas, here we are so very seriously concerned.

So concerned, in fact, that PEN America felt the need to publish an article entitled DEFENDING FREE EXPRESSION: A TOOLKIT FOR WRITERS AND READERS.

If you aren’t familiar with the freedom-defending organization, this is what PEN America is about:

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

★ ★ ★

Here are some “bullet” points from the toolkit for our intellectual self-defense:

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“Post-apocalyptic fiction has been moved to our current affairs section”

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HEROES OF DYSTOPIA
HEROES OF DYSTOPIA

I wish I were smart enough to be able to claim this post’s eye/brain-catching headline as my own. But, alas, I cannot because I got it from this read-worthy #longread of an article written by John Feffer, a journalist and author who, with his read-worthy article, attempts to (in subtle sublimity) — and in my view does — make the case of why we should purchase his new near-future dystopian novel which spookily mirrors the current dystopic, Trumpian events of today, and who, Feffer, got it, the headline, from a friend on facebook in the form of a viral photo of a sign in front of bookstore in Boston.

A whole lotta fortuitous and fast-moving mechanics behind that headline up there, wouldn’t you agree?

To paraphrase/abuse a popular insurance company commercial from several years past that was trying to get us to fork over the beans for their coverage so we would be covered/prepared for any disastrous potentiality…

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Meet our 2016 National Book Award Winner

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COLSON WHITEHEAD: USA TODAY “2016 AUTHOR OF THE YEAR”

Colson Whitehead was born in 1969, and was raised in Manhattan. After graduating from Harvard College, he started working at the Village Voice, where he wrote reviews of television, books, and music… COLSONWHITEHEAD.COM

2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER

IMAGE COURTESY OF DOUBLEDAY

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Why Write, Dammit?!

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The Writing Hand

I’m not a very good writer, by which I don’t only mean it in regards to what I’ve written, but also and mostly to how I’ve written.

The act of writing pains me and I’ll pretty much do anything mostly legal I can to get myself out of it. I guess the best way to express how I feel about writing is: I don’t like having to write, but I truly love having had written.

But still, I don’t really know why I do feel the need to write except that there is some unidentified force and/or source beyond my reach and comprehension that obliges me to do so.

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BELIEVE IN LEAVE

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So, I was thinking (yes, I understand the risks)…

But, I was thinking, just imagine if each of the 25,109 and growing followers of this humble site were to donate just $1.00 to help me fund my film LEAVE…

Just imagine how much that would be!

Keep in mind that I am a product of the United States public school system, and that, by design, my higher level degrees have absolutely nothing to do with math, so my calculations may be a bit suspect…

But I believe that if every one of the 25,109 followers were to donate $1.00 to help me fund my film, that would come to the heavenly financial figure of… [finger cipher]…

$25,109.00!

Now that there would be a whole lotta of cheeze and it would help me in a whole lotta ways in realizing my cinematic dream called LEAVE.

Now, I’m a practical man (not!), and I know all 25,109 of you donating $1.00 each to support my dream is an impossible expectation…

But, let’s consider what you get here for free 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, 365-days a year non-stop and in perpetuity for as long as our pretty yet petulant planet revolves around the sun that may help motivate you towards donating that $1.00…

You get to publish your work to the RELATING TO HUMANS feature…

You get the IABS&R…

You get occasional “PRO-TIPS”…

You get LITERARY ZEN…

You get ARTWORK?…

You get HUMOR…

You get HEALTH advice…

You get MOTIVATIONAL ADVICE…

And you get so much more.

But, even with all this free stuff created just for you forever floating around here, I understand that my hope of everyone donating even just $1.00 is an impossible expectation.

But then again…

SO WAS THE CAVS COMING BACK FROM BEING DOWN 3-1 IN THE FINALS!

AND SO IS THE TRIBE WINNING THE WORLD SERIES!

BUT IT’S THE YEAR OF “BELIEVELAND” BABY!

THIS YEAR, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

WHICH MEANS, WITH YOUR HELP

LEAVE IS POSSIBLE!

…

Uhm…

Too much, right?

Yeah.

Sorry ’bout that…

Anyway…

Please donate what you can, if you can, my friends >> BELIEVE IN LEAVE.

Thank you.
 

BELIEVE IN LEAVE