In many ways, a writer is a prophet, not of the future but of the present. A writer digest reality ahead of the crowd. He or she makes sense of a senseless world and bends the links of random events into a chain that hopefully can stand up to the fabrications of history. For the truly subversive […]
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s early short stories. His insight into the human spirit is never tempered by the wide range of genres included within, whether he is retroflexing the boundaries of science fiction or conveying a simple love story. Almost every one can be read in about 20 minutes, but each leaves the reader with a cadre of […]
It’s becoming increasingly apparent to even the most distracted Americans that the country is falling apart economically and socially. It’s been a slow descent, but not so slow anymore. However, our problems are not merely economic. There is a shadow of social sickness enveloping the society, now becoming obvious to just about everyone. We documented this quite throughly […]
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” —Albert Camus It seems there has always been a draw to horror stories, the weird, supernatural, and unknown powers lurking just beyond our view. All of the mysterious creatures from classic horror dwell in the darkness, where our unconscious can project our deepest […]
Superheroes are the modern versions of classical mythology. They offer answers to philosophical questions about morality, what it means to be human, our responsibilities to each other, and more. Most importantly, they reveal our culture’s inner values. Put simply, they are a legitimate part of our cultural heritage, but in recent years superhero movies and other […]
Humanist and environmental activist Jerry Mander is nearing 80-years-old, but you wouldn’t know it to hear him. In recent years he has spoken on the dangerous, unsustainable and “obsolete” system of global capitalism, but his earliest and probably most influential public work is his manifesto warning about the many dangers of television. Here in his […]
I recently finished reading the Charles Dickens’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, a story of sacrifice and revenge before and during revolutionary France. Dickens was partially inspired to write the novel to to develop some of the themes he had addressed in previous novels, namely poverty. He insisted that if things did not change, […]
This is part 2 of 2. For part 1, click here. If the primary theme of the new Batman movies could be boiled down to one word, it would be fascism. Clearly, all superhero movies have fascist elements in them. They feature superhuman beings who through force of will and personal strength are capable of beating back otherwise […]
When I select books to read, I tend to choose one of two types: new books that are immediately relevant and old books that are immediately relevant. In other words, I read for content that I can apply, not for simple enjoyment or curiosity about other people’s lives. At first glance, Gore Vidal’s 2002 book, […]
Good art, real art that is, always reflects some greater reality about the times we live in. False art or corporate art seeks rather to distract from reality in an effort to get us to buy and consume more and more, never questioning how fragile the whole system is. We think the next Batman movie […]
