July 4 2020 A Declaration of Liberty As we celebrate Independence Day, I offer you a meditation on the contradictions of power, the frailty of order, the illusion of authority, the relativity of truth and the falsification of history in service to power and authority in the form of a story, originally written as … Continue reading A Declaration of Liberty
Tonight I will not sleep But I will dream For in dreams We forge new truths Cast off your illusions With me and together We will remake the oaths and bindings Of our world We will transgress the boundaries Of the Forbidden And discover new identities and Dimensions of human being Unleash the thousands of … Continue reading April 30 2020 Dreams of Walpurgisnacht
“The point is not to teach us something in particular. The point is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached. And to give pleasure.” Susan Sontag An inescapable force of protean genius, her subversion of critical theory and practice cast a looming shadow over our culture for decades. Like the protagonist in … Continue reading Susan Sontag, on her birthday January 16, 2020 revision
The sky above me is filled with snow clouds, so the moon is hidden but its power is everywhere. A pair of owls have found each other, calling out into the night with growing vigor and hope of discovery until they finally met in a flurry of joyous song, having found the one being in … Continue reading January 10 2020 Reply to my sister on the Wolf Moon
Best Fiction: Plow Over The Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk Wonderful and strange novel which won the Nobel Prize; unlike Jerzy Kosinski she has thus far escaped the consequences of the Polish government’s Holocaust denial. Blake is a special love of mine, and her use of his mythology is brilliant and a dazzling … Continue reading The best books of 2019, the ones we’ll still be reading a thousand years from now
Buried Mirror, Fuentes Farewell Espana, Sachar Age of Philip II, Braudel 1492: The Year the World Began, A Foot in the River, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, The World: A History, Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years, Columbus, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, Ideas That … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2019 Edition World Literature: Spain
The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe, Michael Pye A History of the Vikings, Gwynn Jones The Viking World, Brink ed Norse Mythology, John Lindow The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, Margaret Ross The Last Viking Trilogy: The … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2019 edition World Literature: Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden. & Denmark
Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, Suzanne Massie Natasha’s Dance:: a cultural history of Russia, Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991, Orlando Figes Russia and the Russians: A History, Geoffrey Hosking Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Robert K. Massie St Petersburg: a history, Solomon Volkov Baba Yaga: The Wild … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2019 Edition World Literature: Russia
Journey to Portugal: history and culture, Jose Saramago Prince Henry “the Navigator”: A Life, Peter E. Russell The Lusiads, Luís de Camões The Crime of Father Amaro, Eça de Queirós The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa The Inquisitors’ Manual, The Natural Order of Things, Act of the Damned, An Explanation … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2019 Edition World Literature: Portugal
The Dutch Golden Age: gateway to our modern world, Hans Goedkoop An Embarrassment of Riches, Rembrant’s Eyes, Simon Schama Amsterdam, Russell Shorto The Autumn of the Middle ages, Erasmus and the age of Reformation, John Huizinga Van Gogh, Steven Naifeh & Gregory White-Smith The Erasmus Reader The Assault, Harry … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2019 Edition World Literature: the Netherlands
