Vladimir Nabokov, on his birthday April 22  2025 revision

    A Russian mystic and Surrealist who railed against the formal authoritarian power and depersonalization of both organized religion and government, an aristocrat whose father had been assassinated by the communists, then driven into penniless exile, a vendetta he pursued through all his writing and the source of his magnificent critique of the failure of … Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov, on his birthday April 22  2025 revision

  Kathy Acker, on her birthday April 18  2025 revision

     “Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified” Kathy Acker      Punk icon and social revolutionary, model for the character of Delirium in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels, rebel and figure of the Goddess of Liberty; I celebrate Kathy Acker and her reimagination of our … Continue reading   Kathy Acker, on her birthday April 18  2025 revision

Charles Baudelaire, on his birthday April 9 2025 revision

“Only poets are innocent enough to invent such monstrosities, everything seems possible!” –Charles Baudelaire     A visionary aesthetics and poetry of beauty, fragile and exquisite, crafted with delicacy and imagination, a Romantic who saw himself as aligned with Byron and who pioneered Symbolism; such was Charles Baudelaire the poet, novelist, and critical essayist.      To … Continue reading Charles Baudelaire, on his birthday April 9 2025 revision

Donald Barthelme, on his birthday April 7

Absurd and surreal free-associative stories, playful, odd, and totally uninterested in comprehensibility, full of references to literature and philosophy, art and music, but also to pop culture and ephemera, Donald Barthelme’s works are comprised of found texts, collages of words, lists, theatrical declamations, bizarre dislocations and nonsequitors.      He used the methods invented by Gertrude … Continue reading Donald Barthelme, on his birthday April 7