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
Sad that her birthday falls on a day of mourning, the assassination of Martin Luther King, a memorial I observe in accord with my own understanding; yet also we must honor their lives, now linked together for eternity as they were in life through their friendship, with action as well as with reflection. Let us … Continue reading Maya Angelou, on her birthday April 4
A transgressive humor and wit, a concern for the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of things, and an exuberant desire for life; Milan Kundera evokes a compelling sense of kinship in the reader, regardless of his subject. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a masterpiece of world literature, and The Festival of Insignificance is … Continue reading Milan Kundera, on his birthday April 1 2026 revision
Superbly written stories crafted with a language of beautiful delicacy and wit, with ideological vendettas and rants thereof; the works of John Fowles explore themes of identity and meaning, truth and beauty, stopping just short of the polemical. They include the beautiful film The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a reimagination of the story of … Continue reading John Fowles, on his birthday March 31
Nikolai Gogol, comedian, satirist, fantasist, social revolutionary, who doubles dream characters with real ones and reflects our world in a funhouse mirror image, who was set in motion by his friend Pushkin and was claimed by Dostoevsky as a personal source and authorial model, was a pathfinder of modern Russian literature, art, and music, … Continue reading Nikolai Gogol, on his birthday March 31 2026 revision
Pouring forth words like a fountain, Bohumil Hrabal writes in a lyrical stream of consciousness which recalls that of James Joyce, Walt Whitman, and Allen Ginsberg, works filled with characters who are oddballs and outcasts and somehow very familiar like members of an extended family you meet at seasonal tented gatherings, of events outrageous … Continue reading Bohumil Hrabal, on his birthday March 28 2026 revision
From the profoundly learned, compassionate, and very human Mario Vargas Llosa we have a feast of uncontestable Great Books; an incomparable masterpiece of postmodern magical realism by way of Zola entitled The Green House, The Way to Paradise on the lives of Gauguin and his socialist-feminist grandmother, a historical novel on the great Irish … Continue reading Mario Vargas Llosa, on his birthday March 28 2026 revision
“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” ― Tennessee Williams, Conversations with Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, The Night of the Iguana, The Glass Menagerie; the iconic films which became part of our culture, shaped cinema as an extension of … Continue reading Tennessee Williams, on his birthday March 26
Grotesqueries, paradoxes, alarums and terrifying visions, suffering and redemption, the frightening of the horses; Flannery O’Connor, a self-described Thomist, is among the greatest authors the world has ever produced, and possibly the best religious writer of the modern age. Her great novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, her short story collections … Continue reading Flannery O’Connor, on her birthday March 25
A poetry of language and identity, exile and dislocation, and of the effects of colonial imperialism and war; David Malouf wrestles with the origins of violence, nationalism, and racism as great themes throughout his novels. A reimagination of Tolstoy’s War and Peace set in WWII, The Great World can be numbered with On … Continue reading David Malouf, on his birthday March 20
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 