Few literary figures have struggled with ownership of identity and internalized oppression on the scale of Roth, the Jew exiled by his tribe for transgression. In this he is a parallel of Jerzy Kosinski, a Polish Catholic persecuted to death by the Polish state as part of their Holocaust denial. As a writer … Continue reading Philip Roth, on his birthday March 19 2025 revision
The brutalization of war and other violence, the dehumanization of both victims and perpetrators, identity confusion, madness, a pathology of disconnectedness and alienation, misogyny; these are the themes of David Rabe’s plays and novels of toxic masculinity, the anchorages of his world. Authoritative and devastating when speaking as a witness of history about … Continue reading David Rabe, on his birthday March 10 2025 revision
Heir to the tradition of Akutagawa’s Kappa, which documented its author’s descent into madness and founded Japanese Surrealism, as well as that of Kafka to whom he is often compared, Kobo Abe lives at the intersection of Albert Camus’ songs of rebellion, Jean Paul Sartre’s diatribes of alienation and rebirth, the Surrealist satires and … Continue reading Kobo Abe, on his birthday March 7 2026 revision
Puzzles, palindromes, strange experiments of form; Georges Perec’s work is an exploration of the limits and boundaries of formal structures, and of the construction of meaning in a howling wilderness of life. Here be dragons; for we are all off the map, lost in a changeable world wherein meaning and value are only what … Continue reading Georges Perec, on his birthday March 7 2026 revison
Founder of the dominant literary style of the late 20th century, inescapable as a force of history, who bestrode a continent like a colossus, Gabriel García Márquez wrestles with vast personal and social themes and issues in his novels, with beautiful and grotesque prose. He writes books to survive tragedies by, violence and … Continue reading Gabriel García Márquez, on his birthday March 6 2026 revision
Of Akutagawa’s fantastical, multivalent short stories, two are important must-reads, the first being the universally acclaimed Rashomon. Kurosawa made one of the world’s great films of it, and as a worldview the Rashomon Effect has been applied to a broad spectrum of academic disciplines- possibly the only short story to become an empirical method. … Continue reading Ryunosuke Akutagawa, on his birthday March 1 2026 revision
Eminently cultured satirist and mocker of false idols, he took apart, tested & remade the pillars of our civilization in his novels, which read like the histories of alternate realities. In fact they are also a manual; he intends that we continue his work. Dazzling verbal fireworks and prestidigitation, a magician’s grand trick, … Continue reading Anthony Burgess, on his birthday February 25 2026 revision
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin, Seduction of the Minotaur A hero and lioness who refused to be silenced and worked her own printing press when no one would publish her books, she has always reminded me of that other great independent woman … Continue reading Anais Nin, on her birthday February 21 2026 revision
Misunderstandings, translations, the shifting nature of history, wherein truth and identity can be endlessly reinterpreted; there are multiple levels of ambiguity and confusion in Amy Tan’s novels, resulting from the disconnect between oral narrative conventions of Chinese mothers using traditional storytelling and the conceptual frames of their American daughters. A main theme of … Continue reading Amy Tan, on her birthday February 19, 2026 revision
“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Kazantzakis Freedom fighter, author, philosopher, adventurer and wandering scholar, Kazantzakis is a heroic figure like the subject of his masterwork Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, composed over 13 years (1925-1938), an immense epic poem written more beautifully than Homer’s but one of his least read … Continue reading Nikos Kazantzakis, on his birthday February 18 2026 revision
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 