Greatest poet of the Arabic language and scholar of its literature, secular humanist and fearless voice of diversity and tolerance, Adonis championed freedom of conscience and individual autonomy against Islamization as political and religious tyranny. For who stands between each of us and the Infinite serves neither. Syrian born as Ali Ahmad Said, he … Continue reading Adonis, on his birthday January 1
Cinematic montages and the juxtaposition of images as narrative translations of pop art collages, the shift of meaning across boundaries and strategies of discord and surprise, nonsequitors, bizarre red herrings; the novels of Manuel Puig illuminate our shadow selves like a Magic Lantern. His stories can be Surrealist dream voyages, subversions of Freudian psychology, … Continue reading Manuel Puig, on his birthday December 28
“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness” – Jean Genet Among the great iconoclasts and poets of liberation, Jean Genet became himself a figure of the Rebel so anointed by Sartre; but also he is a Saint and mystic whose fictionalized autobiographies … Continue reading Jean Genet, on his birthday December 19
Metaphysical fantasies, Surrealism and dreams, a Quixotic tilting at authoritarian power structures, the world as a prison of the flesh and a web of treacherous illusions, varieties of truth and lies, echoes of Kafka, Gogol, and Camus; Philip K. Dick is a seer whose visions of our possible futures illuminate questions of human being, … Continue reading Philip K. Dick, on his birthday December 16
Writing as a form of scientific inquiry,detached, precise, visually oriented and object- directed thinking, a language of surfaces and not essences; Gustave Flaubert was a collector of characters,witticisms, convolutions of language who pursued an elusive humanity with the aloofness of Descartes’ rationalism. His aesthetic goal was to absent the authorial voice entirely; to objectify … Continue reading Gustave Flaubert, on his birthday December 12
Naguib Mahfouz seeks through his novels to guide his nation into the future by reclaiming the values of traditional faith, in works of great humanity, insight, and genius which portray the lives of ordinary peoples in adaptation to historical forces. To this end he marshals a vast scholarship of both Islamic and Western … Continue reading Naguib Mahfouz, on his birthday December 11 2025 revision
Death and the immortality of the spirit, untitled poems with short telegraphic lines and obscure rhyme, unconventional punctuation and other personalizations of grammar; Emily Dickinson made her own rules. A scholar with wide ranging interests, her poetry is shaped by the influences of Wordsworth and Emerson, Keats, Whitman,the Brownings, Shakespeare, the Bible, … Continue reading Emily Dickinson , on her birthday December 10
A gorgeous synthesis of classical paganism and Puritan Christianity, John Milton’s epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, reimaginations of the Old and New Testaments respectively, form an extended meditation on the implications of free will, and an exposition of the paradoxes of Christian theology and its social and political consequences.Hubris and sin are … Continue reading John Milton, on his birthday December 9
Hilarious,vivid, gorgeous evocations of Magical Realism drawn from life, the stories of Louis de Bernieres transform the histories of real people into myths of human meaning and value, and their nations into palaces of memories and identities which lie just beyond the edge of the real. You may direct anyone who questions the value … Continue reading Louis de Bernieres, on his birthday December 8
America’s most important political philosopher and communications theorist, his foundational text Manufacturing Consent formed the basis of the propaganda unit I taught yearly in my Forensics class. If you need a guide to the science of persuasion as social control beyond the works of Cicero, look no further. Bread and circuses, indeed. Masters of … Continue reading Noam Chomsky, on his birthday Dec 7
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 