J.G. Ballard died today after a long battle with prostate cancer. He is perhaps best known for his autobiographical novel The Empire of the Sun, but I will always remember his work from the seventies and early eighties, beginning with Crash and ending with his collection of short stories War Fever. It was these edgy, [...]
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Arts Festival Photos
It was my privilege to photograph this year’s Macon State College Arts Festival “Borderlines: Reading, Writing, Performing within American Spaces.” All of the speakers were excellent; I particularly enjoyed the stories of Tayari Jones and Carman Agra Deedy, though poets Lillian Allen and Lorna Goodison were also entertaining and poignant. My thanks to festival organizers [...]
Katrinko Must Die
In the preface to his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Raymond Kurzweil suggests that the most important question that we will face this century is how we define the “human.”
God Is a Comedian
From today’s Writer’s Almanac: It’s the birthday of Voltaire, (books by this author) the man who helped spark the Enlightenment in France, born François-Marie Arouet in Paris (1694). He was a well-known playwright and poet. He spent most of his late life in exile, and he wrote most of his work from England. In the [...]
Frames in Kafka’s Metamorphosis
In reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis for class last week, I noticed that the novella is framed in a way that highlights one of its central — if not the central — thematic concerns of the text. Figuratively, frames are a way to organize and structure reality. If you consider a photograph, it is framed or composed in such a way as to present the real world in an organized and predictable fashion.
Zemeckis’ Beowulf
I couldn’t help but be struck by the interesting re-telling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, by Robert Zemeckis, Neil Gaiman, and Roger Avary. They kept the basic story intact, but added a twist with Grendel’s mother and more subtle characters. In fact, the theme of fatherhood in the time of heroes was nicely problematized: the [...]
Bukowski on God
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own [...]