When the Comrades classified my conduct and my smile as intellectual (another notorious pejorative of the times), I actually came to believe them because I couldn’t imagine (I wasn’t bold enough to imagine) that everyone else might be wrong, that the Revolution itself, the spirit of the times, might be wrong and I, an individual, … More Milan Kundera I
This is Lima marinera, which you must hear to believe. Axé.
Descanse en paz. There has been a video made in memory of Mr. Fuentealba which documents events leading up to his death, and Página 12 published an article chronicling his life. He grew up in the vicinity of San Martín de los Andes, which is in Patagonia. Our music for this piece of news will … More Carlos Fuentealba
PZ: I am not enjoying our relationship, Whiteman, and I would like certain things to change. WM: I am not willing, Z. PZ: Well then, Whiteman, it is time for me to go. WM: Absolutely not! It is strictly forbidden! The experts have ruled that there must be compromise in relationships. In this case the … More That Endless Whiteman
Here is Eva Ayllón on “Mal Paso.” This is coastal music from Peru, syncopated and African-based. Listen to that piquant Creole guitar. The square drums are called drawers. Actual drums were banned, back in the day, as subversive. Therefore the slaves would take the drawers out of the dressers and turn them into drums. Here … More Eva Ayllón
There is a book by Daniel Hurewitz called Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics, and Martin Duberman has reviewed it. The review starts like this: What is the self? Do we all have one? Is it best treated with Botox or with books? Is it grounded in genetic concrete or manufactured by … More Bohemian Los Angeles
Le Colonel Chabert leads us to the Cultural Parody Center, which in turn leads us to the documentary Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War, Parts I and II. It is fascinating and I hasten to call attention to it although I have not even finished watching it. The Cultural Parody Center quotes from the NYT review of … More On the Former Yugoslavia
I have spoken today with someone who still converses every night with the ghosts of the Viet Cong he killed. And every so often I hear a moving speech by an American who has visited Auschwitz and has contemplated the horror. Misanthropic or perhaps envious of such imagined innocence, I think it is very easy … More After 1945
Here are some marvelous paragraphs from David A. Bell’s review essay, introduced in the last post. In the twenty-first century the Enlightenment appears anything but the triumphant imperial “project” denounced by vulgar postmodernists. Its heritage is fragile and endangered. Admittedly, its works remain in the “canon”–but perhaps only because they go largely unread in certain … More Profane Illuminations
Now I am supposed to be at a festival but it is raining I am still cleaning out my bookcases and files. I would like to be reading: 1. Richard Serrano, Against the Postcolonial: “Francophone” Writers at the Ends of the French Empire (Lexington Books, 2005). The publisher’s blurb says: Richard Serrano begins his provocative … More La Libre Pensée
coldhearted scientist وداد 