Category Archives: Literature

Rings v. Rand

A very good recent article on the history of science fiction has this great quote from TV and comics writer John Rogers: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas … Continue reading

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Walker Percy Weekend

Watching this promo for the annual Walker Percy Weekend, which cuck extraordinaire Rod Dreher helped launch (it’s “a glimpse at what a Jewish immigrant gave to a small Southern town”), made me quite sad. Except for the hired black hands … Continue reading

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Sam Shepard’s “Spy of the First Person”

The NYT has a moving piece on the making of Spy of the First Person, the late Sam Shepard’s final, posthumous work, and one that explored his last months of life suffering from the worsening symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis … Continue reading

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PKD: Electric Dreams

The sheer volume of quality content in this, the Third Golden Age of Television, is overwhelming. The British show Black Mirror, a modern update to The Twilight Zone (with self-contained episodes riffing on the theme of our enslavement to technology) … Continue reading

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My Problem With Rich Lowry’s Problem with Cormac McCarthy

Just when I think Rich Lowry can’t become more of a clown, he dons an even bigger pair of floppy red shoes. In his very short post “My Problem With Cormac McCarthy” he writes: I just came back this week … Continue reading

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Falstaff

Allen Mendenhall reviews Harold Bloom’s new book Falstaff: Give Me Life (Shakespeare’s Personalities): The result is a solemn, exhilarating meditation on Sir John Falstaff, the cheerful, slovenly, degenerate knight whose unwavering and ultimately self-destructive loyalty to Henry of Monmouth, or … Continue reading

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Pound For Pound

In TAC, Scott Beauchamp reviews the new book The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound, by Daniel Swift (“Ezra Pound, Locked Away”): Ezra Pound is a litmus test as much as he is a poet. His cartoonish … Continue reading

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A Legion of Horribles (aka Death Hilarious)

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood … Continue reading

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The Sci-Fi Roots of the Alt-Right

In “The Sci-Fi Roots of the Far Right”, leftie David Auerbach makes me want to read the Hugo-nominated 1977 novel Lucifer’s Hammer, co-authored by Larry Niven and the recently-deceased Jerry Pournelle: Pournelle — who died earlier this month — first rose to … Continue reading

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Cormac McCarthy’s Gnosticism

In First Things, Peter Leithart has a brief article on “Cormac McCarthy’s Gnosticism”: Whatever the religious borrowings, McCarthy puts his sources to good literary use. Few writers are capable of the lush phantasmagoria of the battle scenes in Blood Meridian. … Continue reading

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