What to Read -- Archives : poetry, drama, criticism
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How Can We Tell? submitted by Wallis Leslie
More >>“It was so, it was not, in a time long forgot” is the stock opening of Arabic folktales and recurs throughout the pyrotechnically intriguing yet perplexing production of Salman Rushdie in Satanic Verses. How can listeners tell what is so or what is not? Should they even try? (Remember John Keats’ theory of negative capability that posits all creativity stems from the ability to tolerate not knowing an answer, not forcing uncertainty into a box of certainty).
In Rushdie’s novel, many stories are told, some of them called “satanic verses.” These verses would be statements of “truths” purporting to come from God or from well-meaning people, but possibly coming from Satan or from people with evil intent. If even a revered prophet could be (temporarily) persuaded to accept false testaments out of practical rather than divine...
Posted by Ms. Wallis Leslie on Feb 6 2011 8:51AM | 0 comments
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Words in Our Ears, submitted by Wallis Leslie
More >>Much ink and cybertext has been devoted of late to lamenting, deploring, celebrating, and generally wondering about the value of various media for the delivery of words. Each medium has advantages.
In the case of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, the author reads his own novel for the audible version of the text. Since the narrator is a poet who is putting together an anthology of contemporary rhymed and metered verse, the delivery of the sounds and rhythms of the words and lines he contemplates is wonderfully delightful and instructive.
Baker takes readers on a quirky tour of trends in poetry through the point of view of narrator Paul Chowder, a somewhat hapless and almost hopeless procrastinator, who finds the writing of an introduction to his anthology a nearly insurmountable task. Chowder's efforts to win the return of his sweetheart Roz, to tend to his dog Smacko, and to keep body and soul together without cutting his finger off musicall...
Posted by Ms. Wallis Leslie on Nov 8 2010 11:11AM | 0 comments
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To Be Or Not to Be, reading Irvin D. Yalom's "Staring at the Sun," posted by Wallis Leslie
More >>Keats' poem "When I have fears that I may cease to be" poignantly expresses the way that obsessing about the end of life can lead to nihilism. Keats’ fear that he might cease to be seems more like a certainty than a possibility, but the fear proves incapacitating to many people as Dr. Irwin Yalom explains and attempts to ameliorate in his book Staring at the Sun.
Yalom uses his many years as a psychiatrist working with patients as well as his personal intimations of mortality and his lifelong contemplation of the works of Epicurus, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer and many other philosophers and psychoanalysts to elucidate the subject of human mortality.
As the population of the United States trends more and more to the geriatric, one would think that death and dying would be in the forefront of the public imagination, especially since the preponderance...
Posted by Ms. Wallis Leslie on May 27 2010 5:35PM | 0 comments
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Stop Staring at That Puddle Narcissus: Projection vs. Perception, posted by Wallis Leslie
More >>The ability to distinguish what is in front of our faces from what we wish to have or imagine to see in front of our faces is a crucial life skill, one that may be less dangerously honed in reading literature than in navigating daily life.
Chinua Achebe calls Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" a racist text while I see it as exposing contemptible racist attitudes. Bob Poole’s Los Angeles Times article quotes UCLA Prof. Tom Wortham who labels Mark Twain a racist and advises, "Let's not try to see it [Huckleberry Finn] in terms of what we wish Mark Twain had written. Go back and look at the text." When I go back and look at the text, I see a young boy who chooses to damn his soul to hell rather...Posted by Ms. Wallis Leslie on May 6 2010 3:11PM | 0 comments
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