Records of a floating life
If you looked back (given a sufficient amount of time) at your life, what details would you choose to record? Just the essentials? As the great T’ang poet Li Po … Continue reading
Genji monogatari
So much has been said about Genji Monogatari (源氏物語): some say it is the world’s first novel; others, the greatest novel ever written; others again an incomparable source of information … Continue reading
True Fictions
This is a true fiction about how the venerable genre of true fiction gave rise to the novel in England in the 17th century. Their antecedents probably explain why the … Continue reading
Democracy
The word ‘democracy’ has a confusing etymology, and nobody knows how to really define it: which makes it an easy term to use duplicitously. My advice is, don’t get in … Continue reading
The Golden Ass
Apuleius was a Latin writer who lived in the second century AD (about 124-170 AD). He is the last major writer of (surviving) classical Latin, a relic of the stable … Continue reading
Racism
The nineteenth century in western Europe was an Age of Science. More than that, it was an age of applied science, and inventions that drew people together began to proliferate. … Continue reading
Dylan and Guthrie
I’ve just read Bob Dylan’s Chronicles volume 1 (Simon and Schuster 2004) and it took me straight to Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory, a memoir that is in some ways … Continue reading
Nudity
Nudity: the state of being without clothes. There are many reasons for it around the world. Don’t need clothes, can’t afford them, desire to be sexually provocative, need to shock, … Continue reading
