By Clara Godwin-Suttie The concept of camp has long been regarded as famously undefinable, famously decadent, and famously gay, with a noticeable presence throughout history and contemporary times. Susan Sontag, a brilliant queer woman who understood sexuality and gender identity through a progressive perspective of celebration and creativity, wrote the seminal essay that is credited with defining camp and bringing it...
Continue reading...Poetry
Tristan Tzara, the “cool dad” of Dadaism
Tristan Tzara, born in Romania in 1896, did not live a happy life. He survived two World Wars and life as a Jew in Europe during the Holocaust. He was also an incredible man, a founder of Dadaism, who wrote plays, poetry, essays, manifestos, directed films, painted and composed music. While it might not be surprising to struggle to come...
Continue reading...The passionate spirit of Charles Péguy
Facts Charles Péguy was a French novelist, dramatist, and idealist – who later in life became deeply fascinated by mysticism, the fight against fascism, the search for world peace, and the analysis of artistic genius. Quotes “Love is rarer than genius itself and friendship is rarer than love.” “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.” “We must always tell what...
Continue reading...Interviews with Authors – Dave Williams
Congratulations on your beautiful new book, “Nobody Will Like This Book”. Could you tell us a little about the idea behind it and about your writing journey; how it started out, whether it changed much along the way? Thank you for calling it beautiful! I was having fun creating my book “The Dancing Fish” (poems and drawings), and I wanted...
Continue reading...Author Interview – Alexander Raphael
Alexander Raphael discusses his new (third) book, his place in the literary world, the power and challenges of writing daily. His first book of short stories – THE SUMMER OF MADNESS – is famous for moving, funny, heartbreaking, informative, and utterly captivating plots. His second book – ILLUSIONS, DELUSIONS – is famous for a wide range of characters, twisted and...
Continue reading...Grotesque: abnormally large, shockingly ugly, distorted, and ludicrously odd
I have a remedy against thirst, quite contrary to that which is good against the biting of a mad dog. Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you; drink always before the thirst, and it will never come upon you. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, book 1 Have you ever wondered what a grotesque world would look like?...
Continue reading...Aspects of the Novel
No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it’s meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author’s brains out. Bohumil Hrabal, Czech novelist There’s a book called Aspects of the Novel, a series of lectures from E. M. Forster, written in 1927. I haven’t read it myself...
Continue reading...Book Review “Colder: A Collection of Poetry & Prose”, River Dixon
Winter. Somewhere in North Dakota. River: Do you know what I’d ask Santa if I’d ever met him? Dixon: Hot babe? River: I’d say “I want COLDER”… Dixon: Are you mad, it is already -16,6 F! Why do some young kids dislike poetry? Why do so many people unsatisfied with modern poetry? When Marianne Moore wrote a poem titled “Poetry,”...
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