As far as contemporary absolute leaders are concerned, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il certainly ranks as one of the most interesting. To say nothing of his policies, politics, and views, he has been seen as larger–and decidedly stranger–than life. Known as a gourmand despite the contradictions inherent in that lifestyle vis Communist practice, he has been […]
If you have a few hours to spare, I recommend taking a look at Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide, by Peter Allison. The title is pretty self-explanatory, and the book is just a series of anecdotes about the author’s time spent as a guide in the Okavango Delta. […]
The conspiracy theory craze of the 1990s–criticized and largely explored in some of Steve Beard’s journalism from his collections Logic Bomb: Transmissions from the Edge of Style Culture and Aftershocks: The End of Style Culture–helped further open up and prime the public’s willing desire to believe that the forces that seemed to control their bank […]
One of the Last Arch-Modernists.
Alain Robbe-Grillet, French artist and pioneer of the “new novel” died this past week aged 85. Robbe-Grillet had one of the most maddeningly difficult world-views of the 20th century. His cold prose, disdain for conventional narrative structure, and emphasis on experiential memory set his work part from even his […]