Why Do They Come to Hinder Us?
Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (La Trahison des Clercs) [1927] Julien Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals can be read as a gloss on the Dreyfus Affair. In this polemic against intellectuals who have…
Birthday Greetings to Dianne Lee
You have been for many decades A light in the darkness Countless people (and creatures) You have loved and sacrificed for It’s true, Love is the best Resistance— How come NPR hasn’t interviewed you these…
Transmitting Beauty
Donald Keene, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan Columbia University Press, 2008 The first sentence of George Steiner’s first book (on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) reads: “Literary criticism should arise out…
“I Belong to Chomsky”
The following is the chapter, “Peril,” from The Book of Mev. Spring 1994 was blooming in the Bay Area. We participated in a Good Friday demonstration at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear laboratory with Steve…
The Last Few Pages of “The Poetry Deal” by Jessica Flier
Jessica is taking my Diane di Prima class, and posted this at our class blog. She gave me permission to share with whomever I wished. Enjoy! The last few pages of The Poetry Deal are…
Knowing and Not Knowing the Global American Berserk
Philip Roth, American Pastoral Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997 …the angry, rebarbative spitting-out daughter with no interest whatever in being the next successful Levov, flushing him out of hiding as if he were fugitive—initiating the Swede…
Her Vivacity Gladdened Life
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Knopf: Everyman’s Library, 1992 I’ve acknowledged previously the importance of Reinaldo Arenas and Eduardo Galeano during the late 1990s into 2000 as I was trying to figure out…
Share the Wealth with Alee Quick: How a Small Newspaper Is Staying Committed to Watchdog Journalism
I’m Alee Quick, local news editor for The Southern Illinoisan, a regional newspaper based in Carbondale. We cover Southern Illinois from Missouri to Kentucky, and down to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers….
Don’t Get Rattled by Samsara
So many of my brilliant former students— Their families from Gujarat, Bijar, Delhi, Kerala, West Bengal— Would pity me Or express incredulity That I, their erstwhile quasi-prof, Hang on the words Of Sri Anandamayi Ma…