Abstract: Aristotle’s Poetics was written circa 335 b.c.e. but then lost for many centuries, available only through a translation of an Arabic version. Much of its meaning has been argued over, although a few elements are generally accepted. Aristotle discusses drama and lyric and epic poetry. He also talks about the importance of form, diction, the ideal qualities of characters represented in literature, and the emotive or cathartic effect of the whole literary work. Disagreement about his meaning is due partly to the fact that Poetics was the most influential extended writing in literary analysis and theory in the West for two millennia. By the eighteenth century, writers and journalists were certainly discussing ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Chris Mavricos I first met Luce at a shady little pool hall on the far side of the Anklewood mountains. She worked the day shift from noon to seven and I came in at seven and stayed till two. All we did was ferry drinks from the bar to the tables. If the crowd wasn’t spending enough, we’d put out little saucers of peanuts to make everyone thirsty and if someone was getting too ripped and starting to make trouble, all we had to do was signal the bartender and boom, they were cut off. It’s not like the customers couldn’t have walked a couple extra steps and ordered their own beer or liquor, but the owner—a well-muscled brute of a woman with knuckle tattoos that read your next—had decided ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Kenny Louie I’m driving down the street and I have an overwhelming urge to take a bite out of my steering wheel, so I do. The steering wheel is black plastic, more like a toy car’s steering wheel than the faux leather-covered wheels my parents had when I was growing up. I don’t know what’s come over me. It doesn’t taste particularly good, and it makes a loud crunching sound against my teeth. It’s like the crispy version of a plastic pen, a familiar though not entirely unpleasant taste. It’s hard to swallow, but I swallow it and take another bite. I have to say that I like the sound it makes as I eat it. It fills my head with sound, like when you eat ice. I’m aware that my mouth ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photos by Steven Pisano Funding was always an issue. This was one of the administration’s favorite lines, and it was, Jonathan would later tell himself, what led to the mistake, which led to the miracle. Scrambling to find someone to fill the slot of Distinguished Visiting Writer without the money to bring someone truly distinguished, at least not someone who would be widely recognized as such, he’d made a typo, or, well, honestly he didn’t know how it had happened. Maybe he’d been thinking of Edmund White, whom he knew he couldn’t possibly afford and anyway whose status as a major gay novelist, perhaps even the major gay novelist, might stir up trouble at the small Catholic college ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude. ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Thomas Allen, clockwise from top left: Spring, 2004; Sugar, 2009; Maneater, 2006; Outbreak, 2009 Brian Dettmer, Charlotte Life or Theater', 2013, hardcover book, acrylic varnish, image courtesy of the artist and P•P•O•W, New York In the summer of 1924, while completing The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that [book] jacket you’re saving for me.” Fitzgerald went on to tell him that he had already “written it” into his novel. Perkins dashed off a mollifying reply: “There isn’t the slightest risk of giving it to anyone in the world but you.” The dust-jacket art featured Spanish ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Portrait of James Whale, courtesy of the George Eastman Museum In 1917, while serving as a second lieutenant in the British Army on the Western Front, twenty-six-year-old James Whale was captured by the Germans at Aisne Farm in France. Led off at bayonet point, he felt lucky; most of his platoon had been killed. He was transported to Holzminden, a prison camp in the heart of enemy territory where six hundred officers were already imprisoned. The brutal camp commander, Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer, claimed that the camp was escape-proof. Prisoners dug a hundred-yard tunnel with knives, forks, and frying pans, and twenty-nine men crawled free. Another seventy might have made it through if not for a ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Tyler Keevil My wife left work two hours ago and still isn’t home, so I’m haunting our back window, watching snow sweep through the ochre cone of a streetlamp further down our block. The streetlamp next to our house isn’t lit: not because it’s faulty but because the County Council has decided to switch these lights off at random intervals to save money. And because of that, I’m studying this other streetlamp, fifty yards away, trying to gauge the heaviness of the snowfall. There are gritters (what I would call snowploughs) out roaming the roads, but not enough of them. The council is cutting back on highway maintenance, too. They’re cutting back on everything. When it snows like ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Ralf Peek Jill was still sleeping, so he got out of bed quietly, and in the bathroom he pulled on his swimming suit and stepped into his sandals. She was still sleeping when he left the rental cottage that overlooked the bay. He planned to be back from his swim before she even woke because he knew she would worry. Earlier in the summer, there had been stories in the local paper about shark sightings all up and down the Cape, even close to shore, but there hadn’t been any reports in almost a month now, and at any rate, not a single soul in the area had been attacked, and what were the odds anyway' He wasn’t an overly cautious person, but he was hardly reckless. The cottage ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Anna and John Wilderson For a brief period in my late twenties, I lived alone on a horse ranch at 9,500 feet in the San Juan Mountains. The closest human heartbeat was thirteen miles away, the nearest airport two hundred. The altitude gave me vertigo and headaches and months of spectacular, disturbing dreams, but it was worth it for the sky, which was grandiose and constantly changing, a lava lamp let loose of its goblet. Never had I seen a sky like that, and I haven’t seen one since. Granted, I haven’t been looking. The ranch belonged to an ex-boyfriend of mine who was spending the year in Asia to find himself. From his itinerary, I concluded that finding oneself was best ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: When we say “Time” we mean ourselves. Most abstractions are simply our pseudonyms. We are time. Photo by David Bleasdale A play is a story that happens. It’s here—this moment, this accretion of moments onstage—before it’s gone. I prefer “moments” because rarely do we retain words, no matter how lyrically or pithily or wittily they’ve been uttered. We delight in, hold on to, and sometimes carry with us these moments that moved us—out of ourselves and into the present. Many years ago, though not so many years, I sat in a room and listened to a writer speak. I considered him old; I was not yet thirty. The writer was Barry Hannah, and he was somewhere in his sixties—an age far ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Patrick Robins That Friday afternoon in AAA Guns and Jewels, Shaun’s life flashed before his eyes, just as they said it would when you faced death, though it wasn’t his death but his grandfather’s that made the events of Shaun’s twenty-two years begin to reoccur as soon as he heard the old man shout, “Go right ahead and shoot me, you little shit!” Shaun was in the back room on the phone with a woman who was calling from Feed the Children. “Most of the people who live on our planet are hungry—and most of those people are infants and children,” she was saying when Shaun heard A. J. shout these words, turned around, and froze because of what he saw in the yellow, dirty electric light of ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Mark Twain published two sequels to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The first was Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). The other was Tom Sawyer, Detective, published two years later. Previously, he’d begun a third installment, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians. He didn’t finish it. Huck narrates both of Twain’s finished sequels. In Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom, Huck, and Jim see a hot-air-balloon exhibition. They climb aboard the balloon, and its inventor, a professor, takes them on an unplanned trip across the United States and the Atlantic Ocean. The professor becomes unhinged, so in order to save the others, Tom murders him. The surviving trio takes the balloon to Egypt and sees the Sphinx. In Tom ... Read More Keywords: Artists' books; Whale, James,; Monster films; Finn, Huckleberry PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
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