Essays
Oct 20th 2014
Bob Dylan likes to use other people's words, and images. Some people object to this.
Oct 17th 2014
Colm Herron, a Facts & Arts columnist, has just published a new book: The Wake (and what Jeremiah Did Next)
This is the introduction to the book on Amazon:
Oct 13th 2014
To the English-speaking world at least, the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature to French author Patrick Modiano will probably have come as a surprise. Many won’t even have heard his name.
Oct 10th 2014
A novel written in an invented “shadow tongue” to give the feel of Early Middle English has a place on the shortlist for the Goldsmiths book prize for innovative fiction.
Oct 8th 2014
Holland might seem an unlikely place to go to see the art of a great American artist, but I am here to tell you it is worth the trip.
Oct 2nd 2014
Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine, enemy of superstition, pioneer of rationality and fount of eternal wisdom.
Sep 28th 2014
The Dutch furniture designer Martin Visser was the first collector to recognize the importance of the Cobra movement. Visser knew Karel Appel and his friends when they had just begun their careers, and were living in extreme poverty, with no recognition from the art world.
Sep 25th 2014
LeRoy Neiman’s paintings, posters and famed handlebar mustache made him one of the most recognizable artists of our time.
Sep 18th 2014
Note to my readers: This essay is a follow-up to my rereading of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that is more personal essay than review and
Sep 13th 2014
The first time I fell in love was in the children’s section of Brooke Park library. I was eleven and she was ten and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight.
Sep 4th 2014
In 1962, Bob Dylan told an interviewer: "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves, just waiting for someone to write them down.
Sep 2nd 2014
Almost daily, we are faced by difficult choices we are challenged to confront over a range of foreign and domestic policy concerns.
Aug 19th 2014
The New Atheists are once again provoking controversy, this time with their comments on Gaza which has prompted divisions among those better known for presenting a united front against religion.
Aug 16th 2014
I applaud those who retain the strength to fight the never-ending battle against ignorance, intolerance and persistent persecution of rationalists.
Aug 13th 2014
Humor is an essential part of the human experience. We tend to think of comedy as frivolous, a side show to the miseries of hunger, disease, and poverty that visit the vast majority of the global population.
Aug 11th 2014
ISIS in Iraq is murdering Christians and Shia Muslims alike under the guise of a Holy War.
Aug 7th 2014
In a broad sense of that term, reading Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe is akin to a religious experience. I would not be at all surprised if Tegmark felt a similar sense of excitement in writing this massively learned yet wonderfully accessible book.
Jul 27th 2014
Jul 25th 2014
Many professional authors are also parents, but recently, there have been a number of success stories of parents simply writing for their own children and becoming very successful.