Essays

In the modern era, conceptual innovators have radically transformed the function and role of style in the arts. Traditionally, style was the artist’s signature or trademark, the unique and distinctive means by which he expressed his ideas or perceptions.

Martin Walker is a senior fellow of a private think tank for CEOs of major corporations. He is also editor-in-chief emeritus and international affairs columnist for UPI, and for many years has been a journalist for the Guardian.

When I was sixteen my father handed me a journal my mother had kept during the nine months she was dying of cancer.  She passed away when I was two years old and the memories I had of her were only images: lying next to her in bed listening to her read a story; putting a Speed Buggy puzzle toget

Fortunately, Derek Walcott didn't study psychology.

To the casual observer, the past three years in Russia have been particularly mystifying — bold protest marches, campaigns calling the Duma majority “crooks and thieves,” the imprisonment of some, but not all, leading dissidents, and gulag time for the outrageous Pussy Riot girls.

“. . . as if language were a kind of moral cloud chamber

through which the world passed and from which

Valentine’s day has passed—and perhaps you forgot.

Love is forever—so here are some ways to powerfully express your love on an ordinary day—and make someone love you—or, if necessary, forgive you.

A few years ago, I was standing in a queue at my bank in Tarrytown, New York, when I heard Russian being spoken behind me. This was not an everyday occurrence. Tarrytown is a suburban Republican enclave of neat lawns and narrow minds.

I first read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, now in its 25-year anniversary edition, in the mid-eighties and I began to breathe again, I began to write to live—and I don’t mean support myself.

Editor's Note: This is a five part series - Please click here for part One.

Editor's Note: This is a five part series - Please click here for part One.

Editor's Note: This is a five part series - Please click here for part One.

When Nobel Prizewinning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn died five years ago, I experienced several days of flashbacks to the surrealistic times of Soviet power. I had been a correspondent in Moscow in the 1960s and 1970s and my most vivid memory was encountering the great writer face to face.

“I wonder if anyone in my generation is able to make the movements of faith?”

This article was originally posted on Truthdig, www.truthdig.com, poste

Following on the heels of a new book by Jesse Ventura that maintains Lee Harvey Oswald was not John Kennedy’s lone assassin, plus a movie just out about the event, entitled “Parkland,” several books are about to be released to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of

The demand for gossipy detail on writer J.D. Salinger’s private life seems to be a bottomless pit.

Alvin Lucier’s book: Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music, reviewed by Michael Johnson is in the Music Review section.

I thought the book business was being choked to death by television and iPods but I must be wrong. Clean, well-lighted superstores are still going strong. Could customers merely be doing penance for spending too much time slumped on their living room couch?