Category Archives: Literature/poetry/spoken word

keeping hansel and gretel on a short leash

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Dave

They exist. And we know that this invisible architecture of the labyrinth can be very real and almost impossible to get out of. In the mythical Greek tale, Icarus was able to fly out on some crafted wings, but still … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged Franz Kafka, Hansel and Gretel, James Frazer, james frazer the golden bough, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Duchamp, Orson Welles, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Walter Benjamin | Leave a comment

the new seekers

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Dave

Aldous Huxley is to the negative or anti-utopia what Plato and Sir Thomas More combined are to the positive. We are apt to be less familiar with the Republic’s guardians and Utopia’s jeweled toys than we are with Brave New … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged Aldous Huxley, Andrew Potter, c.m. kornbluth, Frederick Pohl, George Orwell, Herbert Marcuse, joseph heath, Karl Marx, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Max Horkheimer, Noam Chomsky, Paul Goodman, Ray Bradbury, Sir Thomas More, Slavoj Zizek, Theodor Adorno, William Tenn | Leave a comment

grass roots

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Dave

Nihilism and anarchism? If, as you read a book, you feel that the author hates you and all the fabric of your life, that his chief purposes in writing are to communicate to you his loathing and his scorn, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged anselm kiefer, Cindy Sherman, George Frankl, Gideon Levy Haaretz, Gunter grass, Gunter Grass The Tin Drum, Henry Miller, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, peter kropotkin, Tom Segev | Leave a comment

fantasy on the life of the hybrid

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Dave

The Tin Drum. At first sight this monstrous book looks as thought it might be a satire on the life of Germany during the Hitler era, the war, and the postwar boom. Its hero has a German name and thinks … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged anselm kiefer, Gunter grass, Hans Bellmer, James Joyce, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Martin Heidegger, Paul Celan, sarah honig, Slavoj Zizek | Leave a comment

tin drums: marching to a different beat

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Dave

…Nobel laureate Günter Grass is expected to be released from a Hamburg hospital within days, after undergoing what his secretary called a routine test. Grass was admitted on Monday, less than two weeks after his poem criticising Israel triggered a … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged Gunter grass, Gunter Grass israel, Gunter Grass The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass Zionism, Henryk M. Broder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Marieluise Beck, MK David Rotem, MK Robert Ilatov, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Fassbinder, Zvi Rex psychoanalyst | Leave a comment

crime is remarkably pragmatic

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Dave

by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com) the dark sleazy underbelly of the victorian cultural era criminal is extremely well-chronicled in this old dog-eared paperback book (found in a thrift store for 50¢.) written by Kellow Chesney (great name, eh?), The Victorian … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged art chantry, Cockney slang, Gustave Dore, Henry Mayhew, Kellow Chesney, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, The Victorian Underworld, Victorian era crime, Victorian era slang | Leave a comment

Utopia: stories of the days to come

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Dave

Utopia is not exactly the same as the Messianic Kingdom where the wolf dwells with the lamb and the leopard lies down with the kid. Its peaceable, but only through divine intervention. The other Utopia, the secular one, is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged Aldous Huxley, Aldous Huxley Brave New World, alexander korda, George Orwell, H.G. Wells Men Like Gods, h.g. wells the time machine, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Orson Welles, Orson Welles Mercury Theater, Orson Welles War of the Worlds | Leave a comment

utopia: machines triumphant

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Dave

Utopians were prophets in the sense of predicting the future and also prophets in the sense of castigating the present; a vision of things as they should be was also a reproach to things as they are. One of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged H.G. Wells, H.G. Wells A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells When the Sleeper Wakes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karel Capek, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Samuel Butler, Samuel Butler Erewhon, William Morris, William Morris News From Nowhere | Leave a comment

The Eden-ites

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Dave

The Garden of Eden. The first Utopia. Throughout time people have gotten impatient about waiting for the rapture; dabbled in nihilism to prod the redemption; in general, a complete dissatisfaction with the world as it is leading to fervent imaginings … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged Aldous Huxley, edward bellamy, Etienne Carjat, Jules Verne, Leon Benett, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Utopian novels, William Morris | Leave a comment

hunger: pangs of freedom

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Dave

The hunger for pure immanence. Or when the blending of realism and idealism becomes a kind of performance art, a “shock of the new” to use the Dadaist phrase, a disruptive force that effectuates art through the banal “ready-made” activity … Continue reading →