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Look no further for the essence of life.

Shall We Meet Beyond The River?

Where the surges cease to roll...

The Greatest 20th Century American Novel

I have long been of the opinion that the greatest novel written by an American in the 20th century was As I Lay Dying.



John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra, however, has undermined my confidence in that judgment.



I have found few books as emotionally shattering as this one. I did not expect to be moved by Julian English's unraveling. But O'Hara's prose is masterful and spare. Every sentence (or practically every one) hits home and draws blood.

Appointment in Samarra is a masterpiece.

Lost Illusions

Sadly neglected today, John O'Hara was like John Cheever, only with a chip on his shoulder. Cheever with an attitude.

John Cheever was a great tragedian of the suburbs; O'Hara a Balzacian poet of the seamy side of small town American life.



All three (Balzac, Cheever, O'Hara) exposed what Sartre called the nothingness that lies coiled like a worm in the heart of being.

The Gnostic Of Today

The Gnostic of today...[is] a perceptive man, his eyes turned towards the present and the future in the intuitive conviction that he possesses within himself the keys to his future, a conviction he must hold steadfastly against all the reassuring mythologies, the so-called salvatory religions and disalienating ideologies which serve only to hinder his presence in the true reality. For the important thing today is not so much to discover new stars as to break down the new frontiers that constantly arise before us, or which are delineated within ourselves, so that we may cross over them, as into death, with our eyes wide open.

~Jacques LaCarriere, The Gnostics, 128.

The Many Faces Of Istanbul

Mahershala Ali

Interview.

The Knowledge That Makes Us Free

Who were we?
What have we become?
Where were we?
Into what place have we been thrown?
Whither are we hastening?
From what are we delivered?
What is birth?
What is rebirth?

Excerpts from Theodotus 78.2

Valentinus

In brief.

Joshua Parens On al-Farabi

Chris Hedges

The Election Circus Begins.

I think it is important to refuse to legitimate the farce that passes for politics in the U.S., and Chris Hedges is among the few journalists with the intellect and moral courage to consistently bear witness to the fact that the Emperor has no clothes.

As Hedges knows, Trump's imbecilic narcissism--as egregious as it is--is not the heart of the problem. Rather, it is emblematic of a far deeper and pervasive moral condition that afflicts many Americans of his generation and my own: a form of arrested emotional development that understands life as a competition to see who dies with the most toys.

Politics is incapable of addressing this condition: it is no accident that Aristotle wrote his Politics only after he had written the Nicomachean Ethics.

So here we are, once again, gearing up for another season of reality-TV-democracy that looks remarkably similar to all of the previous seasons. Most of those among us who still have the capacity to recognize that something has gone terribly awry can (and, all too predictably, will) point their fingers at the Russians or people who support third party candidates or whomever it is they currently wish to blame for what are, in fact, our own self-inflicted injuries. And that will pass as intelligent commentary or even "progressive" politics. And perhaps, in the current political and cultural dispensation, it is. But it is also beside the point.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

And So We Toil...

Cultivating our intelligence: that share of the Pleroma we embody in Yaldabaoth's realm...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622

Marcuse

Marcuse Society Conference 2019.

Significant Form

What is it?







Clive Bell's famous essay.

Nature's Cathedral

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