THE INSANITY OF TRUTH In Thomas Mann’s novel “Dr. Faustus” his central character is a talented musician, Adrian Leverkuhn, who elects to contract syphilis, hoping that madness will inspire his creativity and take him beyond the ordinary. During one outbreak of Leverkuhn
MY LIFE AS AN ARTHRITIC SNAIL Contrary to the opinion of some of my friends who avoid social networks, Facebook isn’t a place where people gather to talk about the number of snails eating their begonias. I’ve learned a good deal more than that from my web friends. (Yahoo Images) R
Just met the girl with the dog in the park this morning. I stopped to compliment her on the love so clearly evident between her and her pet. She told me she has had the animal for two years and though the dog has had some obedience training, mostly it has become attuned to its owner
TO PAWS IN TRIBUTE I thought about “Old Yeller” and “Lassie” the other day, and how their courage and loyalty stand out. Those novels came to mind as I was finishing my walk in the park. Ahead of me was a young woman with a large dog, a mongrel that looked like
BLOWING BUBBLES Non-fiction author Eli Pariser can sure pick a book title: “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You.” This writer found a new problem to worry us — because, we all know, bad news sells. This time the trouble is with the World Wide Web. Pariser war
WHAT’S IN A NAME? In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” the heroine asks: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” (Yahoo Images) She asks a good question and one a writer needs to consider
A MIND OF ONE’S OWN Virginia Woolf’s collection of essays, “A Room of One’s Own,” attempts to explain why no woman writer has lived who is comparable to Shakespeare. Her explanation is that throughout history women have been under educated and dependent upon men for
MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS ON THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL One of my favorite stories is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novella, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It is set in medieval Padua where a student, Giovanni Guasconti, comes to study at the University. From his rooms, he overlooks a be
OF GODS AND RELICS Years ago, I watched a television program where a man claimed he could recognize any prominent author in western culture simply by the writing style. The premise was that every author had a “voice” as unique as a thumb print. I suppose, the same could be said
SELFISHNESS AS A VIRTUE I wrote a blog post a while back (July 22) about a woman who had relied heavily upon the support of her husband and came to regret it. A reader responded that the woman had lived a selfish life. The flaw is common. I can hardly think of a work in literature tha