Blog Profile / Literary Kicks
| URL : | http://www.litkicks.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Literature | |
| Posts on Regator: | 945 | |
| Posts / Week: | 3.4 | |
| Archived Since: | March 2, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Everything About Paul Nelson
Paul Nelson was the most important rock critic you’ve probably never heard of. As a writer, he -- along with Paul “Crawdaddy” Williams and Greg “Who Put The Bomp” Shaw and a few other trailblazers -- helped turn rock ‘n’ roll fan-chatter...Show More Summary
Talkin' Occupy With Eliot Katz
I met Eliot Katz many years ago at St. Marks Poetry Project in New York City, back in a different era when several now legendary figures like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Tuli Kupferberg and Janine Pommy Vega were still alive and never missed a reading at St. Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: Cognitive Bias Gone Wild
Okay, enough about what the US Supreme Court's historic ruling to uphold Obamacare means for the country. Let's talk about what our reaction told us about us. It sure was a strange reaction.
The decision was scheduled to be announced on Thursday morning, June 28, starting at 10:am. Show More Summary
My Dinner With Barack Obama
It's the latest trend for Presidents and presidential candidates to go around having dinner with randomly selected donors. Given my general lack of social skills, it's probably good that I haven't been selected to have dinner with Barack Obama. Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: Siri Hustvedt on Desire
I don't think we really want to solve the puzzle of desire. What would we do afterwards? But the puzzle seems to be impossible to solve anyway, so we can enjoy pondering it forever. Here's a passage that caught my attention in "Variations on Desire", the opening piece in Siri Hustvedt's appealing new collection of essays, Living, Thinking, Looking.
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The Quiet Power of Robert Caro
Somewhere just before the publication of the fourth book in Robert Caro's planned five-volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, it became clear that Caro had emerged as the only superstar biographer in the world. The ecstatic level...Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: The Trunk
There are three misconceptions about philosophy that I'd like to clear up today. The first is that it's an academic discipline, carried out by professors and graduate students in quarterlies and journals while the rest of us breathlessly await reports of their findings. Show More Summary
Why Reading Is Always Social
"Is reading social?" The question has been going around the litsphere, though many who have answered have reached for a middle ground between the disconcerting idea of social (and Internet-connected) literature and the more traditional notion of reading as an intensely private and solitary activity. Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: Jonathan Haidt Makes Some Sense
Our search for a great living ethical philosopher has so far turned up empty. We're only at the early stages of the search, having recently examined the work of Alain De Botton and Sam Harris, both of them young trendy philosophers who...Show More Summary
Ray
1. The classic science-fiction author Ray Bradbury has died. I never really kept up with his work, but when I was a kid I thought Illustrated Man had the coolest book cover in the universe. "The Veldt" was my favorite story from that collection. Show More Summary
Someday This Will All Be Funny
It seems everything we know about the 1960s is wrong. Facts about the both celebrated and maligned decade are one thing—hey, we’re up to our paisley headbands in the facts!—but the truth is far more elusive. Michel Choquette, a former...Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: The Auguste Comte Awakening
I can never guess which of my Philosophy Weekend blog posts will turn out to have legs. Nine months ago, researching the origin of the word 'altruism', I learned that the term had been coined by Auguste Comte, a 19th Century French philosopher I had heard of but knew little about. Show More Summary
Visions of Brautigan
(Richard Brautigan, a remarkable author of experimental fiction who was briefly popular during the Summer of Love-era, has been getting some overdue attention due to the publication of 'Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard...Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: Anger Issues
Last weekend's blog post "A Dollar's Worth of Morals" may turn out to be the most unpopular thing I've ever written on this site. Several typically friendly Litkicks commenters posted in no uncertain terms that they hated the piece... Show More Summary
Road Drops
The film version of Jack Kerouac's On The Road has dropped! I never thought it would happen.
The film is still not in general release, but it has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and reactions to the long-awaited literary adaptation are starting to pour in. Show More Summary
Awaiting "On The Road"
Yes, my friends, the longest wait in film history is about to end, though you'll only get to see the movie if you're on the French Riviera. The Walter Salles/Jose Rivera/Francis Ford Coppola interpretation of Jack Kerouac's On The Road...Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: A Dollar's Worth of Morals
Years ago, when I was working for a small litigation software company in New York City, I was leaving the office one day when I thought I heard someone shout my name from far away. I stopped in the building lobby and looked around, but I didn't see anyone and couldn't imagine why somebody would be calling for me. Show More Summary
Laurent Binet's Metafictional Dilemma
HHhH, a remarkable new historical novel by a young French author named Laurent Binet, has been getting a lot of attention. The book, a sly and woolly ponderance of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovokia during World War II, is as good as all the hype suggests.
What makes HHhH stand out is the author's approach to his historical plot. Show More Summary
Philosophy Weekend: Ellen Pearlman on Buddhism and the Avant-Garde
Exactly sixty years ago, in May 1952, 81-year-old Zen Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki began teaching a regular course at Columbia University. 39-year-old modernist composer John Cage attended a few of his lectures, and this is the electric...Show More Summary
The Literary Life: Spencer Kansa in the Zone
(This is the first guest post in our interview series The Literary Life, in which we present fascinating people who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of creative inspiration. Today, Laki Vazakas interviews Spencer Kansa, author...Show More Summary