There's possibly only 1 person under the age of 47 who's actually going to read this and not be familiar with the theory of "the death of the author" , but I'm going to go ahead and explain it anyway. It was the subject of a 1967 essay by Roland Barthes (pronounced with the "es" silent,…
Forescript: I gave this as a paper at geography conference in Seoul last year. You won't have been there. For editing reasons, I've taken out all the footnotes. If you read all of it, and you like it, or if you don't, you can offer some tips on how to write a better conclusion, or…
(Preface: A few months ago, I wrote a kind of half-assed close-reading of Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium". Surprisingly, it was-relatively-overwhelmingly popular. I have never been one not to milk the udder until its completely dry, be it an idea that seems to have some traction, a particular recipe that's easy to cook but makes me…
(Headnote: I'm reposting this, which I posted a long time ago, because I think it's funny, and because I was supposed to continue it, but never did. However, the whole "Sailing to Byantium" thing is turning into a thesis-length jobbie because a couple of people read and liked it, so if enough people --2-- like…
(Preface: I mentioned before about deciding to write a more in-depth analysis of Yeats' famous poem "Sailing to Byzantium", part by part. The original post is here, the first second part is here, the second second part is here, and this is the third second part, if that makes sense. If you have the will,…
Let's just go ahead and call this Part 3 of a series on Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium". If you're bored, sitting on a train, or a bus, or even on a really shitty blind date, read this, alone, or with someone else, and marvel at how much time some people have on their hands. Part…
Note: This turned out to be a much longer undertaking than I had originally envisioned, so I've decided to split it up into parts. This is part 2 (?). Part 3 to follow in the near future. Disclaimer: before I begin this: the word "fool", which occurs a number of times throughout the following, is intended…
Yeats' late poems are some of his most heartbreaking. In them, he portrays himself by turns as an old man reflective "An aged man is but a paltry thing", somewhat regretful when he is being forced to "lie down in the rag and bone shop of the heart", and even mischievous and funny, "A barnacle goose far up…
In "The Dialectic of Enlightenment", Adorno and Horkheimer explain how the fascist dictator's appeal is essentially narcissistic--people can live through the dictator who says the things that they want to say but are afraid to. Hiter and Mussolini are their exemplars of this. Often, in the most ironic fashion, Trump is compared with Hitler. The correct (as in, most ironic) response…
This is not a hatchet job. But... There's a man who writes a lot about how to be a blogger, and I shouldn't really be writing something that appears to be critical of him, since he and his alternative personalities probably constitute everybody who has, or will ever, read this blog in particular. But... What he's doing, and…
