“Now open in my eyes a thousand eyes of curiosity.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves ALBERTO MANGUEL (BORN 1948) Alberto Manguel is a proliferate writer and reader. His world travels both in and out of books converge in everything he writes. His writings explore an intimate love of reading that is arguably unparalleled by anyone alive. …
A Thousand Eyes of Curiosity With Alberto Manguel Read More »
“In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.” Henri Bergson Henri Bergson (1859-1941) Henri Bergson was a …
Henri Bergson on the Cinematographic Mechanism of Thought Read More »
“The art of rhetoric underlines the ambiguity of language; to practice the art, one remains mindful that all conclusions are provisional, tentative. The art lies not in the completion of a text, but in the transfiguration of one text — one system of possibilities — into another.” William A. Covino, The Art of Wondering REVISING …
William Covino on the Art of Wonder in Philosophy Read More »
“Hail to Thee, Logos, Thou Vast Almighty Title, In Whose name we conjure— Our acts the partial representatives Of Thy whole act.” Kenneth Burke Misunderstanding Truth There is a huge misunderstanding in culture that the idea of relativism has wiped out the notion of absolute reality. Consequently, morals decline and society is in shambles. This …
“One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.” David Foster Wallace Who’s there? The famous words Shakespeare pens at the beginning of Hamlet are answered 387 short years later in the first two words of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: I …
David Foster Wallace and the Utter Hell of Solipsism Read More »
Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life. Charles Scribner, Jr. When we trace language from orality, characterized by the pre-socratics and the passing of tradition from one mouth to the next, to literacy made possible by writing …
The Muse Learns to Read: Trace the Process of Intellectual Becoming Read More »
“Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.” Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation WHAT IS HYPERREALITY? Hyperreality is …
Tracing the Evolution of Jean Baudrillard’s Hyperreality Read More »
“Camerado, this is no book, who touches this, touches a man, (Is it night? Are we here alone?) It is I you hold, and who holds you, I spring from the pages into your arms…” Walt Whitman, So Long! In William Covino’s book, The Art of Wondering (1988), he advances Plato’s definition of rhetoric that he develops …
On the Energy of Language and the Rhetorics of Reading Read More »
“My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.” Mark Z. Danielewski In an interview with Google, Mark Z. Danielewski comments on the didactic way he writes his novels. This might come as a surprise if you …
“To be creative a person must exist and have a feeling of existing, not in conscious awareness, but as a basic place to operate from. Creativity is then the doing that arises out of being. It indicates that he who is, is alive.” D. W. Winnicott, Living Creatively I was invited to present at a …
Trickle Down Pedagogy and Creativity in the Classroom Read More »
On January 12, Haruki Murakami turns 70, and we are going to celebrate now because it’s already his birthday in Japan. Murakami’s been writing novels, short stories, and essays for the last 40 years. He’s translated more than 100 novels and short stories into Japanese, including authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, and Raymond …
“Nothing is really work unless you’d rather be doing something else.” James Barrie When you think of Neverland, you probably think of adventure and fantasy and infinite play, but there is a dark, irredeemable side of Neverland that we rarely confront. For the first time, we are seeing digital rhetorics open the sky of possibilities …
“We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.” ~Carl G. …
Roland Barthes on Photographing the Unconscious 📷 Read More »
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” Carl Jung Using Greg Ulmer’s concept of electracy, Jan Holmevik explores the tension between absence and presence in his 2012 work, Inter/vention: Free Play in the …
Free Play in the Age of Electracy With Jan Holmevik Read More »
“Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.” ~Saint Augustine Americans celebrate Thanksgiving this week, a holiday Abraham Lincoln designated in the midst of the American Civil War to pause and …