The Invisible in Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
In Haruki Murakami’s short story, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, he offers insight into the phenomenology of sound taught by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Walter Benjamin on Explosive Reading and the Storyteller
Walter Benjamin considers The Storyteller an artistic observer capabale of seeing and communicating beauty in a way that transforms readers and listeners.
Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel
Four women will invent time travel. Three will make their mark on history. Two will do anything to be remembered. One will not survive. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIME TRAVEL Summer is here and we are cracking open a new book together. We’d love for you to join us in reading The Psychology of Time Travel […]
How to Read More by Creating a Reading Habit
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.” Anthony Trollope For most teachers and professors wondering how to read more books, establishing new routines, resolutions, and goal-setting are the answer. But let’s face it: life is changing at a far more rapid […]
Walter Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality and the Reader
Keywords Walter Ong, Psychodynamics, Orality and Literacy “Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.” Marshall McLuhan When we trace language from orality, characterized by the pre-socratics and […]
A Thousand Eyes of Curiosity With Alberto Manguel
“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. […]
Dynamic Epistemology and the Etymology of Truth
“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 […]
The Muse Learns to Read: Trace the Process of Intellectual Becoming
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 on clay tablets, we see a complex shift in human consciousness.
The Rhetorics of Reading With Wonder
Keywords Rhetorics of Reading, William Covino, Wonder, Paul de Man “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! What happens when we read? Do […]
Mark Z. Danielewski on Changing the Way We Read
“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 […]
Roland Barthes on Photographing the Unconscious in Camera Lucida
Keywords Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Punctum, Unconscious “What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.”Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida The French literary theorist, Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980), explores the power of photography in his 1979 book, Camera Lucida. In this explosive work, Barthes demonstrates how […]
Free Play in the Age of Electracy With Jan Holmevik
“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 […]
Sherry Turkle on the Narrow Path to Human Connection
“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 […]
The Myth of Sisyphus: Albert Camus on Rewriting Failure to Imagine Sisyphus Happy
Keywords The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, Imagine Sisyphus Happy “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.” Albert Camus The French philosopher, Simone Weil, had a profound influence on the existential thinker, Albert Camus. Both thinkers radically committed to living by conviction chose to live lives characterized by love. Weil […]
Himalayas of Literature: From Wallace to Joyce
“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.” –Reinhold Messner Himalayas of Literature is one of Book Oblivion’s newest ongoing course series. Participants reside all over the world and read through some of the most intense literature on the planet. Stephen L. Russell is our guide and chooses […]