Pain Is a Portal to Beauty: Stunning Discoveries After Loss, Psychedelics, and Feeling It All by Alexis LeighMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Review: Pain Is a Portal to Beauty: Stunning Discoveries After Loss, Psychedelics, and Feeling It All
Pain Is a Portal to Beauty: Stunning Discoveries After Loss, Psychedelics, and Feeling It All by Alexis LeighMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Review: Villa Incognito
Villa Incognito by Tom RobbinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I recall first enjoying this audiobook when it first came out. This was a time I was less rigorous about recording my opinions. Still I was intrigued as the commentary on American military/foreign policy from the Vietnam War to 9/11 was maybe the most political I have read from Robbins.
The character "Tanuki himself" is a randy rogue and kind of demigod
View all my reviews
Friday, March 20, 2026
Review: Bloodlust: Conversations with Real Vampires
Bloodlust: Conversations with Real Vampires by Carol PageMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
The exploration of "real vampires" seems to mostly uncover sad basket cases shifting from trauma to bloodsucking to high camp like Dracula Live from Transylvania (TV Movie, 1989). The author attended the production of this sad thing and also went to England to meet with the Highgate self-serving fraudster Sean Manchester. Maybe a bit closer to the mark and more authentic was Vlad whose band The Dark Theater produced Matters Of Life And Undeath while Vlad lived a donor-seeking vampire's life.
More fan than fang was rocker Paul Barrett. The author met Barrett in Whitby, England at a "Hunt-a-vampire weekend" celebrating the location Bram Stoker chose to write some of his famous tale.
Paul and Lincoln Barrett then joined me. Paul urged me to include a chapter on rock and roll and vampires in this book, and was delighted to learn I planned to do so. He told me about the song "Dinner with Drac," by John Zachalee, which was in the American Top 20 in 1958 and was then released in London, only to be banned in England by the BBC because of the lyrics, which seems ridiculous now. He sent me a tape of the song, along with some of his other favorite oldies. A passage from the song runs, "A dinner was served for three / at Dracula's house by the sea. /The hors d'oeuvres were fine, but I choked on my wine / when I learned that the main course was me."
Obviously vampires and music as an aesthetic and lifestyle makes me think of extreme goth and that gets referenced too:
They can be found in certain Boston clubs, such as the Rathskeller or the Channel, when certain bands are playing. The music is punk, new wave, or hard core, not heavy metal. Shannon doesn't like the devil-worship subject matter of some of the heavy metal bands. Curtain Society and Sleep Chamber are two Boston-area bands that draw the vampires out to dance. Some of their fans are rumored to practice self-mutilation. In the band Requiem in White, the lead singer dresses like Dracula. Requiem in White has as many as one hundred vampires in their crowd; other bands have perhaps forty mixed in their audiences.
This refers to a 1980s Boston goth/vampire subculture as depicted in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles—specifically in novels like The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)—where vampires mingle with punk/new wave crowds. Bands like Requiem in White, Sleep Chamber, and Curtain Society are associated with the era and scene building on and including rumors of extreme behaviors among devoted fans.
Of the sad, would-be vampires I feel the most insight is gained from James Riva II, known here as "Gabriel" and in the press as the "Vampire Killer," a Massachusetts man who shot his 74-year-old grandmother, Carmen Lopez, in 1980, believing her a vampire. Riva used gold-painted bullets, stabbed her in the heart, drank her blood, and attempted to burn the house down. In 1981, Riva was convicted of second-degree murder and arson, receiving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Riva claimed he was instructed to commit the crime. Defense lawyers argued he was insane and had a long history of mental illness, but this was rejected. As of 2025, Riva has been denied parole multiple times, with the board citing continued paranoia, lack of remorse, and danger to society. The author met and interviewed him while he was incarcerated for the 1980 murder. In the extensive quotes from that interview is, I feel, the most accurate analysis of the motivations of these souls seeking blood sustenance:
These people call themselves vampires, but they are just sick puppies who think that they're going to get power. See, most people start this nonsense because they're unhappy with what they are, and they think that by getting into Satan worshipping, they're going to be enhanced some-how, that they're going to be popular, they're going to get powers. I mean, you have vampires in the movies, they always have total control over their lovers. They manage to do whatever they like with impunity it seems, until the end of the movie. That seems attractive to some people, and they want it.
View all my reviews
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Review: Ulysses
Ulysses by James JoyceMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Back cover
The complete and unabridged text, as corrected and entirely reset in 1961.
Like the first American edition, published by Random House in 1934, this new edition contains the original foreword by the author, the historic decision by Judge John M. Woolsey whereby the Federal ban on Ulysses was finally removed, and the foreword by Morris Ernst on the importance of Judge Woolsey's decision.
Ulysses is now available for the first time in paperback
Woolsey read the entire book and included in the decision his review:
Joyce has attempted-it seems to me, with astonishing success
-to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing.
...
I hold that "Ulysses" is a sincere and honest book and I think that the criticisms of it are entirely disposed of by its rationale.
V. Furthermore, "Ulysses" is an amazing tour de force when one considers the success which has been in the main achieved with such a difficult objective as Joyce set for himself. As I have stated, "Ulysses" is not an easy book to read. It is brilliant and dull, intelligible and obscure by turns. In many places it seems to me to be disgusting, but although it contains, as I have mentioned above, many words usually considered dirty, I have not found anything that I consider to be dirt for dirt's sake. Each word of the book contributes like a bit of mosaic to the detail of the picture which Joyce is seeking to construct for his readers.
If one does not wish to associate with such folk as Joyce describes, that is one's own choice. In order to avoid indirect contact with them one may not wish to read "Ulysses"; that is quite understandable. But when such a real artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible for the American public legally to see that picture?
To answer this question it is not sufficient merely to find, as I have found above, that Joyce did not write "Ulysses" with what is commonly called pornographic intent, I must endeavor to apply a more objective standard to his book in order to determine its effect in the result, irrespective of the intent with which it was written
From the annotated decision on JSTOR:
Judge John Woolsey of the Southern District of New York issued what would become one of the most widely published (and perhaps even read) legal decisions in US history. The case, United States v. One Book Called “Ulysses,” began in 1932 when lawyer Morris Ernst and Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf arranged to have a copy of the novel written by James Joyce imported and seized by US Customs.
Woolsey’s decision, which found Ulysses to not be obscene, was appealed to the US Circuit Court and upheld, allowing Random House to begin publishing the novel in the US. The first American edition included Woolsey’s decision and an introduction by Ernst, who went on to become a leader of the ACLU (while acting behind the scenes as advocate and information source for the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover.)
Many of the parties involved in the lengthy journey of Ulysses—into print, and to the States—went on to become major figures in modernism, publishing, jurisprudence, and/or LGBTQ+ history (with Sylvia Beach covering multiple categories.) JSTOR offers substantial research on these topics, as well as on Joyce’s works, legacy, and heirs.
---------------------
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
https://biblioklept.org/2020/06/16/ca...
https://www.stephens-workshop.com/joy...
and recreation https://eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.ed...
View all my reviews
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Review: James Joyce's Ulysses: a Study by Stuart Gilbert Vintage V-13
James Joyce's Ulysses: a Study by Stuart Gilbert Vintage V-13 by Stuart GilbertMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Obviously the value of such a work as this depends on its authenticity, and "authenticity" in the present case im-plies that the ideas, interpretations and explanations put forward in these pages are not capricious or speculative, but were endorsed by Joyce himself. Thus it may be of some interest if I describe briefly the circumstances leading up to the writing of this book and those under which it was writ-ten. It was when I was assisting MM. Auguste Morel and Valéry Larbaud in the translation of Ulysses into French that the project suggested itself to me. In making a translation the first essential is thoroughly to understand what one is translating; any vagueness or uncertainty in this respect must lead to failure. This applies especially when the texture of the work to be translated is intricate, or the meaning elusive. One begins with a close analysis, and only when the implications of the original are fully unravelled does one start looking for approximations in the other language. Thus I made a point of consulting Joyce on every doubtful point, of ascertaining from him the exact associations he had in mind when using proper names...
Around him Joyce was gathering a new circle. Stanislaus distrusted them as sycophants, and perhaps they were. They were also hard-working sycophants, deeply committed to helping him with the preparation and publication of his difficult new book. Chief among them were Maria Jolas and her husband Eugene, an energetic American couple who were publishing extracts from Work in Progress in their cosmopolitan literary journal, transition. Another important recruit was Stuart Gilbert. Gilbert (whose name Joyce pronounced with three syllables: Gi-la-bert) was an Oxford-trained lawyer who had served as a judge in Burma and who was devoting himself to explicating and translating Ulysses. Gilbert's French wife, Moune, a small lively woman, was active in publishing. She soon became one of Nora's best friends.
...
In the afternoon Stuart Gilbert came over from his boarding house, and the two men worked on Gilbert's study of Ulysses, which was to become for many readers an indispensable, if humorless, guide to the difficult book.
- Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce
Jewish (Semitic) Leopold Bloom moves through the a real Dublin landscape as Ulysses made his Odyssey through the Semitic-named real geography of the Mediterranean.
In the course of his long study of Homeric origins M. Bérard demonstrates that the poet of the Odyssey must have had access to, and carefully studied, some Phoenician record of voyages in the eastern and western Mediterranean, a pre-Achaean "Mirror of the Sea". A very large number of the Odyssean place-names are of Semitic origin; these were the names under which the places came to be known to the earliest Greek navigators. The latter translated the names into their own tongue, and so each place had a pair of names-the Phoenician and the Greek. For instance (Odyssey X, 135) Circe's island is named Aiaie. The "island of Circe" is an exact translation of the Semitic compound Ai-aie...
View all my reviews
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Review: Basic Concepts in Quantum Mechanics
Basic Concepts in Quantum Mechanics by A.S. KompaneyetsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
... that tests (educational, not physical) show that 90 percent of the difficulty in understanding the concepts of quantum mechanics arise from an insufficient grasp of elementary laws of mechanics, and only 10 percent is connected with the new ideas.
Quantum mechanics is a continuation of classical mechanics. This does not mean of course that it could be logically deduced from Newton's laws of motion. An element of conjecture must always exist in the creation of new theories. Thus, 3 years before the diffraction of electrons was demonstrated experimentally, Louis de Broglie proposed that the motion of electrons should exhibit wave properties. Developing de Broglie's idea, Schrödinger obtained an equation for the wave function and thus created the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics. Working completely independently, Heisenberg found another, equally valuable form of quantum mechanics. Only later was direct experimental confirmation obtained. This does not mean that de Broglie, Schrödinger and Heisenberg had no experimental basis for their work. On the contrary, an enormous quantity of experimental material had already been accumulated that could not be explained by classical theory.
View all my reviews
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Review: Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance
Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance by Susan Simensky BietilaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[See my different review in the upcoming Spring 2026 issue of Fifth Estate.]
View all my reviews
Sunday, February 15, 2026
Saturday, February 14, 2026
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Review: Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance
Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance by Susan Simensky BietilaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
See my review in the upcoming Spring 2026 issue of Fifth Estate.
View all my reviews
Monday, February 9, 2026
Sunday, February 8, 2026
Review: Salt of the Earth: One family's journey through the violent American landscape
Salt of the Earth: One family's journey through the violent American landscape by Jack OlsenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
DOC Number: 917391
Offender Name: GREEN, MICHAEL K
Location: Monroe Correctional Complex-WSR
Offender Name: GREEN, MICHAEL K
Custody Status: In Custody
Age: 63
Race: White
https://mylifeofcrime.wordpress.com/2...
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id... Green had previously confessed to being in the dead girls home the day of her disappearance but said he didn't kill her.
https://mkg4jc.wordpress.com/2008/01/...
View all my reviews
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Friday, February 6, 2026
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Review: My Friend Leonard
My Friend Leonard by James FreyMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Audible audiobook edition narrated by Andy Paris.
Following investigations by The Smoking Gun and a famous confrontation with Oprah Winfrey, it was revealed that many parts of Frey’s memoirs were exaggerated or fabricated.
Authenticity: Frey later admitted that "significant" portions of his relationship with Leonard—including a three-month jail term they shared at the start of the second book—were invented.
Real Identity: While Leonard was presented as a real person, critics and investigators have questioned his existence or the degree to which he was fictionalized, noting that many of his "larger-than-life" exploits lack corroborating evidence.
View all my reviews
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Friday, January 30, 2026
Review: The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Review: Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance
Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance by Susan Simensky BietilaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
See my review in the upcoming Spring 2026 issue of Fifth Estate.
View all my reviews
Friday, January 23, 2026
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Review: The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory
The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory by Kenny FriesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Disalbed from birth
Throughout my life, friends and strangers have asked me "What happened to your legs?" There was a time earlier in my life when I, too, could not stop asking why at birth I was missing bones in my legs. Chance, the fuel of natural selection, was not at that time a satisfactory explanation.
Disability studies theorist Lennard J. Davis echoes Bagemihl, showing how, when we speak of disability, we associate it with a story, place it in a narrative. A person became deaf, became blind, was born blind, became quadriplegic. The impairment becomes part of a sequential narrative.
By doing this we think of disability as linked to individualism and the individual story. What is actually a physical fact becomes a story with a hero or a victim. Disability becomes divorced from the cultural context, and becomes the problem of the individual, not a category defined by the society. The dialectic of normalcy-for someone to be normal, someone has to be not normal is kept intact.
Gilded age
The global economic recession of the 1870s encouraged the view of societies in competition in a hostile world. In the United States, business leaders such as Andrew Carnegie believed that unrestrained competition was natural selection at work. Human intervention could not mitigate the struggle for existence.
In the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century, Social Darwinism transformed into eugenics. Whereas Spencer and the Social Darwinists advocated a laissez-faire policy, sup-porting the status quo of the economic and social hierarchy, eugenicists advocated an active governmental and institutional role in "purifying" society of perceived "weakness."
In 1881, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, researched deafness in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He concluded that deafness was hereditary. In "Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race" he recommended a marriage prohibition for the deaf. He warned that boarding schools for the deaf could become breeding grounds for a deaf human race. In 1896, Connecticut became the first state to prohibit the marriage between anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded."
By the 1880s, European studies stressing the heredity of criminality had become the basis for "criminal anthropology" in the United States. In 1887, the superintendent of the Cincinnati Sanitarium issued the first published recommendation of sterilization for criminal activity.
Race increasingly became a focus for eugenics. Darwin rejected the idea that different races were different species.
....
After the stock market collapse of 1929, it became difficult to believe the correlation between economic status and intelligence. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, social scientists shifted their emphasis to the social causes of human difference.
...
After the war, when asked why eugenics declined so quickly in the United States, Popenoe admitted "the major factor ... was undeniably Hitlerism." But as early as the 1880s, reformers such as Powell and Boas spread Darwin's message that no one stayed on top, because change and adjustment were the order of nature. Boas, invoking the Darwinian notion of constant change, asked: Was it possible that traits thought to be desirable today, would be viewed otherwise in the future?
View all my reviews
Review: Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance
Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance by Susan Simensky BietilaMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
biography start
Bessarabia
1920s
Palmer raids,, ice Bondi raids
Family fled 1921 year of second 1919 1921 pogrom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_H...
"TRUMP FLAMBOYANTLY PROCLAIMS HIS IRRATIONAL WHIMS LIKE A TRUE CZAR.
HE COMMANDS TOADIES TO SCAPEGOAT IMMIGRANTS, MEXICANS & MUSLIMS, IMPRISONING EVEN CHILDREN.
WHEN HE WAS MADE AN HONORARY COSSACK IT WAS CLEAR THAT THEY RECOGNIZED ONE OF THEIR OWN."
"chose Brooklyn College and started there in 1964.
The summer before college, I worked at a racially integrated summer camp in the Catskills run by communist-influenced, antiracist organizers from my neighborhood. I learned about people a year or two older who had joined civil rights marches and voter registration drives in the South, as well as some guys who were moving to Canada to avoid the military draft. At night, after the campers were tucked in, the camp counselors sat around a campfire, where I learned that the US was at war with Vietnam. I felt physically shaken by the realization that the US was not a democracy but instead the number-one imperialist power after World War II's destruction of Europe. One of the other counselors was in the newly formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and gave me the name of the student who was starting a chapter...
The New Left introduced me to unvarnished history and critical thinking. This changed my life."
Chapter worth of text interspersed graphic novel like panels
Brooklyn College Vietnam antiwar student demonstrations
View all my reviews
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Review: Pain Is a Portal to Beauty: Stunning Discoveries After Loss, Psychedelics, and Feeling It All
Pain Is a Portal to Beauty: Stunning Discoveries After Loss, Psychedelics, and Feeling It All by Alexis Leigh My rati...
-
1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza My rating: 3 of 5 stars The presidential electio...
-
Managing in Turbulent Times by Peter F. Drucker My rating: 5 of 5 stars Drucker's career as a business thinker took off in 194... -
Plutarch Fall of the Roman Republic [Penguin Classics L 84] by Rex Warner My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a p...
