Category: Books

The Stendhal Syndrome

I am familiar with the great French author Stendhal’s novels–The Red and the Black, and The Charterhouse of Parma–having read them some years ago, but until I read an article in the online magazine The Point I’d never hear about Stendhal Syndrome. The Stendhal syndrome is a psychic disorder that causes dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when someone is exposed…

Book review: the War of Art

Steven Pressfield’s the War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles  offers pop psychology advice to struggling writers and artists. Pressfield is most known for his novel and film  The Legend of Bagger Vance. Before reading this book on my Kindle, I’d read nothing by the author. Mimicking Sun Tzu’s classic The…

Status
Tom Hudson

I am reading two books just now:  Darwin, Portrait of a Genius  by Paul Johnson, and Guide to Aesthetics  by Benedetto Croce. I’ve always enjoyed Johnson’s work and this book is no exception. My only complaint is that it’s too short. Croce is primarily a philosopher of aesthetics. Both highly recommended.  

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez died last Thursday. The great writer was 87. The Colombian writer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Marquez was a leading practitioner of magic realism, which is style that incorporates fantastic or magical elements into otherwise normal situations. That is a poor label because is assumes that reality is a known.…

Book Review: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (audio version)

“You mock, dude!” Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a lively philosopher and prodigious writer known for his biting wit. Russell was deeply involved with the social issues of his day and spent time in prison for his efforts–for his pacifists views during World War I, and again for his anti-nuke protests in his 80’s(!). He was stripped…

Book Thief

 In the summer before third grade, we moved to a small town far from Dayton.  The ramshackle house we rented was across the street from the public library.  With its pink-marble columns, the library seemed to exist in another world.  I began spending all of my free time there.   My frequent visits to the library…

David Hickey’s Air Guitar

Do you like to read?  Me, I’ve always been a voracious reader.  Like other autodidacts, I let my interests take me where it will–I read what I damn well please.  Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of art theory  (Foucault, Panofsky, Derrida, Johnson) and criticism, which brings me to Hickey.  I recently finished two of…