It is rare for me to find a book, aside from the works of Ayn Rand, that I love reading. A great classic, such as Shakespeare play, can move me by certain elements of it and make me marvel at its greatness; but the dark or mixed sense of life of so many classics can […]
Thank you, Ryan, Rogan, and IMH for your excellent answers to the question I posed at the end of my previous post, Dramatic Conflict. I had not thought of the points you make. (Thanks also to David for your thanks.) With revenge and altruism as the only values (if any) that today’s heroes fight for, […]
This post is about art, but I will start by quoting something I wrote a few weeks ago in a political context: Even a rat fights when cornered. But a man of reason and courage does not wait until his loved ones have been murdered and his own survival hangs by a thread. He fights […]
Since my favorite Shakespeare sonnet (#29, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) is so well known, here instead is my second favorite (#76): Why is my verse so barren of new pride So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to […]
My March 4th post on Laughter, Weeping, and Crying was a revision of something I wrote in 1999. At that time, I had done some library research on the topic, but had not found any source of much use. But last week, thanks to the Internet and Google, I did find an excellent source: The […]
This post may be of interest particularly to my friends in the dramatic arts, but who’s not interested in drama? Observe that people rarely cry or weep in the heat of battle. It just would not have been practical for the mind and body to have been designed that way. If a warrior sees his […]
I would like to recommend a Web site that has given me many hours of pleasure and inspiration: the Art Renewal Center, at http://www.artrenewal.org/. The site contains “one of the largest on-line museums on the internet … that features tens of thousands of high quality images of the greatest painters and sculptors in human history.” […]