THE NAPOLEON DUPORT CAPER PART 1
IT WAS 1812, destined to be the year about which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky would later compose an Overture. You know the one, with cannons and bells, celebrating Russia’s defense against … Continue reading
SOME THOUGHTS ON URBANIZATION
I’VE JUST READ Ben Rogers’ “The Great Sorting,” a London Review of Books review of Richard Florida’s The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequalities and What We Can … Continue reading
HOLMES AND THE PONTIFF PART 2
WHAT WITH the Vatican’s trove of second-century cameos not exactly qualifying as religious art, Pope Leo XIII was in a fine pickle. Fortunately, Sherlock Holmes had a reputation that extended … Continue reading
HOLMES AND THE PONTIFF PART 1
“I WAS EXCEEDINGLY preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos,” Sherlock Holmes said, “and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English … Continue reading
THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, COMPLETE WITH HYPHEN PART 2
THERE WAS literary justice in the first appearance of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade being on April Fool’s Day, 1857: This Melville novel recounts the happenings on that very … Continue reading
THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, COMPLETE WITH HYPHEN PART 1
WHAT FOLLOWS is a meta-review. That is, a review of reviews, in this case of The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, one of only a few books coming to mind that have … Continue reading
AUTOMOTIVE MUSCLE—PUT IN PERSPCTIVE
A BRIEF recollection of automotive muscle confirms the current idiocy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Scott Pruitt wanting to dial back the auto industries’ hard-earned, if occasionally grudging, advances … Continue reading
(GARDEN) PARTY POLITICS, RHINOS ON STAGE
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD, yesterday’s topic here at SimanaitisSays, is an excellent metaphor for the current political scene. There’s unreality, cliché, tragicomedy, and a person here and there striving to … Continue reading
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
WHAT WITH the world seemingly at sixes and sevens, what better time to explore the Theatre of the Absurd? Its mid-20th-century plays by Edward Albee, Samuel Becket, Václav Havel, Eugene … Continue reading
EVOLUTION EVOLVES TOO
IF EVOLUTION’S clock were wound back and restarted, would I be here to compose these lines or you to read them? This provocative question is addressed in Jonathan Losos’ book … Continue reading
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