Alex M Bustillo

Guest Blogger: Claudia Moscovici: My Favorite Twenty-first Century Salon

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:04:00 +0000

Guest Blogger: Claudia Moscovici

My Favorite Twenty-first Century Salon: Confessions of A Would-be Salonnière:

Thanks to Claudia for this fascinating post-

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When I opnened a twitter account a few months ago, it wasn't difficult to find the phrase that best captures me: "Born in the wrong century, a would-be salonnière." Ever since college, when I first learned about Marquise de Rambouillet--the refined hostess who led the most talented artists and writers of Louis IV's court in scintillating intellectual discussions in the elegant alcove of her drawing room--I knew that I had missed my opportunity and true calling in life. Sure, women may be able to be and do whatever they want today. Society is less sexist, more democratic. But in an era when entertainment news outdoes even socio-political news in popularity and readership, what hope is there for placing art, literature and philosophy at the center of public attention again?

The main problem I encountered in being a contemporary salonnière was: Where are the salons? Most academic discourse struck me as too technical and specialized to draw a large audience. Analogously, literary gatherings seemed too intimate and self-promotional: more about selling your latest book than about discussing art and literature. However, once I stopped looking for salons in any specific physical location, convention or even institution, I discovered quite a number of online salons, where writers, artists and intellectuals converge to discuss their works, in a clear, interesting and sophisticated fashion. I'd like to share with you some of my favorite contemporary salons.

Litkicks.com. I discovered Litkicks ( http://www.litkicks.com/) in October 2009, when I found on the internet an article about a fellow Romanian-born writer, Herta Müller. The article was called "Herta Who?" by Dedi Felman and it was about the dissident writer's recently awarded Nobel Prize in Literature. At that point, the founder of Litkicks, Levi Asher, also wrote a brief note on the blog about my recently published novel on similar themes, Velvet Totalitarianism , 2009/Intre Doua Lumi, 2011. We got in touch by email and I became a regular reader and occasional contributor on the blog. Litkicks features articles on literature, poetry, art, philosophy, music, cinema and politics.

Levi was a software developer (and culture lover) on Wall Street when he startedLitkicks.com in 1994, which became, along with Salon.com, a pioneer culture blog. The website was originally launched to support Beat Generation poetry andexperimental fiction. Over the years, it has expanded its scope to includecontemporary literature in general, essays on nineteenth and twentieth-centuryFrench poetry and fiction (including Michael Norris's excellent essays onProust), lively political articles, and Levi's top-notch Philosophy Series. Litkicks includes articles on established authors published by the big publishing houses as well as reviews about talented independent writers published by smaller presses. The blog has thousands of readers a day, but thanks to a loyal following of regular contributors and commentators, it retains the intimate feel of a community of friends engaged in intellectual discussions and debates.

Catchy.ro. Founded in 2010 by Romanian journalists Mihaela Carlan and Diana Evantia Barca, Catchy.ro (http://www.catchy.ro/) is quickly catching on as Romania's premier blog. Discussing all aspects of art, entertainment, politics and culture, Catchy.ro is inspired by the highly successful The Huffington Post, founded by Arianna Huffington in 2005 and recently acquired by AOL for a whopping 315 million dollars. Part of The Huffington Post's enormous success stems from Arianna Huffington's pull and connections with wealthy investors. To offer just one notable example, in August 2006, SoftBank Capital invested 5 milliion dollars in the company. However, its success can also be attributed to the high quality of its articles and the popularity of its over 9000 contributors. Without question, The Huffington Post gathered some of the best bloggers in every field it features. Moreover, the blog has not merely adapted, but also stayed one step ahead of the curve in its use of technology, recently introducing "vlogging"--or video blogging--which is taking off and making journalism even more multimedia and interactive.

If I mention Catchy's precursor in some detail, it's because I believe these are also some of the features that have helped the Romanian blog grow so quickly during the past year, since its inception. Catchy "like a woman" targets primarily a female audience. But ultimately its panel of excellent journalists--with expertise ranging from art, to literature, to philosophy, to music, to fashion to pop culture and, above all, to the most fundamental aspects of human life itself, like health, love and marriage--draws a much broader audience of both genders and every age group. Like The Huffington Post, Catchy.ro also treads perfectly the line between intellectual writing and pop culture, providing intelligently written articles for a general audience. As some of the more traditional Romanian newspapers h ave struggled and a few even collapsed, the up-and-coming blog Catchy.ro shows that in every country adaptation is the key to success.

Agonia.net. Started by the technology expert and culture promoter Radu Herinean in 2010, Agonia.net (http://english.agonia.net/index.php) is a rapidly expanding international literary blog. It includes sections on prose, screenplays, poetry, criticism and essays. Agonia.net has the following assets: a) it publishes well-regarded writers and intellectuals, b) it's contributor-run so that it can grow exponentially and internationally (with sections in English, French, Spa nish, Romanian and several other languages in the works) and c) it has a team of great editors that monitor its posts and maintain high quality standards. Agonia. net improves upon the model of online creative writing publishing pioneered by websites like Wattpad.com, which are contributor-run but have no editorial monitoring. Because of lack of editorial control, Wattpad.com has not been taken seriously by readers and publishers despite its vast popularity with contributors. Any literary blog that has a chance at being successful has to have the capacity for handling a large number of incoming contributions while also maintaining reliable editorial standards. Agonia.net seems to have mastered this delicate balance.

U-Sophia.com. Last but certainly not least, I'm excited to tell you about a new multimedia, international online salon called U-Sophia (http://u-sophia.com/) whose Advisory Board I just joined last week as a founding member. Its founder,Dan Shorer, is a modern-day Renaissance man: with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Sorbonne, he is also an actor and movie director. Far from being pretentious or elitist, Dan believes that art, literature, music and philosophy are inherently democratic, to be enjoyed by everyone across the globe. He adopts André Gide's adage about knowledge: to believe in those seeking wisdom, not those who claim to have found it. Non-dogmatic, multidisciplinary, technologically advanced and international, U-Sophia offers a forum for artists, musicians, writers, movie directors, composers singers, philosophers, actors and literary critics--intellectuals and creative artists in all fields--to share their insights and talents with the rest of the world. It also has a reference space, called WikiSophia, modeled after the Wikipedia, where contributors can share information about their areas of expertise. Its Marketplace offers a forum where writers and artists can sell their works online.

In keeping with the idea of a "modern-day Republic of Letters" U-Sophia is alsomultimedia. It holds meetings or sessions where artists and intellectuals can actually meet in online salons--both see and hear each other--to discuss common points of interest, ranging from opera to Proust. This is a phenomenal opportunity, especially given the fact that, by way of contrast to the current alternative--purchasing expensive plane tickets to fly to international conferences and conventions--U-Sophia is free, funded entirely by donations. In participating in these exciting artistic, literary and intellectual forums, I'm starting to feel like my calling as a 21st century salonnière might not be an anachronism after all. I invite you to explore each of them and see which ones fit your talents and interests best.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

literaturesalon | November 9, 2011 at 11:33 pm | Tags: Agonia.net, Agonia.ro, Arianna Huffington, book review, book reviews, Catchy.ro, Claudia Moscovici, communist Romania,Confessions of A Would-be Salonnière: My Favorite Twenty-first Century Salons, contemporary culture salons, contemporary fiction, contemporary literature, Dan Shorer, Diana Evantia Barca,fiction, Intre Doua Lumi, Levi Asher, literary blog, literary criticism, literary salon, literature,literature salon, literaturesalon, Litkicks, litkicks.com, Mihaela Carlan, novel, online international multimedia salon U-Sophia, online literary salons, Radu Herinean, Romanticism and Postromanticism, salon, The Huffington Post, U-Sophia, U-Sophia.com, Velvet Totalitarianism,WikiSophia | Categories: Agonia.net, Agonia.ro, Arianna Huffington, book review, catchy.ro,Claudia Moscovici, communist Romania, Confessions of A Would-be Salonnière: My Favorite Twenty-first Century Salons, contemporary fiction, culture blogs, Dan Shorer, Diana Evantia Barca, fiction, Intre Doua Lumi, Levi Asher, literary criticism, literary fiction, literature, literature salon, literaturesalon, litkicks.com, Mihaela Carlan, Radu Herinean, salon, salonnière, salons, The Huffington Post, U-Sophia, U-Sophia.com, Velvet Totalitarianism, WikiSophia | URL:http://wp.me/p13NZL-ir

The Case of the Texas Judge: When Does Spanking Cross the Line to Abuse?

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:24:00 +0000

The Case of the Texas Judge William Adams: When Does Spanking Cross the Line to Abuse?

By Bonnie Rochman Friday, November 4, 2011 | TIME Magazine

The Healthland Podcast: Spanking, Drinking and Mind Control

Regarding the YouTube video of his beating his teenage daughter with a belt, Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams said, "It's not as bad as it looks on tape."

Related Topics:

Much of the nation has spent seven minutes watching slack-jawed as a Texas

judge beat his teenage daughter with a belt in a YouTube video that's burning

up the blogosphere. The video, made in 2004, was recorded with a hidden camera

by Hillary Adams, the daughter of Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams.

She posted it last week in a bold move that could potentially empower other

abused children to do what she did: secretly install a video camera in her

room to catch what she described as repeated acts of violence.

Hillary said she concealed the camera's red "on" light with a scarf. (One can

only imagine the consequences had her father discovered that his expletive-laced

orders to her to "bend over the bed" were being recorded.) "It could be that this

video will inspire other youth to post stuff," says George Holden, a professor of

psychology at Southern Methodist University who has studied corporal punishment for

15 years. "It's an interesting case of how media could prompt changes in parents'

behavior. Who knows what may emerge in the next week?"

Judge Adams isn't sticking around to find out. He's gone on paid leave in the wake

of the frenzy over the footage, which shows the family-law judge viciously whipping

his then-16-year-old daughter with a leather strap. He also released a statement

through his attorney calling into question his daughter's motives for releasing

the video, suggesting that she is retaliating against him after a recent

disagreement over money. According to the statement, which was posted by MSNBC:

If this entire event was a plea for help and healing, the methodology is certainly

unorthodox. Judge Adams, who among other reasons, still has a minor daughter to

consider, chooses to involve the media as little as possible whilst personal

family matters are sorted through. The public may ponder what consideration

Hillary Adams gave her little sister before subjecting the entire family to

worldwide microscopic scrutiny, and permanent consequences.

When Hillary Adams, now 23, posted the video, she urged in accompanying text

that her father not be re-elected. On Thursday, she told the Today show that

she thinks her father needs "help and rehabilitation" but that she doesn't

want him to lose his job.

Comments posted by Judge Adams on his Google+ Page:

Friday 4 November 2011:

So this little cunt sets up a camera and then provokes me into administering

some corporal punishment..NOW a few years later put this on YouTube because

I wouldn't support her financialy. other than that she was fine with the

beating. why take so long?

Friday 4 November 2011:

How long do you think it's going to be for my daughter to get her book,TV

or movie deal? she has no money that's why she uploaded this video a few days ago!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Thursday 3 November 2011:

Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 12.02 Misdemeanors

An indictment or information for any misdemeanor may be presented within

two years from the date of the commission of the offense, and not afterward.

Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 12.01 Felonies

Injury to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual ( 2 out 3)

Texas Statute of Limitations is no more than 5 yrs.

I win.

This piece of shit was quoting Scripture and worshipping Jesus as

his excuse for such indecent behavior. May he find Jesus deep in

the bowels of hell.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Adams, for his part, doesn't appear to have done much soul-searching

about the incident itself. He told a reporter for Corpus Christi KRIS-TV

that he'd simply punished his daughter for illegally downloading music from

the Internet. "It's not as bad as it looks on tape," he said.

It's likely that he really believes that, says Holden. "It really reflects

his mindset and beliefs that hitting a child is okay," says Holden, who

in June presented his findings from the first real-time study of parents

spanking their children at an international conference on corporal punishment.

Below, Holden, a father of three who says he has never spanked his children,

discusses the nitty-gritty of corporal punishment and delves into the nuances

of when it veers into child abuse:

HEALTHLAND: What exactly does the research show in terms of the percentage of

parents who hit their kids?

HOLDEN: Between 70% and 90%. Most of that occurs in the peak spanking ages of

2 to 5 when kids are typically noncompliant and curious. They engage in

activities parents don't want them to and they don't listen.

What happens when the children get older?

It's still surprising the number of parents who do hit their teens. It's

much less, like 20%, but there's still a sizable number of parents who get

angry with their teens and resort to physical punishment. The whipping with a

belt was pretty extreme.

Is corporal punishment seen as acceptable?

It depends on which set of parents you're talking with. It depends on their background,

their heritage, their education level. Some parents think there's nothing wrong with it.

That's the way they were brought up. Typically, more educated parents will, if they do

engage in that behavior, be less forthcoming in admitting they do resort to violence.

What surprised me about this video was how the father seemed to methodically plan out

the beating, even leaving the room to get another belt. Is that typical?

It's more common that it's automatic in the heat of the moment. There isn't a lot of

evidence about this, but from my tapes it's much more instantaneous. It's an emotional

reaction and isn't a planned event like this video illustrated. Of course there are

plenty of cases where a child transgressed and the parent then says, Go get a switch.

In the video, the father was an interesting mix of in some ways being in control and

in some ways being out of control. His language was pretty much out of control and

incredibly angry but he was still collected enough that he could give her instructions.

He was emotionally out of control but cognitively in control. It reflects his beliefs

that spanking is a good way to deal with misbehavior.

Is it a good way?

Absolutely not. It's only good for stopping immediate action because a child is upset,

crying and hurting. But it does not contribute to positive behavior or development of

self-control. It contributes to aggression — kids spanked are more likely to hit

others, both peers and adults. It's very confusing for kids to be hit by their

parents because they think that they're loved by their parents, yet they're being

hurt by those parents. It's emotionally conflicting and can result in depression

and emotional anxiety.

At what point does punishment cross over to child abuse?

There's no clear-cut answer. It's easy to say it's child abuse if there are broken

bones, injuries, major bruises. But it's a gray line. Some people would say any

hitting, including spanking, is assault and should be classified as child abuse.

Does what we saw in the video qualify as child abuse?

I would definitely call that abusive behavior. It's a combination of his verbal

tirade and the whipping. I would call Child Protective Services on him. What's

interesting is the criminal justice system does not allow prisoners to be

physically punished, but here is a judge who was physically hurting his

daughter and showing no self-control or restraint. It's kind of ironic.

In his work he had to subscribe to a very different model of how we

punish people.

Parenting can be exasperating. What should a ticked-off parent do?

Take a time out. Separate, go to different parts of the house. Calm down.

Then come back together and talk about it.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman.

You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on

Twitter at @TIME.

Smells Like Old Smelly Cheese: Vieux Boulogne - World's smelliest cheese

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:13:00 +0000

Smells Like Old Smelly Cheese: Vieux Boulogne - World's smelliest cheese

Vieux Boulogne, a soft, yet firm French cheese made from cow's milk and matured by washing with beer, tops a list of the smelliest cheeses reveals scientists today. The artisan-made cheese was tested for its smell along with other known pungent cheeses by Cranfield University on behalf of Fine Cheeses from France.

"Love it or loathe it, the sign of a fine cheese is often its characteristic smell as well as its flavour and texture and we wanted to find out if France's reputation for producing smelly cheeses was true," said Sally Clarke from Fine Cheeses from France.

Dr Stephen White, senior research officer Cranfield University led the study by using an electronic nose as well as a human olfactory panel to sniff out those with the strongest scent.

Fifteen cheeses were selected with the help of cheese experts in France and the UK and put through the smelly stakes. Dr Stephen White said: "The results suggest that electronic nose technology could be a useful tool for cheese characterisation, quality control and authenticity testing in the future. The smelliest cheeses were washed rind cheeses. There was no obvious correlation between the age of the selected cheeses and smelliness, nor type of milk origin, although cows' milk cheeses did dominate the smell chart."

Cheeses whose rinds are washed (in a salt water solution, beer or brandy) were rated smelliest. Tops was Vieux Boulogne followed by Pont l'Eveque - both washed rind cheeses, produced from the milk of cows raised on the lush, coastal pastures of Normandy.

Camembert de Normandie, the most widely imitated cheese in the world, was rated third. It has a natural rind and is best known for its creamy texture and mushroomy aroma. Hard cheeses were found to be least smelly of all. Goat's cheese, English Farmhouse Cheddar, Ossau Iraty, Raclette and Parmesan took the bottom five places in the smell league.

Pungent smelling cheeses are becoming more popular in the UK - Epoisses de Bourgogne (probably the most pungent smelling cheese that is widely available here) is now sold in Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose, but in this study it was found to be less pungent than other speciality rind washed cheeses such as Livarot.

The Cheese Smell League

In order - Most smelly first

-- Vieux Boulogne - Cow's milk cheese from Boulogne sur Mer, Pas de Calais, aged 7-9 weeks, rind is washed with beer

-- Pont l'Ev�que AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Normandy, aged 6 weeks, rind is washed with brine

-- Camembert de Normandie AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Normandy, min age 21 days, soft, bloomy rind

-- Munster - Cow's milk cheese from Alsace Lorraine, N E France, aged 3 weeks, rind is washed with brine

-- Brie de Meaux AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Ile de France, outside Paris, aged 4-8 weeks, soft, bloomy rind

-- Roquefort AOC - Sheep's milk cheese from Roquefort, near Toulouse, aged 3 months, blue mould cheese

-- Reblochon AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Savoie region in France, aged 3-4 weeks

-- Livarot AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Normandy, aged 90 days, rind is washed with brine

-- Banon AOC - Goat's milk cheese from Provence region, aged 1-2 weeks and wrapped in chestnut leaves

-- Epoisses de Bourgogne AOC - Cow's milk cheese from Burgundy, aged 4-6 weeks, rind is washed with brandy (Marc de Bourgogne)

-- Parmesan - Cow's milk cheese from Italy, aged 2 years

-- Raclette - Cow's milk cheese from French Alps, aged 2 months

-- Ossau Iraty AOC - Sheep's milk cheese from Basque region in S France, aged 3 months

-- Cheddar - Cow's milk cheese made across the UK, aged 6-24 months

Least Smelly

-- Crottin de Chavignol AOC - Goat's milk cheese from Chavignol near to Sancerre in the Centre region of France, aged for minimum of 10 up to 6 months. The test sample was aged 4-6 weeks old.

Patricia Michelson, owner of La Fromagerie cheese shops in London said: "The group of washed rind cheeses, originating in northern France have a reputation for their strong smell which results from the milk enzymes reacting to the brine or alcoholic solution which is brushed onto their surface during the cheese making process.

"Vieux Boulogne is a young, modern cheese with a surprisingly mellow and gentle taste that's perfect served with some crusty bread and a beer. It's a great cheese to try, as it doesn't have the earthy, farmyardy flavours that some people find overpowering."

Sally Clarke said: "France has a huge selection of weird and wonderful whiffy cheeses and their smell often disguises a delicate, subtle flavour that has to be tried to be believed. So, we're encouraging British shoppers to be a little more daring with their Christmas cheeseboard by choosing one of the cheeses from our smell study."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/17043.php

Andre Malraux: Intoxication

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:17:00 +0000

There is always a need for intoxication:
China has opium,
Islam has hashish,
the West has woman.

Andre Malraux

André Malraux DSO (3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Bertrand Russell: Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:05:00 +0000

Has Religion Made

Useful Contributions to Civilization?

by Bertrand Russell

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

The word religion is used nowadays in a very loose sense. Some people, under the influence of extreme Protestantism, employ the word to denote any serious personal convictions as to morals or the nature of the universe. This use of the word is quite unhistorical. Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the churches that they have founded, whereas churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished. To take the case that is of most interest to members of Western civilization: the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects. Some of the Franciscans, it is true, attempted to teach the doctrine of apostolic poverty, but the Pope condemned them, and their doctrine was declared heretical. Or, again, consider such a text as "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan.

What is true of Christianity is equally true of Buddhism. The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his deathbed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood -- as it exists, for example, in Tibet -- has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree.

There is nothing accidental about this difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress. The church opposed Galileo and Darwin; in our own day it opposes Freud. In the days of its greatest power it went further in its opposition to the intellectual life. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to a certain bishop a letter beginning: "A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends." The bishop was compelled by pontifical authority to desist from this wicked labor, and Latinity did not recover until the Renaissance. It is not only intellectually but also morally that religion is pernicious. I mean by this that it teaches ethical codes which are not conducive to human happiness. When, a few years ago, a plebiscite was taken in Germany as to whether the deposed royal houses should still be allowed to enjoy their private property, the churches in Germany officially stated that it would be contrary to the teaching of Christianity to deprive them of it. The churches, as everyone knows, opposed the abolition of slavery as long as they dared, and with a few well-advertised exceptions they oppose at the present day every movement toward economic justice. The Pope has officially condemned Socialism.

Christianity and Sex

The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex -- an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make. Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. Monks have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. The teaching of the church has been, and still is, that virginity is best, but that for those who find this impossible marriage is permissible. "It is better to marry than to burn," as St. Paul puts it. By making marriage indissoluble, and by stamping out all knowledge of the ars amandi, the church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain. The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged.

The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords people an outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, and even noble. Take, for example, the question of the prevention of syphilis. It is known that, by precautions taken in advance, the danger of contracting this disease can be made negligible. Christians, however, object to the dissemination of knowledge of this fact, since they hold it good that sinners should be punished. They hold this so good that they are even willing that punishment should extend to the wives and children of sinners. There are in the world at the present moment many thousands of children suffering from congenital syphilis who would never have been born but for the desire of Christians to see sinners punished. I cannot understand how doctrines leading us to this fiendish cruelty can be considered to have any good effects upon morals.

It is not only in regard to sexual behaviour but also in regard to knowledge on sex subjects that the attitude of Christians is dangerous to human welfare. Every person who has taken the trouble to study the question in an unbiased spirit knows that the artificial ignorance on sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical health, and causes in those who pick up their knowledge by the way of "improper" talk, as most children do, an attitude that sex is in itself indecent and ridiculous. I do not think there can be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable. I should not put barriers in the way of the acquisition of knowledge by anybody at any age. But in the particular case of sex knowledge there are much weightier arguments in its favor than in the case of most other knowledge. A person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed, and it is ridiculous to give young people a sense of sin because they have a natural curiosity about an important matter.

Every boy is interested in trains. Suppose we told him that an interest in trains is wicked; suppose we kept his eyes bandaged whenever he was in a train or on a railway station; suppose we never allowed the word "train" to be mentioned in his presence and preserved an impenetrable mystery as to the means by which he is transported from one place to another. The result would not be that he would cease to be interested in trains; on the contrary, he would become more interested than ever but would have a morbid sense of sin, because this interest had been represented to him as improper. Every boy of active intelligence could by this means be rendered in a greater or less degree neurasthenic. This is precisely what is done in the matter of sex; but, as sex is more interesting than trains, the results are worse. Almost every adult in a Christian community is more or less diseased nervously as a result of the taboo on sex knowledge when he or she was young. And the sense of sin which is thus artificially implanted is one of the causes of cruelty, timidity, and stupidity in later life. There is no rational ground of any sort or kind in keeping a child ignorant of anything that he may wish to know, whether on sex or on any other matter. And we shall never get a sane population until this fact is recognized in early education, which is impossible so long as the churches are able to control educational politics.

Leaving these comparatively detailed objections on one side, it is clear that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity demand a great deal of ethical perversion before they can be accepted. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

The Objections to Religion

The objections to religion are of two sorts -- intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.

To take the intellectual objection first: there is a certain tendency in our practical age to consider that it does not much matter whether religious teaching is true or not, since the important question is whether it is useful. One question cannot, however, well be decided without the other. If we believe the Christian religion, our notions of what is good will be different from what they will be if we do not believe it. Therefore, to Christians, the effects of Christianity may seem good, while to unbelievers they may seem bad. Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

A certain kind of scientific candor is a very important quality, and it is one which can hardly exist in a man who imagines that there are things which it is his duty to believe. We cannot, therefore, really decide whether religion does good without investigating the question whether religion is true. To Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews the most fundamental question involved in the truth of religion is the existence of God. In the days when religion was still triumphant the word "God" had a perfectly definite meaning; but as a result of the onslaughts of the Rationalists the word has become paler and paler, until it is difficult to see what people mean when they assert that they believe in God. Let us take, for purposes of argument, Matthew Arnold's definition: "A power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." Perhaps we might make this even more vague and ask ourselves whether we have any evidence of purpose in this universe apart from the purposes of living beings on the surface of this planet.

The usual argument of religious people on this subject is roughly as follows: "I and my friends are persons of amazing intelligence and virtue. It is hardly conceivable that so much intelligence and virtue could have come about by chance. There must, therefore, be someone at least as intelligent and virtuous as we are who set the cosmic machinery in motion with a view to producing Us." I am sorry to say that I do not find this argument so impressive as it is found by those who use it. The universe is large; yet, if we are to believe Eddington, there are probably nowhere else in the universe beings as intelligent as men. If you consider the total amount of matter in the world and compare it with the amount forming the bodies of intelligent beings, you will see that the latter bears an almost infinitesimal proportion to the former. Consequently, even if it is enormously improbable that the laws of chance will produce an organism capable of intelligence out of a casual selection of atoms, it is nevertheless probable that there will be in the universe that very small number of such organisms that we do in fact find.

Then again, considered as the climax to such a vast process, we do not really seem to me sufficiently marvelous. Of course, I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better. And then we have to reflect that even this result is only a flash in the pan. The earth will not always remain habitable; the human race will die out, and if the cosmic process is to justify itself hereafter it will have to do so elsewhere than on the surface of our planet.. And even if this should occur, it must stop sooner or later. The second law of thermodynamics makes it scarcely possible to doubt that the universe is running down, and that ultimately nothing of the slightest interest will be possible anywhere. Of course, it is open to us to say that when that time comes God will wind up the machinery again; but if we do not say this, we can base our assertion only upon faith, not upon one shred of scientific evidence. So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth and is going to crawl by still more pitiful stages to a condition of universal death. If this is to be taken as evidence of a purpose, I can only say that the purpose is one that does not appeal to me. I see no reason, therefore, to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated. I leave on one side the old metaphysical arguments, since religious apologists themselves have thrown them over.

The Soul and Immortality

The Christian emphasis on the individual soul has had a profound influence upon the ethics of Christian communities. It is a doctrine fundamentally akin to that of the Stoics, arising as theirs did in communities that could no longer cherish political hopes. The natural impulse of the vigorous person of decent character is to attempt to do good, but if he is deprived of all political power and of all opportunity to influence events, he will be deflected from his natural course and will decide that the important thing is to be good. This is what happened to the early Christians; it led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficient action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action. Social virtue came therefore to be excluded from Christian ethics. To this day conventional Christians think an adulterer more wicked than a politician who takes bribes, although the latter probably does a thousand times as much harm. The medieval conception of virtue, as one sees in their pictures, was of something wishy-washy, feeble, and sentimental. The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting the Turks, like St. Louis. The church would never regard a man as a saint because he reformed the finances, or the criminal law, or the judiciary. Such mere contributions to human welfare would be regarded as of no importance. I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility. With this separation between the social and the moral person there went an increasing separation between soul and body, which has survived in Christian metaphysics and in the systems derived from Descartes. One may say, broadly speaking, that the body represents the social and public part of a man, whereas the soul represents the private part. In emphasizing the soul, Christian ethics has made itself completely individualistic. I think it is clear that the net result of all the centuries of Christianity has been to make men more egotistic, more shut up in themselves, than nature made them; for the impulses that naturally take a man outside the walls of his ego are those of sex, parenthood, and patriotism or herd instinct. Sex the church did everything it could to decry and degrade; family affection was decried by Christ himself and the bulk of his followers; and patriotism could find no place among the subject populations of the Roman Empire. The polemic against the family in the Gospels is a matter that has not received the attention it deserves. The church treats the Mother of Christ with reverence, but He Himself showed little of this attitude. "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" (John ii, 4) is His way of speaking to her. He says also that He has come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and that he that loveth father and mother more than Him is not worthy of Him (Matt. x, 35-37). All this means the breakup of the biological family tie for the sake of creed -- an attitude which had a great deal to do with the intolerance that came into the world with the spread of Christianity.

This individualism culminated in the doctrine of the immortality of the individual soul, which was to enjoy hereafter endless bliss or endless woe according to circumstances. The circumstances upon which this momentous difference depended were somewhat curious. For example, if you died immediately after a priest had sprinkled water upon you while pronouncing certain words, you inherited eternal bliss; whereas, if after a long and virtuous life you happened to be struck by lightning at a moment when you were using bad language because you had broken a bootlace, you would inherit eternal torment. I do not say that the modern Protestant Christian believes this, nor even perhaps the modern Catholic Christian who has not been adequately instructed in theology; but I do say that this is the orthodox doctrine and was firmly believed until recent times. The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured that these infants went to Heaven. No orthodox Christian can find any logical reason for condemning their action, although all nowadays do so. In countless ways the doctrine of personal immortality in its Christian form has had disastrous effects upon morals, and the metaphysical separation of soul and body has had disastrous effects upon philosophy.

Sources of Intolerance

The intolerance that spread over the world with the advent of Christianity is one of the most curious features, due, I think, to the Jewish belief in righteousness and in the exclusive reality of the Jewish God. Why the Jews should have had these peculiarities I do not know. They seem to have developed during the captivity as a reaction against the attempt to absorb the Jews into alien populations. However that may be, the Jews, and more especially the prophets, invented emphasis upon personal righteousness and the idea that it is wicked to tolerate any religion except one. These two ideas have had an extraordinarily disastrous effect upon Occidental history. The church made much of the persecution of Christians by the Roman State before the time of Constantine. This persecution, however, was slight and intermittent and wholly political. At all times, from the age of Constantine to the end of the seventeenth century, Christians were far more fiercely persecuted by other Christians than they ever were by the Roman emperors. Before the rise of Christianity this persecuting attitude was unknown to the ancient world except among the Jews. If you read, for example, Herodotus, you find a bland and tolerant account of the habits of the foreign nations he visited. Sometimes, it is true, a peculiarly barbarous custom may shock him, but in general he is hospitable to foreign gods and foreign customs. He is not anxious to prove that people who call Zeus by some other name will suffer eternal punishment and ought to be put to death in order that their punishment may begin as soon as possible. This attitude has been reserved for Christians. It is true that the modern Christian is less robust, but that is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians. Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 b.c.; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime. My great-great-grandfather, after observing the depth of the lava on the slopes of Etna, came to the conclusion that the world must be older than the orthodox supposed and published this opinion in a book. For this offense he was cut by the county and ostracized from society. Had he been a man in humbler circumstances, his punishment would doubtless have been more severe. It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.

The Doctrine of Free Will

The attitude of the Christians on the subject of natural law has been curiously vacillating and uncertain. There was, on the one hand, the doctrine of free will, in which the great majority of Christians believed; and this doctrine required that the acts of human beings at least should not be subject to natural law. There was, on the other hand, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a belief in God as the Lawgiver and in natural law as one of the main evidences of the existence of a Creator. In recent times the objection to the reign of law in the interests of free will has begun to be felt more strongly than the belief in natural law as affording evidence for a Lawgiver. Materialists used the laws of physics to show, or attempt to show, that the movements of human bodies are mechanically determined, and that consequently everything that we say and every change of position that we effect fall outside the sphere of any possible free will. If this be so, whatever may be left for our unfettered volitions is of little value. If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other. There might in certain metaphysical systems remain a region of pure thought in which the will would be free; but, since that can be communicated to others only by means of bodily movement, the realm of freedom would be one that could never be the subject of communication and could never have any social importance.

Then, again, evolution has had a considerable influence upon those Christians who have accepted it. They have seen that it will not do to make claims on behalf of man which are totally different from those which are made on behalf of other forms of life. Therefore, in order to safeguard free will in man, they have objected to every attempt at explaining the behaviour of living matter in terms of physical and chemical laws. The position of Descartes, to the effect that all lower animals are automata, no longer finds favor with liberal theologians. The doctrine of continuity makes them inclined to go a step further still and maintain that even what is called dead matter is not rigidly governed in its behaviour by unalterable laws. They seem to have overlooked the fact that, if you abolish the reign of law, you also abolish the possibility of miracles, since miracles are acts of God which contravene the laws governing ordinary phenomena. I can, however, imagine the modern liberal theologian maintaining with an air of profundity that all creation is miraculous, so that he no longer needs to fasten upon certain occurrences as special evidence of Divine intervention.

Under the influence of this reaction against natural law, some Christian apologists have seized upon the latest doctrines of the atom, which tend to show that the physical laws in which we have hitherto believed have only an approximate and average truth as applied to large numbers of atoms, while the individual electron behaves pretty much as it likes. My own belief is that this is a temporary phase, and that the physicists will in time discover laws governing minute phenomena, although these laws may differ considerably from those of traditional physics. However that may be, it is worth while to observe that the modern doctrines as to minute phenomena have no bearing upon anything that is of practical importance. Visible motions, and indeed all motions that make any difference to anybody, involve such large numbers of atoms that they come well within the scope of the old laws. To write a poem or commit a murder (reverting to our previous illustration), it is necessary to move an appreciable mass of ink or lead. The electrons composing the ink may be dancing freely around their little ballroom, but the ballroom as a whole is moving according to the old laws of physics, and this alone is what concerns the poet and his publisher. The modern doctrines, therefore, have no appreciable bearing upon any of those problems of human interest with which the theologian is concerned.

The free-will question consequently remains just where it was. Whatever may be thought about it as a matter of ultimate metaphysics, it is quite clear that nobody believes it in practice. Everyone has always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain effect on behaviour. The apostle of free will maintains that a man can by will power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a man can say "British Constitution" as clearly as if he were sober. And everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world. The one effect that the free-will doctrine has in practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.

No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behaviour to sin; he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. An analogous way of treating human beings is, however, considered to be contrary to the truths of our holy religion. And this applies even in the treatment of little children. Many children have bad habits which are perpetuated by punishment but will probably pass away of themselves if left unnoticed. Nevertheless, nurses, with very few exceptions, consider it right to inflict punishment, although by so doing they run the risk of causing insanity. When insanity has been caused it is cited in courts of law as a proof of the harmfulness of the habit, not of the punishment. (I am alluding to a recent prosecution for obscenity in the State of New York.)

Reforms in education have come very largely through the study of the insane and feeble-minded, because they have not been held morally responsible for their failures and have therefore been treated more scientifically than normal children. Until very recently it was held that, if a boy could not learn his lesson, the proper cure was caning or flogging. This view is nearly extinct in the treatment of children, but it survives in the criminal law. It is evident that a man with a propensity to crime must be stopped, but so must a man who has hydrophobia and wants to bite people, although nobody considers him morally responsible. A man who is suffering from plague has to be imprisoned until he is cured, although nobody thinks him wicked. The same thing should be done with a man who suffers from a propensity to commit forgery; but there should be no more idea of guilt in the one case than in the other. And this is only common sense, though it is a form of common sense to which Christian ethics and metaphysics are opposed.

To judge of the moral influence of any institution upon a community, we have to consider the kind of impulse which is embodied in the institution and the degree to which the institution increases the efficacy of the impulse in that community. Sometimes the impulse concerned is quite obvious, sometimes it is more hidden. An Alpine club, for example, obviously embodies the impulse to adventure, and a learned society embodies the impulse toward knowledge. The family as an institution embodies jealousy and parental feeling; a football club or a political party embodies the impulse toward competitive play; but the two greatest social institutions -- namely, the church and the state -- are more complex in their psychological motivation. The primary purpose of the state is clearly security against both internal criminals and external enemies. It is rooted in the tendency of children to huddle together when they are frightened and to look for a grown-up person who will give them a sense of security. The church has more complex origins. Undoubtedly the most important source of religion is fear; this can be seen in the present day, since anything that causes alarm is apt to turn people's thoughts to God. Battle, pestilence, and shipwreck all tend to make people religious. Religion has, however, other appeals besides that of terror; it appeals specifically to our human self-esteem. If Christianity is true, mankind are not such pitiful worms as they seem to be; they are of interest to the Creator of the universe, who takes the trouble to be pleased with them when they behave well and displeased when they behave badly. This is a great compliment. We should not think of studying an ants' nest to find out which of the ants performed their formicular duty, and we should certainly not think of picking out those individual ants who were remiss and putting them into a bonfire. If God does this for us, it is a compliment to our importance; and it is even a pleasanter compliment if he awards to the good among us everlasting happiness in heaven. Then there is the comparitively modern idea that cosmic evolution is all designed to bring about the sort of results which we call good -- that is to say, the sort of results that give us pleasure. Here again it is flattering to suppose that the universe is controlled by a Being who shares our tastes and prejudices.

The Idea of Righteousness

The third psychological impulse which is embodied in religion is that which has led to the conception of righteousness. I am aware that many freethinkers treat this conception with great respect and hold that it should be preserved in spite of the decay of dogmatic religion. I cannot agree with them on this point. The psychological analysis of the idea of righteousness seems to me to show that it is rooted in undesirable passions and ought not to be strengthened by the imprimatur of reason. Righteousness and unrighteousness must be taken together; it is impossible to stress the one without stressing the other also. Now, what is "unrighteousness" in practise? It is in practise behaviour of a kind disliked by the herd. By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty. This is the psychology of lynching, and of the other ways in which criminals are punished. The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.

But, it will be said, the account you have been giving of righteousness is wholly inapplicable to the Hebrew prophets, who, after all, on your own showing, invented the idea. There is truth in this: righteousness in the mouths of the Hebrew prophets meant what was approved by them and Yahweh. One finds the same attitude expressed in the Acts of the Apostles, where the Apostles began a pronouncement with the words "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us" (Acts xv, 28). This kind of individual certainty as to God's tastes and opinions cannot, however, be made the basis of any institution. That has always been the difficulty with which Protestantism has had to contend: a new prophet could maintain that his revelation was more authentic than those of his predecessors, and there was nothing in the general outlook of Protestantism to show that this claim was invalid. Consequently Protestantism split into innumerable sects, which weakened one another; and there is reason to suppose that a hundred years hence Catholicism will be the only effective representation of the Christian faith. In the Catholic Church inspiration such as the prophets enjoyed has its place; but it is recognized that phenomena which look rather like genuine divine inspiration may be inspired by the Devil, and it is the business of the church to discriminate, just as it is the business of the art connoisseur to know a genuine Leonardo from a forgery. In this way revelation becomes institutionalized at the same time. Righteousness is what the church approves, and unrighteousness is what it disapproves. Thus the effective part of the conception of righteousness is a justification of herd antipathy.

It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one may say, is to give an air of respectability to these passions, provided they run in certain channels. It is because these passions make, on the whole, for human misery that religion is a force for evil, since it permits men to indulge these passions without restraint, where but for its sanction they might, at least to a certain degree, control them.

I can imagine at this point an objection, not likely to be urged perhaps by most orthodox believers but nevertheless worthy to be examined. Hatred and fear, it may be said, are essential human characteristics; mankind always has felt them and always will. The best that you can do with them, I may be told, is to direct them into certain channels in which they are less harmful than they would be in certain other channels. A Christian theologian might say that their treatment by the church in analogous to its treatment of the sex impulse, which it deplores. It attempts to render concupiscence innocuous by confining it within the bounds of matrimony. So, it may be said, if mankind must inevitably feel hatred, it is better to direct this hatred against those who are really harmful, and this is precisely what the church does by its conception of righteousness.

To this contention there are two replies -- one comparatively superficial; the other going to the root of the matter. The superficial reply is that the church's conception of righteousness is not the best possible; the fundamental reply is that hatred and fear can, with our present psychological knowledge and our present industrial technique, be eliminated altogether from human life.

To take the first point first. The church's conception of righteousness is socially undesirable in various ways -- first and foremost in its depriciation of intelligence and science. This defect is inherited from the Gospels. Christ tells us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease. To acquire such knowledge is no part of our duty, according to the church. The church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to a pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma. Take, for example, two men, one of whom has stamped out yellow fever throughout some large region in the tropics but has in the course of his labors had occasional relations with women to whom he was not married; while the other has been lazy and shiftless, begetting a child a year until his wife died of exhaustion and taking so little care of his children that half of them died from preventable causes, but never indulging in illicit sexual intercourse. Every good Christian must maintain that the second of these men is more virtuous than the first. Such an attitude is, of course, superstitious and totally contrary to reason. Yet something of this absurdity is inevitable so long as avoidance of sin is thought more important than positive merit, and so long as the importance of knowledge as a help to a useful life is not recognized.

The second and more fundamental objection to the utilization of fear and hatred practised by the church is that these emotions can now be almost wholly eliminated from human nature by educational, economic, and political reforms. The educational reforms must be the basis, since men who feel hatred and fear will also admire these emotions and wish to perpetuate them, although this admiration and wish will probably be unconscious, as it is in the ordinary Christian. An education designed to eliminate fear is by no means difficult to create. It is only necessary to treat a child with kindness, to put him in an environment where initiative is possible without disastrous results, and to save him from contact with adults who have irrational terrors, whether of the dark, of mice, or of social revolution. A child must also not be subject to severe punishment, or to threats, or to grave and excessive reproof. To save a child from hatred is a somewhat more elaborate business. Situations arousing jealousy must be very carefully avoided by means of scrupulous and exact justice as between different children. A child must feel himself the object of warm affection on the part of some at least of the adults with whom he has to do, and he must not be thwarted in his natural activities and curiosities except when danger to life or health is concerned. In particular, there must be no taboo on sex knowledge, or on conversation about matters which conventional people consider improper. If these simple precepts are observed from the start, the child will be fearless and friendly.

On entering adult life, however, a young person so educated will find himself or herself plunged into a world full of injustice, full of cruelty, full of preventable misery. The injustice, the cruelty, and the misery that exist in the modern world are an inheritance from the past, and their ultimate source is economic, since life-and-death competition for the means of subsistence was in former days inevitable. It is not inevitable in our age. With our present industrial technique we can, if we choose, provide a tolerable subsistence for everybody. We could also secure that the world's population should be stationary if we were not prevented by the political influence of churches which prefer war, pestilence, and famine to contraception. The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Leonard Cohen’s Prince of Asturias Awards Speech : How I got My Song

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Leonard Cohen's Prince of Asturias Awards Speech : How I got My Song

Original link from DrHGuy at Heck Of A Guy @ http://1heckofaguy.com/ :

Upgraded Video Of Leonard Cohen’s Prince of Asturias Awards Speech With No Overdubbing.

http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/10/25/upgraded-video-of-leonard-cohen%E2%80%99s-prince-of-asturias-awards-speech-with-no-overdubbing/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRv3rKBZyEY

It is a great honour to stand here before you tonight. Perhaps, like the great maestro, Riccardo Muti, I'm not used to standing in front of an audience without an orchestra behind me, but I will do my best as a solo artist tonight.

I stayed up all night last night wondering what I might say to this assembly. After I had eaten all the chocolate bars and peanuts from the minibar, I scribbled a few words. I don't think I have to refer to them. Obviously, I'm deeply touched to be recognized by the Foundation. But I have come here tonight to express another dimension of gratitude; I think I can do it in three or four minutes.

When I was packing in Los Angeles, I had a sense of unease because I've always felt some ambiguity about an award for poetry. Poetry comes from a place that no one commands, that no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from I would go there more often.

I was compelled in the midst of that ordeal of packing to go and open my guitar. I have a Conde guitar, which was made in Spain in the great workshop at number 7 Gravina Street. I pick up an instrument I acquired over 40 years ago. I took it out of the case, I lifted it, and it seemed to be filled with helium it was so light. And I brought it to my face and I put my face close to the beautifully designed rosette, and I inhaled the fragrance of the living wood. We know that wood never dies. I inhaled the fragrance of the cedar as fresh as the first day that I acquired the guitar. And a voice seemed to say to me, "You are an old man and you have not said thank you, you have not brought your gratitude back to the soil from which this fragrance arose. And so I come here tonight to thank the soil and the soul of this land that has given me so much.

Because I know that just as an identity card is not a man, a credit rating is not a country.

Now, you know of my deep association and confraternity with the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca. I could say that when I was a young man, an adolescent, and I hungered for a voice, I studied the English poets and I knew their work well, and I copied their styles, but I could not find a voice. It was only when I read, even in translation, the works of Lorca that I understood that there was a voice. It is not that I copied his voice; I would not dare. But he gave me permission to find a voice, to locate a voice, that is to locate a self, a self that that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence.

As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.

And so I had a voice, but I did not have an instrument. I did not have a song.

And now I'm going to tell you very briefly a story of how I got my song.

I was an indifferent guitar player. I managed a few chords. I only knew a few of them. I sat around with my college friends, drinking and singing the folk songs and the popular songs of the day, but I never in a thousand years thought of myself as a musician or as a singer.

One day in the early sixties, I was visiting my mother's house in Montreal. Her house was beside a park and in the park was a tennis court where many people come to watch the beautiful young tennis players enjoy their sport. I wandered back to this park which I'd known since my childhood, and there was a young man playing a guitar. He was playing a flamenco guitar, and he was surrounded by two or three girls and boys who were listening to him. I loved the way he played. There was something about the way he played that captured me. It was the way that I wanted to play and knew that I would never be able to play.

And, I sat there with the other listeners for a few moments and when there was a silence, an appropriate silence, I asked him if he would give me guitar lessons. He was a young man from Spain, and we could only communicate in my broken French and his broken French. He didn't speak English. And he agreed to give me guitar lessons. I pointed to my mother's house which you could see from the tennis court, and we made an appointment and settled a price.

He came to my mother's house the next day and he said, "Let me hear you play something." I tried to play something, and he said, "You don't know how to play, do you?'

I said, "No, I don't know how to play." He said "First of all, let me tune your guitar. It's all out of tune." So he took the guitar, and he tuned it. He said, "It's not a bad guitar." It wasn't the Conde, but it wasn't a bad guitar. So, he handed it back to me. He said, "Now play."

I couldn't play any better.

He said "Let me show you some chords." And he took the guitar, and he produced a sound from that guitar I had never heard. And he played a sequence of chords with a tremolo, and he said, "Now you do it." I said, "It's out of the question. I can't possibly do it." He said, "Let me put your fingers on the frets," and he put my fingers on the frets. And he said, "Now, now play."

It was a mess. He said, " I'll come back tomorrow."

He came back tomorrow, he put my hands on the guitar, he placed it on my lap in the way that was appropriate, and I began again with those six chords – a six chord progression. Many, many flamenco songs are based on them.

I was a little better that day. The third day – improved, somewhat improved. But I knew the chords now. And, I knew that although I couldn't coordinate my fingers with my thumb to produce the correct tremolo pattern, I knew the chords; I knew them very, very well.

The next day, he didn't come. He didn't come. I had the number of his, of his boarding house in Montreal. I phoned to find out why he had missed the appointment, and they told me that he had taken his life. That he committed suicide.

I knew nothing about the man. I did not know what part of Spain he came from. I did not know why he came to Montreal. I did not know why he played there. I did not know why he he appeared there at that tennis court. I did not know why he took his life.

I was deeply saddened, of course. But now I disclose something that I've never spoken in public. It was those six chords, it was that guitar pattern that has been the basis of all my songs and all my music. So, now you will begin to understand the dimensions of the gratitude I have for this country.

Everything that you have found favourable in my work comes from this place. Everything , everything that you have found favourable in my songs and my poetry are inspired by this soil.

So, I thank you so much for the warm hospitality that you have shown my work because it is really yours, and you have allowed me to affix my signature to the bottom of the page.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet-

Guest Blogger: Claudia Moscovici:A Writer Returns to Romania

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:35:00 +0000

Thanks to Claudia for her article-

A Writer Returns to Romania

by Claudia Moscovici on Monday, October 17, 2011 04:39 pm

EASTERN EUROPEAN, FICTION, POLITICS, PUBLISHING

Returning to Romania, my native country after 30 years, made me feel like Rip Van Winkle. I didn't fall asleep for that many years, but I did fall out of touch with my native country — and Eastern Europe in general — as I was focusing on my personal and professional life in the United States. My memories of my native country didn't fade, however. I kept them alive through my fiction, the novel Velvet Totalitarianism that I've already written about on Litkicks, and that has just been republished in Romanian translation as Between Two Worlds (Intre Doua Lumi). The image of Romania in my head was also somewhat faded: a kind of black and white — or gray, more like it — snapshot of the communist country my family fled from in 1981. I described this dire image as vividly as I could in my novel:

While Eva waited for the pietoni (pedestrians/walk) sign to turn green, her eyes couldn't help but focus on the poster of General Secretary Nicolae Ceausescu directly facing her. The dictator's face was frozen into the larger-than-life image he wanted to convey: his hair was still dark, glossy and youthful; his brown eyes sparkled with a reassuring warmth; his sensual mouth smiled with compassion; his aquiline, Roman nose took away some of the face's natural beauty but gave it an air of authority. Eva thought how different this man was, and his benevolent image, from the day-to-day reality facing most Romanians. She turned away her gaze with disgust, yet found no consolation in her immediate surroundings. That winter evening, everything looked gray—the streets, the dingy buildings, the people scurrying about. Even the falling snow couldn't add a glimmer of beauty to the gloomy atmosphere. Disoriented snowflakes fell helplessly onto the ground and disappeared without a trace into the pavement. What a pity, Eva whispered to herself, thinking that during the past few years, Bucharest in the evening had become a depressing sight. The formerly lively capital, filled with dazzling lights, picturesque cobblestone streets, Napoleonic-style buildings and its very own version of L'arc de triomphe (Arcul de Triumf) looked anything but triumphant now.

I can say with confidence that the Bucharest I found now, thirty years later, did look triumphant, very much like "the little Paris" it's reputed to be. Or, actually, not so little since if one counts the suburbs Bucharest has grown to a population of 2.3 million people. I arrived in the city during the George Enescu Festival (an international concert series), which lit up the downtown and gathered enormous crowds of classical music lovers. But even during the day, I could hardly recognize this westernized post-Stalinist Bucharest, bustling with elegant people, lit up by international banners (Pepsi, Levi's, Mercedes, etc) and replete with gorgeous mansions built in the Haussmann style of Napoleonic architecture.

The only reason I wasn't shocked by the vast difference between my somber memories of communist Romania and this new, westernized Romania is that I had made a connection between these two worlds via the LinkedIn social networking site. Even before my visit, I was in touch about the launch of my novel with editors and journalists from Forbes.ro, Elle.ro and several other international magazines and journals that have established branches in Romania. With this new internationalization of the media, also comes a standardization of the high standards for conducting interviews, writing articles, incorporating images, etc. All this, of course, doesn't have to imply a homogenization of culture, just the quality control of standards, which overall I found to be a positive development. In some respects, I found the Romanian publishing industry to be ahead of the curve as far as multimedia launches go. I was impressed with the fact that my publisher, Curtea Veche Publishing, incorporated at the launch not only a book trailer but also a music video by the composer and director Andy Platon, called Velvet Love, which were based on the plot of my novel.

The main visual difference I noticed during my brief visit was also positive. I was struck by how busy and bustling Bucharest (like other European cities) was at all hours of the day and evening, filled with cafes, concerts and cultural activities. I was equally impressed by the spectacular beauty of the city itself, which has been recently renovated but includes row after row, and street after street, of gorgeous nineteenth-century mansions of the former Romanian aristocracy. (For anyone interested in going on vacation to Bucharest, I'd strongly recommend it!) Moreover, I noticed a different attitude not only from the previous Communist era, but also from the United States: people in Bucharest seem to devote a lot of time to cultural "leisure" activities that most Americans don't have as much time for or don't prioritize as much. Of course, if I were to compare cultural life in Bucharest with cultural life in New York, it would be comparable, but I'd still maintain that Romanians, and Europeans in general, seem to enjoy more leisure time, and thus have more time to take advantage of cultural activities.

They say that when you travel somewhere as a tourist, it's very easy to become enchanted with the place and not notice its flaws. That's no doubt true. During my visit to Romania, I was not only a tourist, but also an author on a book launch, so I had the privilege of speaking with many media personnel, cultural figures, artists and intellectuals. I'm sure that if I actually lived in the country for an extended period of time, I'd notice more of the downsides, including the economic problems and the political corruption that many Romanians talk about and that impacts their daily lives.

In fact, I discussed these issues briefly with some of the journalists who interviewed me. What became obvious from these conversations is that the issue of political and economic corruption can impact the foreign investment that Romania — like all the countries from the former Eastern Europe — needs to flourish. One of the journalists in particular, who works for a very reputable international magazine, told me that he has interviewed my publisher (Curtea Veche Publishing) because it is a publishing house that is extremely professional, punctual, reliable and abides by international standards. There is a sense of being fashionably late in Romania and of cutting it rather close to deadlines. I suppose it could be called a laissez-faire attitude that still prevails.

However, as Romania develops an increasingly successful capitalist economy, I hope that another version of laissez-faire, tied to professionalism and the work ethic, continues to emerge. If I were to sum up my visit in one phrase, I'd say that thirty years ago I left a Romania that was clearly a part of Eastern Europe, only to return to a Romania that is part of the new Europe, pure and simple. There is no more sense of being caught between East and West, or "between two worlds" as the title of my novel in Romanian implies. The Romania of today is integrated into Europe and I hope that this process of internationalization continues in the country without losing, however, its distinct cultural identity which I, like so many other Romanian intellectuals, appreciate and love.

Read more, comment & subscribe at http://literaturesalon.wordpress.com

http://www.litkicks.com/ReturnToRomania

Claudia Moscovici

Author Archive

2010

• Fiction and Cultural Memory: Writing From Ceausescu's Romania (5 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on July 26, 2010

• The Conformism of Postmodern Style (16 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on September 1, 2010

• An Unlikely Cocktail: Mixing Pop and Bourbon in the Palace of Versailles (10 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on November 5, 2010

2011

• Romania's Literary Star, or Why Americans Are Obsessed With Dracula (14 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on January 31, 2011

• Art Trends: Toyism and Google (14 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on February 28, 2011

• Barna Nemethi's Fashionable 21st Century Dada (7 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on May 5, 2011

• A Writer Returns to Romania (5 comments) by Claudia Moscovici on October 17, 2011

Literary Kicks

Opinions, Observations and Research

Guest Blogger:Claudia Moscovici on Romanian Contemporary Fiction by Dumitru Radu Popa at http://literaturesalon.wordpress.com

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:59:00 +0000

Guest Blogger: Romanian Contemporary Fiction by Dumitru Radu Popa

by Claudia Moscovici at postromanticism.com

Thanks to Claudia for this fascinating post-

Read more at http://literaturesalon.wordpress.com

New post on Literaturesalon's Blog

Romanian Contemporary Fiction by Dumitru Radu Popa

by literaturesalon

Lady V. and Other Stories, by Dumitru Radu Popa

I have just written a post about Proust and his biographers, who attempt to render this classic 20th-century writer palatable and relevant to 21st-century readers. Proust stands the test of time partly because he delves into the depths of our dreams, desires, fears and all the hidden regions of our subconscious, which seem to have their own logic and are perennial. He also puts a writer's magnifying glass on the world of 20th-century French aristocracy--studying them as an entomologist would insects--to magnify the neuroses, deviancy and intrigue that lie beneath a thin veneer of worldliness and respectability.

Today I'd like to present the works of a Romanian-American fiction writer and literary critic, Dumitru Radu Popa, who continues the genre of psychological fiction in our times. Psychological fiction is, in many respects, timeless. As much as our social and political institutions may change, arguably the basics of human nature remain more or less the same. However, the challenge for a fiction writer remains to render basic human fears, emotions, obsessions and desires interesting and engaging for a contemporary audience. Dumitru Radu Popa relies upon his broad cultural training in literature, philosophy, philology and law--as well as his keen artistic sensibility--to accomplish this task, in his short stories, novellas and novels that have won critical acclaim both in his native Romania and in the Uni ted States.

As a writer, literary critic and intellectual, Dumitru Radu Popa has been well-known since the 1970's. His works in Romanian include a book of literary criticism about Saint-Exupery, several collections of short stories (Calatoria, 1982; Fisura, 1985 and Panic Syndrome! 1997), the anthologies Skenzemon! (2005) and Lady V. and Other Stories (2006) as well as two novels, one of which--Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions--has been recently translated into English (Outskirts Press, 2011) and the second of which, Traversind Washington Square (Crossing Washington Square), I'm currently translating into English.

One of my favorite books, Lady V. and Other Stories harks back to the talent of exquisite, well-crafted psychological fiction reminiscent of the modernist style of Henry James and Marcel Proust. This beautifully written collection of short stories is universal in its appeal. It is subtle, even exquisite in the way physical descriptions and details (of gestures and movements) speak volumes about the characters' states of mind and feelings. The narrative, fluid and delicate in style, places itself in the tradition of literary fiction without being in any way arcane or pretentious. Moreover, Dumitru Radu Popa's ironic touches are incisive and honest, without ever becoming brutal. They are similar in tone to Chekhov's fiction, which depicts human beings as they are--flaws and all--without hating us for our foibles and fallibility.

Crossing Washington Square, NYC

Dumitru Radu Popa's newest novel, Traversind Washington Square (Crossing Washington Square) is, in my opinion, the closest in style and introspective bent to Proust's La Recherche. On the surface this is the story--or, more like it, fantasy--of an illicit love affair between a professor and his graduate student. When one delves deeper into the text, however, one discovers a meditation on the nature of time, about how the ingrained memories of childhood infiltrate our memory in unexpected ways and shape our identities as adults as well as lyrical analysis of human mortality itself. To give you a feel for the narrative, I'm including below the first chapter of this intriguing novel.

Crossing Washington Square, by Dumitru Radu Popa

(Tr. Claudia Moscovici)

Swedish Hood

Like every morning, crossing Washington Square from University Place towards 4^th Street, losing myself in the anonymity of the red building, with the brick facade, of the Philosophy Building--a perfect edifice made to reduce everything to the absence of worries and metaphysical torments--I thought that time materialized, gaining a consistency difficult to pinpoint yet lacking, at core, any ambiguity. It could be the beggar on the other side of the fence, exhibiting malodorous wounds or urinating, through his pants, on the bench where he slept all night, covered by newspapers, with a stitched together rag, or sometimes even with a torn American flag, left by God knows what Puerto Rican parade that transformed for an evening the whole neighborhood into a deplorable trash bin: beer cans and Pepsi tumbling with an irritating noise; left-over junk food; packages and trampled cigarettes.

Or perhaps it could be the policeman with a Hispanic name, moving back and forth, on his electric scooter or astride a horse—as useless as it is traditional in the municipal annals of the institution—with a tattered leather agenda peeking from his back pocket, indifferent to the industrious marijuana vendors, who, unperturbed, accost you with the question, whistled through their teeth "Smoke? Smoke?", but always ready to give a blistering ticket for a car parked unknowingly or carelessly in an illegal spot. Or it could be people with somber demeanors—always the same ones!—walking their dogs on the grass, with a resigned air to their daily punishment, so freely accepted. Not to mention the joggers that gallop with a regular stride, sweating in their plastic jogging suits, old or young, almost all of them with a wa lkman on their ears, breathing in deeply the most polluted air in New York, yet convinced, in spite of that, that they're ameliorating their health, as if health, like time itself in a way, had become, all of a sudden, something tangible, perfectly quantifiable and, consequently, susceptible to being altered… Or, finally, it could be the hyper-realist anomaly of the landscape: the minuscule Arch of Triumph, mounted upon Fifth Avenue, the most famous street in New York, a dwarf or an aborted child of its richer cousin from Etoile de la Paris, which the Japanese tourists, like stuffed pheasants, photograph from summer to winter, from all angles, so as not to miss its specificity.

Yes, indeed! Bucharest was dying, or was already dead within me, slowly and gradually, I can't recall exactly which year, month or day since in such cases one no longer knows how many grains make a pile… And all this bazaar (to say bizarre would be too facile), surrounding me, neither friend nor foe, but pure and simple like a fact. All this probably gave time its material consistency, especially crossing the square, every weekday, today being no different from every other day.

Yet time, this unflappable and intangible flow from nothing to nothing, or from nowhere to nowhere, however it was—the beggar, the policeman, the jogger, the derisory Arch of Triumph, perhaps even the empty, abandoned cigarette packs, and the left-over junk food on the ground—it all seemed to me, in the final analysis, an immense embodiment of the urgency with a raised right hand, the pointer finger itself an exclamation point trying to deny access to the impersonally soothing building where I'd spend the next eight hours of the day in the library, in an office, or in classrooms. And the message of this exclamation could have been something like: "Cave! Remember, I go over each detail and each discrepancy of the landscape, but this doesn't mean anything!" Perhaps not quite as dramatic and rhetor ical, but in any case, something similar.

I'm speaking now of the mixed sensations, not even clear to me: someone with more common sense could have easily concluded that, in fact, I was doing nothing more than becoming aware that I was getting old. But it's one thing to notice that, with the same naiveté—so delectable!—that leads adolescents to see in a thirty year old a "finished man", and another to approach 50: then, probably, the only chance of avoiding a psychic depression is contemplating time, as if this could somehow save the individual from a personal acceptance of this flow that leads to the ugly words "old age", ascribing it all to an immanent and incontestable general paradigm.

As mentioned, recently Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, a political thriller and love story, was published in English translation by Outskirts Press. This novel, like the author himself, straddles two worlds. Part of the plot takes place in post-revolutionary Romania, while the other is set in the United States. Far from being an idyllic place of newly gained democratic freedom, the Romania depicted in the novel is filled with practical problems and mutual suspicions. Although the Securitate (or Romanian Secret Police) has been officially abolished, spying still continues as usual: without, however, the same devastating impact as during the communist era. The oppression that used to be the subject of dystopic fiction (such as Orwell's 1984) is now better described, by Popa's novel, in an ironic and cynical vein. In the confusing post-revolutionary political context, the love between Sabrina and Vlad faces many challenges. Yet this is also the plot element that gives the novel a very human touch and captures the readers' interest and emotions. Several stylistic elements--including love story, philosophical dialogue and political intrigue--all work together to create an irresistible fiction. I'm including below an excerpt of the English translation of Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, which appeared online in Levurelitteraire.com, Numero 2, below:

http://www.levurelitteraire.com/0NUMERO2/2_popa.htm

"Come on, Plato. Let's go home. Iphigenia's waiting for you."

"I can't right now, woman! Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm playing backgammon with Homer? And he's got some luck today. It's like he stepped in you know what: I clearly mean … or maybe he just didn't wash his hands after you know what."

"Stop being such an ass, Plato! You're only saying that because you're losing. If you smell anything here it's not me. It must be Idomeneo's shad; he's dried them out like hell and they're so hard they're going to break my dentures…"

"Shad always needs dill," blubbered one of the old man onlookers known as Menny, though his paperwork clearly stated that his name was Menelaus Kakanis.

The roll of the dice drew a cry of joy from Plato while he utterly ignores Iphigenia's emissary who is standing by the door with her hand to her mouth.

"Aha! There you are! This is the end of you! Briseis, hand me one of Idomeneo's dry shad. I'll tenderize it with this pot… too bad I don't have a bust of Cicero…"

"Well, Cicero is out buying new tires," Menny tried to intervene but he was quickly stifled as usually happens to those in his position.

"Iphigenia said to come home right away to wash up and get ready for Aristotle, Penelope and Orpheus, not to mention his cross-eyed sister Cassandra, who are coming over tonight. And then we're all going to go to St. Basil's Church. Herostratus is coming too, you know, the one who just opened that big grocery near Ditmars."

"Oh alright, I'm coming. Just let me finish up with this coward. Homer's coming to church too with Aphrodite and Hecuba. But we have plenty of time, my clothes aren't even ready. The guys at the cleaners on Hoyt Avenue said five o'clock. Catharsis, you know the place. It's the best one, doesn't even compare with those lousy Chinese at French Cleaners."

"Aha, did you hear that? Catharsis!" said in Romanian a guy with the beginnings of a belly, maybe even a full gut, who spoke while holding a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

It was bright as day, Colonel Munteanu.

He and his companion had sat at a table in the back, near the bathrooms that smelled strongly of disinfectant, and this combination of chlorine and dried fish was enough to turn your stomach.

"Since when do you understand Greek?" asked his associate. He was much younger, thin, with prominent cheekbones and an unusually conspicuous Adam's apple, so that the shadow he cast on the wall looked like nothing as much as a cartoon from the Sunday funnies.

"Shut up and listen! Or are you playing the fool? You don't need to speak Greek to know he said Catharsis: those Greek dry cleaners where that big cheese, your godfather, sended his clothes. Don't you remember from the file? It seems that he used to bring in his clothes with blood stains every night. He'd pick them up clean in the morning, but the stains always returned in the exact same spots. Totally absurd!"

"It's not absurd at all! There's clearly some dough involved, if only we could find its traces... But I don't think it's here… Anyway, I was just saying," whinged the other, code name Lazar. "I've seen backgammon before and I don't really like this Greek food, either. I've gotten more used to Chinese, especially since it's also cheaper!"

"We're not talking about what you may or may not like!," chastised a resentful Munteanu. "We have to start somewhere…"

With these words he approached, somewhat shyly, the table of the more or less ancient Greeks who lived in the picturesque neighborhood of Astoria, with all of their glorious history of which, it seemed, they weren't too much aware. Then, as if he had changed his mind, he returned and prodded his companion, "Listen… my English is, how should I say, kind of passive. I understand, but I can't really express myself clearly."

"I see," answered Lazar, with a touch of irony that did not escape the attention of the older man. "It's like with those engineers. They look intelligent enough but, when they try to express themselves, just can't be done!"

He winked jokingly as to erase any misunderstanding, and then went up to the ad-hoc Agora where English wasn't anything to emulate Shakespeare or Milton. Munteanu, aka the Sphinx, did not appreciate the joke and threw a suspicious look at the young man as he was walking away. He found his apprentice a little too full of himself, especially in front of a superior! "It would not hurt him to be a bit more careful!"

After a short moment of confusion, the steady clicking of the dice resumed.

"Do you speak Romanian?" all of a sudden a man asked the colonel. He had been sitting near the greasy window, so dirty that the man could not have really been looking through it, but rather into himself, lost in God knows what thoughts.

Sure, people come to taverns to socialize, but also to possibly come to terms with themselves. Or maybe just to eavesdrop on others.

"Yeah I do speak Romanian? Isn't that clear? So what? It's none of your business!" growled Colonel Munteanu who would have preferred that his young apprentice hurried up and talked to those Greeks about Catharsis.

"Well it may not be a big deal," said the dirty window watcher, "but anyway, if you want any information about... how should I put it… the Romanian community here, you'd do best to ask me."

The guy was somehow "clean-cut", he didn't look like a beggar, and the colonel signaled to Blossom, alias Lazar, as if to say "Hold on a second! Let's see what this guy has to say." So the latter gave up any attempt to speak about the Iliad, the Odyssey and any other epic that might have grown in the tavern, and came back to the table.

"Pour, Blossom!" the colonel said gesturing toward a bottle and the young man immediately obliged pouring out two full glasses of ouzo for his table mates, but only a drop for himself, because he could not stand this perfumed liquor with oily texture.

Silence fell over the room again so that the only sound was the jangling of the dice, a background possibly replacing the typical chorus of ancient Greek tragedy. Everything was as ridiculous and derivative as the illuminatiliving in this small community in Astoria, Queens.

The man who had joined them at the table was massive, with a bald spot that threatened to spread shortly from his forehead to the rest of his head which still spotted some remnants of stringy, greasy hair that had resisted the miraculous cures promised by all sorts of shampoos and conditioners. However, below this, there were a pair of lively eyes; he wasn't stupid by any means, and was not intimidated by the colonel's authoritarian bearing.

"Now it's your turn to pour, you know what I mean! And you'd better tell us everything exactly as it happened if you want to get out of here alive," declared the colonel harshly, despite his apprentice's generous gaze meant to convey something along the lines of: "Why don't you just leave him alone? Maybe he's just some poor fool who knows nothing of our business. What if he speaks Romanian, does that mean we have to harass him? We'd be better off going after the big wigs."

"First of all, I'd like to introduce myself," said the man. "I am, together with my associates, in charge of everything that happens in Romanian business here… I hope you understand what I mean: a deal, some legal matter, or when someone needs to keep their mouth shut…"

And here he made a deft gesture with his hand miming the path of a zipper that starts at the left-most corner of one's mouth and ends over the tightly closed lips of the right-most corner.

"As for other things," he added, "like, for example, the Greek dry cleaners, Catharsis, I'm still the right person to ask. They are the best, if that's what you're interested in, by the way. When I gave my hat to those morons at French Cleaners, the place it is run by the Chinese you know, they shrunk it so bad that I can't wear it anymore. My associates had to bid on e-bay to try to get me a similar one… But if you really want to talk about all these we should probably go to Melon Head's pub. It's the only place around here with real food. Plus I'm getting special treatment…

"Yes, yes!" ventured code name Lazar. "Let's go there!"

In the meantime, Munteanu's mood had been growing worse. The source of his anger was, on one hand, the arrogance of his young subordinate who had begun to give himself airs and to make decisions without even consulting him; and on the other hand, the fact that they were about to leave behind informants that could turn out to be essential to this whole mess that the guys in Bucharest had handed him. Just imagine: people who disappear in dreams, send their clothes to cleaners that make it so that the blood stains reappear the next day. Or, even worse, the task to follow an individual who had run to the other side with the institution's money. What's more to be said, he was simply tired and… overwhelmed by the situation!

Once closed the trunk of the giant Chrysler that she hated so much (and whose disappearance after their vacation, or rather their stop in Los Angeles, she had every reason to look forward to!), Meg sat down in the passenger seat, buckled her seatbelt, and, even before Bob started the car, opened the book she was holding on her knees. Throwing the car in reverse, Bob could not help but grumble, "I see, I'm going to be doing all the driving for days on end, but you could at least help me navigate until we get out of the city."

Meg gave him an amused look. Bob's personality tics no longer bothered her nor made her suspicious as they had when the two were first married. She understood that his inability to take control during their intimate moments had nothing to do with an overwhelming wish to show her, right then, some important paper they had received from the bank; or with a sudden migraine that sent him running to the bathroom where he tarried long enough for her to fall asleep. No! It was a physiological problem, a pretty ordinary one for a couple their age. Sensitive and understanding, she always gave him the impression that everything was alright, that he himself controlled the situation, as, in his mind, it had to be for things to be truly alright. It should be said, however, that Bob too was an active participant in this game, often feigning distress or misunderstandings, as if to test her, to prove to himself that she had figured out what was going on and had no objections. This unspoken agreement, a delicate chess game that kept everything in balance, made their life together not only bearable, but downright happyto the extent that this word can be applied to those who are married.

"Oh honey, I'm sorry not to be more helpful. But knowing you're such a good driver, I thought my inability to read those maps would only irritate you further more!" She was lying shamelessly, of course. We know how carefully she planned every detail of the trip - and please note that we didn't even mention it at the time so that we won't bore the reader - not only every stop and hotel, but also every road and exit that would save them the most time and gas. Despite all of these, she lied graciously and suddenly they found themselves in a shared good mood: he would grumble and drive; she would continue her reading uninterrupted. What could be a better omen for a long trip than such a beginning?

"Ok, Ok," replied Bob satisfied. "It doesn't matter now anyway, I've already merged onto the Maddox Turnpike. But I'm very curious what book has caught your attention so much that last night you fell asleep with the light on."

Meg had begun reading the book the day before the trip, but she had not realized that she fell asleep reading the night before.

"It's a book," she answered, "recommended as summer reading by the company that sent me the tourist information. I don't know how interesting you'd find it… the beginning is pretty boring and it doesn't have anything to do with the title. But what can you do, that's how literature is nowadays."

"Got it!" snorted Bob. "Really Meg, this is so typical of you, and probably that's why I love you so much. You take everything so seriously, like you didn't know that everything is just a trick to make you buy things."

But before Bob had a chance to really get going on with the critique of government manipulation, the IRS, and everything else, Meg cut him off: "I think it's a very good book, but don't ask me why."

"That sounds a little ominous," murmured Bob, sticking his left hand out the window, middle finger upraised, in the direction of the blue Chevy he had just passed.

Meg did not want to leave him completely in the dark, nor did she want him to think that she was talking nonsense.

"I mean that it's strange. It's a translation and the action is multilayered. I'm just a few pages into it, but I'm sure it will go on like this. It's the author's style…"

"Or the translator's," answered Bob sharply. "What's left of the author's style when you're talking about a translation?"

This threw Meg off a bit. She suddenly became suspicious. What did Bob know about books? But she stopped frowning and rephrased the question. Did she really know everything about Bob? "Yeah, maybe that's it! It seems that the translation is very good, that's probably why the book is so easy to read…"

"And from whence came this author to enlighten us with his multilayered book?" asked Bob his voice dripping with irony.

"The cover says he's Romanian, but I didn't want to read too much. You know how it is. The blurb gives away the whole story and there's no joy left in reading the book."

"Oh that's just what we needed," exhaled Bob. "For Romanians to come and teach us!"

"It's not about teaching," answered Meg, "it's just a novel, something made up. But maybe not completely…"

"I bet it was translated from the Russian," posited Bob.

"You think?" exclaimed a puzzled Meg. "I would have thought that they spoke Hungarian over there. I remember reading something in The New York Times Magazine…"

"Nonsense! This Romania used to be part of the Soviet Union," replied Bob completely sure of himself. "There was some big scandal with their KGB about ten years ago, I remember well… It's translated from Russian, I'm sure. Check it out! It's gotta say somewhere in there."

"Probably," acknowledged Meg, but was unable to completely stifle a stray thought of how much Bob knew about geography and geopolitics. "Ah, here it is!" she went on. "Oh well. It says right here that it was translated from Romanian!" And all of a sudden she grew much less worried about her familiarity with Bob's knowledge. "It's obvious! Since the author is Romanian, of course the book was also written in Romanian!"

"Didn't I tell you!" answered Bob triumphantly.

"No," Meg said dryly. "You were just explaining how it was translated from the Russian."

"But I told you that Romania used to be part of the Soviet Union, that's why I thought it was Russian. Of course, after the Berlin Wall fell, all those little countries that were held together by the KGB started reusing their own languages…"

Meg wanted to mention something about the fact that all those countries did not go off in their own direction after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but only several years later, and Romania was not even among them. But she decided not to insist. "Anyway, I like this book! I don't care if it's translated from Russian, Hungarian, or Romanian. I'll read about that afterwards!"

Hearing her say afterwards in that tone, Bob's eyes shot open and he almost lost control of the steering wheel, a move that frightened Meg. She reminded herself she should stand to be a little more careful not to let herself get so riled up with these conversations because you never know where they'll lead…

"After I finish the novel, I mean," she clarified ready to resume her reading.

"Hmm… Ok," muttered Bob. "And what did you say was the title of this very special book?"

Meg ignored the sarcasm in his question. "I Haven't said yet! In translation it's Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, but I don't think the title is very important. So far there haven't even been any characters named Sabrina, just a couple of Romanian spies and (you'll be shocked when I tell you!) a couple just like us that are getting ready to go on vacation. But I think I'm going to skip over the sections about them."

Turning towards Walhalla Circle, Bob added, "Sounds like some great summer reading! Not that American literature is any better, but at least it has clear titles: Tom Sawyer is a story about Tom Sawyer. Sabrina: that's a name that could come from anywhere! And to make it worse, she doesn't even come up in the beginning of the book…"

Meg totally ignored the rest of the diatribe, returning to her book and picking up exactly where she had left off.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

literaturesalon | October 5, 2011 at 6:13 pm | Tags: book review, book reviews, Claudia Moscovici, communist Romania, contemporary fiction, contemporary literature, contemporary Romanian fiction, contemporary Romanian literature, Crossing Washin gton Square, Crossing Washington Square by Dumitru Radu Popa, D. R. Popa, D. R. Popa's Crossing Washington Square, D. R. Popa's Lady V. and Other Stories, D. R. Popa's Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, Dumitru Radu Popa, Dumitru Radu Popa's fiction, fiction, Henry James, Lady V. and Other Stories, Lady V. and Other Stories by Dumitru Radu Popa, literary criticism, literary salon, literature, literature sal on, literaturesalon, Marcel Proust, new fiction, Nicolae Ceausescu, Outskirts Press, post-communist Romania, post-revolutionary Romania, Proustian fiction, psychological fiction, Romania, Romanian Contemporary Fiction, Romanian Contemporary Fiction by Dumitru Radu Popa, Romanian fiction, Romanian writers, Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions by Dumitru Radu Popa, Sabrina si Alte Suspiciuni by Dumitru Radu Popa, salon, totalitarianism, Traversind Washington Square by Dumitru Radu Popa | Categories: book review, Claudia Moscovici, communist Romania, contemporary fiction, Crossing Washington Square, D. R. Popa, Dumitru Radu Popa, Dumitru Radu Popa's fiction, fiction, Henry James, Lady V. and Other Stories, literary criticism, literary fiction, literature, literature salon, literaturesalon, Marcel Proust, Outskirts Press, psychological fiction, Romanian Contemporary Fiction by Dumitru Radu Popa, Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions | URL: http://wp.me/p13NZL-hi

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Remembrance of Things Proust: Alain de Botton, William Carter and Michael Norris Claudia Moscovici, Guest Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:46:00 +0000

I'm pleased to present an article by the talented Claudia Moscovici as a guest blogger.

Ms. Moscovici's work can be followed at http://fineartbooks.wordpress.com and at postromanticism.com

I would like to thank Claudia for permitting to present her work here.

She recently finished two books on psychopathic seduction and dangerous relationships: a nonfiction book called "Dangerous Liaisons: How to Recognize and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction" and a novel called "The Seducer". This novel is a tragic love story about a woman who falls into the clutches of a dangerous, psychopathic lover.

You can preview "The Seducer" on the links below:

http://www.neatorama.com/bitlit/category/the-seducer/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici#p/u/7/gvJxvqE2iTA

Ms. Moscovici's specialties include Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Art History and currently

interested in psychology and psychological fiction (particularly about psychopathy and narcissism.

New post on Literaturesalon's Blog

Remembrance of Things Proust: Alain de Botton, William Carter and Michael Norris

by literaturesalon

As a fan of Marcel Proust's fiction, I'd like to write today about this timeless writer who reflects upon the nature of time. With the centennial of A La Recherche approaching, it's interesting to reflect why--despite the arcane nature (and length!) of his sentences, his philosophical, speculative inclinations and his controversial lifestyle--Proust continues to remain so popular today. I believe that his writing is kept current partly by the process of canonization itself. Influenced by the great nineteenth century writers--Stendhal, Flaubert, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy—Proust became one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. However, his novels are also kept alive thanks to the biographies, books and blogs written by literary critics who straddle perfectly the divide between intellectual/scholarly publications and writing for the general public.

I'm thinking, first of all, of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, which discusses Proust's life in an engaging and witty manner that grabs the readers' attention (whether or not they were, originally, Proust fans). You can see his writings both on his personal website (below) and, more recently, on the art, literature and culture Romanian blog started by Miheala Carlan, Catchy.ro.

http://www.alaindebotton.com/  http://www.catchy.ro/

Rather than putting Proust on a pedestal, De Botton humanizes this legendary figure, alluding to his many challenges and neuroses (his asthma, ambiguous relationship to his mother, and fear of mice) that makes a bridge between contemporary readers and Proust. Botton's "philosophy of everyday life" in general takes somewhat arcane philosophical and literary subjects that are usually relegated to the scholarly sphere and brings them to the general public. Isn't that what being an intellectual is--or should be--about?

The well-known American biographer of Proust (and my good friend), Professor William C. Carter, also makes Proust and his life more accessible to a general audience in his biographies, Marcel Proust: A Life and Proust in Love. Accurate, clear, engaging and without sparing us any details—including details about Proust's sexual obsession with rats, his hypochondria as well as, of course, his various paramours—these two biographies are essential reading for anyone interested in Proust the man. Recently Professor Carter has launched an online course about Marcel Proust and his fiction, which, like his biographies, are aimed at a general audience as well as students and scholars.

www.proust-ink.com

This online course is a high-tech enterprise that includes comments from subscribers, live webcams, filmed posts of 30 lectures on Proust and monthly short films of the life and work of this timeless writer.

Furthermore, if you're interested in engaging discussions of each of the seven novels that form A La Recherche, I'd suggest that you take a look at Michael Norris' series of articles about Proust and his work on one of my favorite literary blogs, litkicks.com.

http://www.litkicks.com/ProustIIIb

Last but certainly not least, for the main image (above) I chose a digital photograph called "Proust Gazes Upon Olympia" by my fellow blogger and friend, Alex M. Bustillo.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

literaturesalon | October 2, 2011 at 6:40 pm | Tags: Claudia Moscovici, literature, literaturesalon, literature salon, book reviews, Alex Bustillo, Alex M. Bustillo, Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, William C. Carter, Proust: A Life, Proust in Love, litkicks.com, postromanticism.com, Marcel Proust, Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Proust's fiction, Mihaela Carlan, Catchy.ro, online course on Proust, 20th century literature, Remembrance of Things Proust: Alain de Botton, William Carter and Michael Norris, Remembrance of Things Proust, Professor William Carter, Proust Gazes Upon Olympia | Categories: Claudia Moscovici, book reviews, books, Alex Bustillo, Alex M. Bustillo, Marcel Proust, Marcel Proust: A Life, Proust in Love, William C. Carter, Michael Norris, Proust, litkicks.com, Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Mihaela Carlan, catchy.ro, online course on Proust, Professor William Carter, Remembrance of Things Proust | URL: http://wp.me/p13NZL-gy

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Guest Post: Romanian Photography: Claudiu Ciprian Popa

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 07:09:00 +0000

Romanian Photography: Claudiu Ciprian Popa by Claudia Moscovici

Guest Post by Claudia Moscovici at

New post on Fineartebooks's Blog

More on Romanian Photography: Claudiu Ciprian Popa

by Romantic and Postromantic Art

I just returned from a book launch in Romania and was very impressed with the artists I had the pleasure of meeting in person and collaborating with. I have posted earlier articles about two impressive Romanian photographers of international stature: Nicolae Cosniceru and Dan St. Andrei. Today I'd like to present Claudiu Ciprian Popa, a young photographer (and Director of Photography) who impresses both through his versatility--he has a double formation in photography and film--and through his talent. It's not an accident that Claudiu Ciprian Popa's style resembles in some respects Nicolae Cosniceru's, his former mentor and now colleague at fotofactory.ro. There's a noticeable similarity in the manner in which the two photographer s approach the public through a striking visual impact of juxtapositions, as in the photo below of a young woman painted in black.

Claudiu Popa, however, retains his own unique style and a more lyrical approach to photography, as evidenced by the series Firefly Dreaming (of the model that goes by the name Laura Firefly), which reveals a metamorphosis of a young woman into a vibrant and seductive sensual being.

A talented Director of Photography, Claudiu Ciprian Popa has also collaborated with Barna Nemethi (whom I've written about earlier, on litkicks.com) on an artistic commercial for Encyclopedia Britannica. This commercial offers not only an aesthetically interesting presentation of its main theme--books--but also a philosophical reflection about time. Through rapidly moving images, it traces the transformations in our lives which fundamentally change us while also pointing to some stability or foundations, provided by our upbringing and culture.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici?feature=mhee#p/f/17/uE_xPyVkgkw

Recently, Claudiu collaborated with Curtea Veche Publishing on a book trailer for my novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, translated into Romanian by Mihnea Gafita as Intre Doua Lumi. I was fortunate enough to participate in making this short film and to meet the talented young actors, some of whom are already stars on Romanian TV shows. Although we only had a few days to make the book trailer, Claudiu managed to recreate the introductory scene of the novel (in a short skit) as well to capture the novel's overall mood (in the later, dreamy sequence).

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici?feature=mhee#p/a/f/1/DgCdLdygaII

This short film marks not only a new step in Claudiu Ciprian Popa's career, but also a relatively new direction in publishing: namely, that of launching books through multimedia publicity campaigns that include book trailers and music videos. For more information about Claudiu Ciprian Popa's photography, see http://fotofactory.ro/.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

Romantic and Postromantic Art | September 27, 2011 at 5:30 pm | Tags: aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, art blog, art criticism, artistic photography, Barna Nemethi, Claudia Moscovici, Claudiu Ciprian Popa, Claudiu Ciprian Popa photography, contemporary photography, Curtea Veche Publishing, Dan St. Andrei, Elena Xing, Encyclopedia Britannica, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, Firefly Dreaming, fotofactory.ro, Intre Doua Lumi< /a>, Laura Firefly, Mihnea Gafita, More on Romanian Photography: Claudiu Ciprian Popa, Nicolae Cosniceru, photography, postromantic art, postromanticism.com, Romanian photography, Romanticism and Postromanticism, sensual art, sensuality, Surrealist photography, the photography of Claudiu Ciprian Popa, Velvet Totalitarianism | Categories: Barna Nemethi, Betty Facaianu, Claudiu Ciprian Popa, Curtea Veche Publishing, Firefly Dreaming, fotofactory.ro, Intre Doua Lumi, Laura Firefly, Mihnea Gafita, Nicolae Cosniceru, photography, Romanian photography, Velvet Totalitarianism | URL: http://wp.me/p12K5w-qs

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Paris Portrait: Bike Close To rue de Rivoli

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Paris Portrait: Bike Close To rue de Rivoli

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Portrait: Diekos in Le Marais

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:08:00 +0000

Portrait: Diekos In Le Marais

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Portrait: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:38:00 +0000

Portrait: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

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An Invitation: The Launch of Velvet Totalitarianism by Claudia Moscovici /Intre Doua Lumi in Romania: ICR Bucuresti, Sept 21, 18:00 p.m

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:46:00 +0000

The Launch of Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi in Romania: ICR Bucuresti, Sept 21, 18:00 p.m.

I'm pleased invite you to the Launch of "Velvet Totalitarianism" or "Intre Doua Lumi" by Claudia Moscovici: Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucuresti, Sept 21, 18:00 pm. The Romanian trnslation is by Mihnea Gafita.

Claudia Moscovici is the author of "Velvet Totalitarianism," . This novel is being republished in translation in her native country, Romania, and in France.

Ms. Moscovici's work can be followed at http://fineartbooks.wordpress.com and at postromanticism.com.

In 2002, she co-founded with Mexican sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto the international aesthetic movement postromanticism.com, devoted to celebrating beauty, passion and sensuality in contemporary art. She published a book on Romanticism and its postromantic survival called "Romanticism and Postromanticism," (Lexington Books, 2007).
She recently finished two books on psychopathic seduction and dangerous relationships: a nonfiction book called "Dangerous Liaisons: How to Recognize and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction" and a novel called "The Seducer". This novel is a tragic love story about a woman who falls into the clutches of a dangerous, psychopathic lover.
You can preview "The Seducer" on the links below:

http://www.neatorama.com/bitlit/category/the-seducer/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici#p/u/7/gvJxvqE2iTA

Ms. Moscovici's specialties include Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Art History and currently

interested in psychology and psychological fiction (particularly about psychopathy and narcissism.

The Launch of Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi in Romania: ICR Bucuresti, Sept 21, 18:00 p.m.

literaturesalon | September 3, 2011 at 5:48 pm | Tags: Andy Platon, Andy Soundland Platon, Avance Praise for Velvet Totalitarianism, book launch of Intre Doua Lumi, Ceausescu dictatorship, Ceausescu regime, Claudia Moscovici, Claudia Mosocvici Intre Doua Lumi, Claudia Mosocvici Velvet Totalitarianism, Claudiu Ciprian Popa, Claudiu Popa, communism, communist Romania, contemporary fiction, contemporary literature, Curtea Veche Publishing, fiction, ICR Bucuresti, ICR launch Intre Doua Lumi, Intre Doua Lumi, Intre Doua Lumi by Claudia Moscovici, literary criticism, literary salon, literaturesalon, Mihnea Gafita, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania, Romanian Cultural Institute, Romanian Cultural Institute Bucharest, spy thriller, totalitarianism, Velvet Totalitarianism, Velvet Totalitarianism by Claudia Moscovici | Categories: Advance Praise for Velvet Totalitarianism, Andy Soundland Platon, book launch of Intre Doua Lumi, book review, Claudia Moscovici, Claudiu Ciprian Popa, communist Romania, contemporary fiction, Curtea Veche Publishing, fiction, ICR Bucharest, ICR Bucuresti, Intre Doua Lumi, Intre Doua Lumi by Claudia Moscovici, literary criticism, literary fiction, literature, literature salon, literaturesalon, Mihnea Gafita, Romanian Cultural Institute, Velvet Totalitarianism | URL: http://wp.me/p13NZL-g3

My first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, will be launched in Romanian translation (by Mihnea Gafita) under the title Intre Doua Lumi (Curtea Veche Publishing, 2011). The presentation, which will include my talk about the book, introductions by , as well as a book trailer produced by Claudiu Ciprian Popa and a music video produced by Andy (Soundland) Platon, will take place at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest (ICR Bucuresti) on September 21, 2011 at 18:00 p.m. Everyone interested in the novel and the subject of Romanian communism is cordially invited to attend this event.

Advance Praise for Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi

A deeply felt, deftly rendered novel of the utmost importance to any reader interested in understanding totalitarianism and its terrible human cost. Urgent, evocative, and utterly convincing, Velvet Totalitarianism is a book to treasure, and Claudia Moscovici is indeed a writer to watch, now and into the future.

–Travis Holland, author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Archivist's Story, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Claudia Moscovici's first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, triumphs on several levels: as a taut political thriller, as a meditation on totalitarianism, as an expose of the Ceausescu regime, and as a moving fictionalized memoir of one family's quest for freedom.

–Ken Kalfus, author of the novel A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

(2006 National Book Award nominee), of The Commissariat of Enlightenment (2003) and of PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies (1999).

Western intellectuals have often blurred the fundamental differences between the imperfect free world they have been fortunate to enjoy and the totalitarian world of communism they never had the misfortune to endure. Claudia Moscovici's Velvet Totalitarianism is a powerful corrective to that ivory tower distortion of reality. Moscovici makes her readers viscerally feel the corrosive psychological demoralization and numbing fear totalitarian regimes impose on those who live under them. At the same time, with style and wit, and informed by her experiences as a child in communist Romania and then as an immigrant in the United States, she tells a story of resilience and hope. Velvet Totalitarianism is a novel well worth reading, both for its compelling narrative and for its important message.

–Michael Kort, Professor of Social Science at Boston University and author of the best-selling textbook, The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath

This vivid novel by Claudia Moscovici, historian of ideas and wide-ranging literary critic, traces a family of Jewish-Romanian refugees from the stifling communist dictatorship of their homeland through their settling in the United States during the 1980's. This fascinating and compelling story is at once historically accurate, exciting, sexy and a real page-turner. Ms. Moscovici is as sensitive to the emotions of her characters as to their political entanglements.

–Edward K. Kaplan, Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities at Brandeis University and author of Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972, winner of the National Jewish Book Award

Moving between extraordinary and ordinary lives, between Romania and the United States, velvet totalitarianism and relative freedom, dire need and consumerism, evoking her Romanian experience in the seventies, the emigration to the U.S. of her family in the eighties, and the 1989 uprising in Timisoara and Bucharest that marked the end of Ceausescu's regime, Claudia Moscovici offers her readers a multifaceted book—Velvet Totalitarianism—that is at once a love story, a political novel and a mystery. Love is the last resort left to people in order to counter totalitarianism under Ceausescu's rule. It keeps families united, allowing them to resist indoctrination and hardship and to make sure their children enjoy the carefree beautiful years that are their due. Love gives the protagonist of the novel the strength to overcome cultural differences between Romania and the U.S. and to invent in turn a form of personal happiness in a context that, while far from being as harsh as her initial one, does not lack its own problems.

– Sanda Golopentia, Professor of French, Brown University

Cold historical facts and figures tend to leave us emotionally indifferent. The impact of a nation's tragic events on one single person or family is much better understood and more profoundly felt. This is what makes Claudia Moscovici's book, Velvet Totalitarianism, so very special. Her novel is prefaced by a well-researched history of Romania under communism. Depending on one's point of view, Moscovici's work could be considered as the fictionalized story of a real Jewish-Romanian family under communism, based on her own recollections and that of her family and supported by true historical facts; or a brief history supported by the fictionalized story of a real family. It's a book well worth reading. The novel is a page-turner, witty and well written.

–Nicolae Klepper, author of the best-selling book, Romania: An Illustrated History.

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Blue Sky Gargoyle

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:41:00 +0000

Blue Sky Gargoyle

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Vali Hotea: A Rising Star in European Cinema by Claudia Moscovici

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:23:00 +0000

I'm pleased to present an article by the talented Claudia Moscovici as a guest blogger.

Ms. Moscovici's work can be followed at http://fineartbooks.wordpress.com and at postromanticism.com.

Claudia Moscovici is the author of "Velvet Totalitarianism," a critically acclaimed novel about a Romanian family's survival in an oppressive communist regime due to the strength of their love. This novel is being republished in translation in her native country, Romania, and in France.
In 2002, she co-founded with Mexican sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto the international aesthetic movement postromanticism.com, devoted to celebrating beauty, passion and sensuality in contemporary art. She published a book on Romanticism and its postromantic survival called "Romanticism and Postromanticism," (Lexington Books, 2007).
She recently finished two books on psychopathic seduction and dangerous relationships: a nonfiction book called "Dangerous Liaisons: How to Recognize and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction" and a novel called "The Seducer". This novel is a tragic love story about a woman who falls into the clutches of a dangerous, psychopathic lover.
You can preview "The Seducer" on the links below:

http://www.neatorama.com/bitlit/category/the-seducer/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici#p/u/7/gvJxvqE2iTA

Ms. Moscovici's specialties include Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Art History and currently

interested in psychology and psychological fiction (particularly about psychopathy and narcissism.

Vali Hotea: A Rising Star in European Cinema

The Romanian director Valentin (Vali) Hotea is not new to the film scene. He made his debut in the 1990′s with his short film The Big Adventure (Marea Aventura). This movie depicts with stark frankness and a picture-perfect, photographic style a young couple having an affair. The film is particularly powerful in the way it oozes sensuality without indulging in either explicit eroticism or sentimentality in its depiction of a romantic liaison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiN_JouoDKE

The Big Adventure won the budding Romanian director the Arte TV Prix Poitier in France in 1994. Continuing in this continental tradition, perhaps the most reminiscent of French culture is Vali Hotea’s short film Hot Snow (Zapada Fierbinte), produced in 2000 by TVR Cinema. This movie strikes me as a contemporary rendition of Diderot’s famous eighteenth century novel, The Nun (La Religieuse, 1796). However, while Diderot’s novel unmasks the hidden corruption of the seemingly pure cloister life, Vali Hotea’s movie does just the opposite.

Hot Snow depicts in a characteristically artistic and photographic style the freshness and innocence of the nuns, from the youngest and most inexperienced to the oldest and most jaded. Viewers witness the young nuns carry the casket of their beloved Mother Superior through the woods, in the middle of a snowy winter day. Initially the group of women appear dejected and serious, as befits such a somber occasion. Little by little, however, they are awakened to the sensual beauty and delight of life. The younger ones begin to frolic in the glistening snow with a childlike innocence. While an older nun berates them for their “inappropriate” conduct, even she, by the end of the movie, is touched by their joie de vivre. A celebration of life–this subtle and philosophical movie reveals–does not necessarily contradict a respect for death.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xj1v3c_hot-snow-zypady-fierbinte_shortfilms

Recently, Vali Hotea has been awarded a large prize by the National Center for Cinematography (Centrul National al Cinematografiei) for his upcoming film about life in communist Romania, called Roxanne by the Police. This movie is of particular interest to me, having just completed my own novel on the subject, Velvet Totalitarianism (Intre Doua Lumi, Curtea Veche Publishing, 2011). Vali’s new movie is inspired by true events: his first love for a girl named Roxana as well as by the hit 80’s song “Roxanne” by the popular rock group The Police. I have had the pleasure of reading some information about this new film, which promises to be not only an engaging love story but also a slice of life that shows the challenges of any intimate human relationship during the repressive communist era. This movie is similar in style to the unforgettable German classic, The Lives of Others (2006). Artistic, sensitive, understated, photographic and philosophical, Vali’s movies are bound to capture our attention, hearts and imaginations. Vali Hotea is a rising star in European cinema, where Romanian film directors have been shining for years.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

By Romantic and Postromantic Art, on September 1, 2011 at 6:08 pm, under cinematographer Vali Hotea, Claudia Moscovici, Diderot, European cinema, European film, film director Vali Hotea, Hot Snow, Intre Doua Lumi, La Religieuse,Marea Aventura, Romanian cinema, Romanian film, Roxanne by the Police, The Big Adventure, The Nun, Valentin Hotea,Vali Hotea, Vali Hotea: A Rising Star in European Cinema, Velvet Totalitarianism, Zapada Fierbinte. Tags: cinema,cinematographer Vali Hotea, Claudia Moscovici, Diderot, Diderot's La Religieuse, Diderot's The Nun, European cinema,European film, film director Vali Hotea, Hot Snow, Intre Doua Lumi, La Religieuse, Marea Aventura, Romanian cinema,Romanian film, Roxanne by the Police, The Big Adventure, The Lives of Others, The Nun, TVR Cinema, Valentin Hotea, Vali Hotea, Vali Hotea's films, Vali Hotea's movies, Vali Hotea: A Rising Star in European Cinema, Velvet Totalitarianism,Zapada Fierbinte.

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Benedictus PP. XVI Pontificale Romanum: Emperor of Trinity Quia putrefactio In Triptych by Alex M. Bustillo

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:39:00 +0000

Benedictus PP. XVI Pontificale Romanum: Emperor of Trinity Quia putrefactio InTriptych

3 Aluminium Mounted Photographs

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Mother's Little Helper Dyptich B by Alex M. Bustillo

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:55:00 +0000

Mother's Little Helper Dyptich B

Aluminium Mounted Photograph

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Mother's Little Helper Dyptich A by Alex M. Bustillo

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:51:00 +0000

Mother's Little Helper Dyptich A

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Dystopic Utopias in Speculative Fiction and Art by Claudia Moscovici

noreply@blogger.com (alexmbustillo@gmail.com) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 05:35:00 +0000

Dystopic Utopias in Speculative Fiction and Art

by Claudia Moscovici

alexmbustillo is pleased and honored to present this article by Claudia Moscovici. Claudia Moscovici is an art critic and author of Romanticism and Postromanticism (Lexington Books, 2007). Her work may be found at http://fineartebooks.wordpress.com & http://literaturesalon.wordpress.com/

There are several great novels associated with the dystopic utopia tradition, but without a doubt four of the most notable are: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Such novels distinguish themselves from both fantasy and science fiction. In an interview, Atwood stated that she prefers the name "speculative fiction," a term coined by Robert A. Heinlein, to describe A Handmaid's Tale (NY: First Anchor Books Edition, 1998): "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships. Speculative fiction could really happen." "Aliens have taken the place of angels: Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction, The Guardian, June 2005). Speculative fiction has become an umbrella term that includes utopian and dystopic fiction as well as apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, some of which may also be considered to be science fiction or fantasy. Moreover, the term applies both to fiction and the visual arts. The best speculative fiction and art, I believe, show what has already begun to happen and extrapolate with amazing lucidity how social and political ideals can turn into our worst nightmares. Every utopic ideology, from Marxism to eugenics and from primitivism to technocracy, has within it the seeds of its own dystopic undoing. Each one shows part of what has happened in our cultures and how things could get a lot worse.

Atwood's novel illustrates what could take place in any culture or society where the women's movement joins forces with the radical right to create a purer society. In such a world, "freedom to" (dress as one wants, choose one's profession and life partner) becomes "freedom from" (being a sex object, having too many choices of partners, location or profession). But "freedom from" is only a euphemism for lack of civil rights, for constraint, for invisibility itself (as women are enshrouded in a veil and even wear blinders on top of their heads, so they can't see or be seen). It is a dystopic utopia; a contradiction in terms. Some societies have implemented such a "freedom from" in the name of various religious or political ideologies, but, Atwood underscores, no society—even the most seemingly open and liberal ones--is immune to it. Totalitarian constraints can happen anywhere, even in the U.S, which, in fact, is the setting for her novel.

While Atwood envisions a danger that could happen, Orwell describes a social experiment that actually did take place. To many who have lived through the totalitarian phase of communism in Eastern Europe, Orwell's 1984 is, in many respect, a historical novel: one that goes hand in hand with Robert Conquest's monumental history, The Great Terror. Newspeak, thought police, brainwashing; the physical and psychological torture for political prisoners to confess to nonexistent crimes and the show trials were all part and parcel of how the NKVD and other Secret Police organizations ruled communist dictatorships. O'Brien, the Thought Police agent in the novel, states: "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." (1984, NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1949, p. 272)

Perhaps the only speculative aspect of Orwell's futuristic utopic dystopia is, as O'Brien himself points out, that those put on show trials die purified of their thought crimes and convinced of the righteousness of the new regime. They are not, as were the victims of Stalinist purges, the embittered martyrs of a lost freedom. O'Brien promises Winston: "I shall save you, I shall make you perfect" (251). Perfection in 1984 is a world with no objective parameters of truth and falsehood or of right and wrong. It is a world in which the past is a convenient fiction for the present; a world where the difference between fear and blind trust is obliterated. The Thought Police aims not merely to oppress man, but also to gaslight him: to get him to accept relativism without question. "We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him," states O'Brian. (263) He pursues: "We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him…. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him… Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation" (263)

By their very nature, utopias are ideological and dogmatic. They often represent a reaction to one form of constraint or dogmatism with an equally strong reaction in an opposite direction. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (NY: HarperCollins, 1932) probes another aspect of ideological dreams that could easily turn into nightmares: the social experiments of eugenics and the supposed biological justifications for social hierarchies and castes. Written during a time when the Nazi party was already starting to implement eugenic policies—described, in some ways, in the novel, Brave New World doesn't spare democratic societies its social critiques either. Huxley describes the disastrous development of capitalism in the U.S. and the dangers that extreme industrialization can pose for humanity. Human beings are reduced to little more than automatons, consuming mood altering drugs and engaging in ritualistic sexual activities to compensate for lack of thought and the superficial nature of their impersonal, emotional ties.

Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (NY: Random House, 1953) issues a warning against censorship: books are burned because of their dangerous, potentially conflagrating ideological effects. However, as Bradbury states in an interview in the late 1950's, the novel also touches upon the alienation among people caused by an excess of information and exposure to the mass media: "But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog… The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. … There she was, oblivious to the man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleepwalking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction." (quoted by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, NY: Ayer Co. Publishing, 1975) Obviously, the author's critique can be exponentially multiplied today, when most of our human contacts are mediated by our ipods, computers, twittering, Facebook, and other technological gadgets and social/mass media networks. The future is already here. Each of these speculative novels not only predicted it, but also critiqued it in a way that remains very current.

Why are these speculative novels still relevant and important? I'd like to explore this question by using as my point of departure a few famous quotes by leading writers and intellectuals.

1."Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world." H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia

Any society is flawed; any political institution, no matter how inclusive or democratic, has some corruption, inequality and unfairness in it. Utopian visions hone in on those weaknesses and injustices to imagine a better world, a world without them. They function, in some ways, as a magnifying glass that allows us to see better the flaws in our societies and institutions and as a mirror to imagine their obverse side.

2. "The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison." Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Almost every speculative novel is, in many respects, more multidimensional and more lucid than any political ideology has ever been or could ever be. It captures both sides of the coin: the utopic vision and its dystopic, more realistic downsides. As Hawthorne puts it: both the ground you build a better society upon and the place you segregate its outlaws and its casualties.

3. "All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in." Toni Morrison, Online NewsHour interview, March 9, 1998

Utopic visions offer the best vantage point for social critiques. As Morrison points out, they are almost always correctives for hierarchies and injustice in the world of the have's from the perspective of the have not's. Since each society has so many distinctions and hierarchies, the have's and the have not's are not a binary dichotomy (between races or classes), but more of a fractal of many social and cultural dichotomies.

4. "Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache… Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness." George Orwell, Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun

Utopic visions will always exist because nothing in our world can ever be perfect. We will always have the "toothaches" Orwell alludes to; there will always be something wrong with our social and political institutions, no matter what they are. Therefore, the need to imagine a world without whatever specific flaws we choose to focus on in our societies is inevitable. We will see in those utopic visions a better society. However, as Orwell points out, in reality, we might only be exchanging a toothache for a headache; one wrong for another.

5. "In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality… We can no longer hope to save everything, but… we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible." (Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason)

As a counterpoint to Orwell's cynicism, we can safely say that not all utopias (or dystopias, depending on your perspective) are equal. Some hells are hotter than others; some political and social structures worse than the next. Utopic visions offer a horizon of possibility. They enable human beings to at least try to aspire to creating better societies and governments.

6. "Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness." E. M. Cioran, History and Utopia

A world without utopic visions is a world deprived of imagination, where one only sees what is and remains blind to what could be. Utopias enable us to dream and envision another way of life, another world, however delusional that illusion may be.

I'd like to conclude this essay on speculative fiction by sharing with you the work of two of my favorite photographers—Dan Andrei and Alex M. Bustillo-- who have transformed the utopic words of fiction writers and philosophers into dystopic visions.

Romanian-born photographer Dan St. Andrei (or Dan Andrei, for short) adopts a philosophical approach to the art of photography. He states: "Life is eventually an eternal attempt to understand your purpose, to build up and mold, to grow and to define yourself … I would like to discover daily reasons to love myself." His images take on so many different styles and approaches: from the fetishism of his sensual fragments; to the poetic dynamism of his photographs of dancers; to the reflexive and dream-like quality of his dystopic utopia images, which he calls, in a deliberate pun, Mytopia.

If his photo series have any common thread, it's in depicting life, as Dan Andrei himself puts it, as "beautifully imperfect." The beauty lies in the aesthetic impact, since Dan Andrei's images are not only beautiful but also haunting. The imperfection is revealed in the human emotions and anxieties they reflect, holding a mirror to both what we reveal and what we hide within. As the artist puts it, through the art of photography, he searches "for the meanings and hidden motivations that put our world into motion." You can view his Myopia series on the link http://danandrei.com/4912/94987/gallery/mytopia.

Alex M. Bustillo is an international artist par excellence. Born in Miami, Florida and of Cuban origin, he currently resides in France. Alex has lived throughout the world, however, including the United States, Puerto Rico, Latin America and Italy. It's not only his diverse cultural backgrounds that shine through in his photographic collages, but also his keen interest in all aspects of culture: including philosophy, literature, music and film.

Pablo Picasso is credited with having invented the artistic collage, made up of sketches, painting and newspaper cutouts. Bustillo transforms this modernist tradition into a postmodern art form that includes overlapping materials as diverse as digital photography, plexiglas and aluminum foil that somehow work together to create a striking and unique artistic whole. Not limited to the visual arts, Bustillo has even collaborated with the American musician Garland Jeffreys to incorporate musical ideas in a visual context.

Bustillo doesn't shy away from anthropology, philosophy or even erotic fiction. His collection Story of the Eye offers a visual interpretation of Georges Bataille's famous erotic and philosophical collection of vignettes by the same name, which was published in 1928. Bataille is best known for his anthropology of pleasure, Eroticism (1957), which studies human sexuality in terms of religious sacrifice and cultural taboos.

In Bustillo's interpretation, Bataille's tale of sexual liberty and libertinism takes a dystopic turn. His dramatic images are atavistic yet historical (in the photograph you can see superposed images of an Egyptian bust, an American Indian chief and a Roman soldier); disembodied yet carnal (one slim leg appears, suggesting death rather than desire). Rather than glorifying transgression, they tell the story of what (and who) is sacrificed by the individual and society when the sadistic and perverse are allowed free reign and gain power over others. At once elusive and allusive, the photography of Alex M. Bustillo provides a tantalizing peek into dystopic utopias. You can view more of Alex's portfolio on the link http://www.saatchionline.com/alexmbustillo.

Claudia Moscovici, literaturesalon

literaturesalon | July 21, 2011 at 10:50 pm | Tags: 1984, Aldous Huxley, Alex Bustillo, Alex M. Bustillo, book review, book reviews, Brave New World, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary photography, Dan Andrei, Dan St. Andrei, digital photography, dystopia, dystopic fiction, dystopic novels, dystopic utopia, dystopic utopias,Fahrenheit 451, fantasy, fiction, George Orwell, literary criticism, literature, literaturesalon, Margaret Atwood,photographer Alex M. Bustillo, photographer Dan Andrei, Ray Bradbury, science fiction, speculative fiction, The Handmaid's Tale, the photography of Dan Andrei, utopia, utopic fiction, utopic literature, utopic novels, Velvet Totalitarianism, why speculative fiction is still relevant, why we need utopias | Categories: 1984, Aldous Huxley,Alex Bustillo, Alex M. Bustillo, Bataille, book review, book reviews, Brave New World, Claudia Moscovici,communism, controlling women's bodies, controlling women's sexuality, critiques of the veil, Dan St. Andrei,dystopic utopias, Eastern Europe, Eroticism, Fahrenheit 451, fantasy, fiction, George Orwell, historical fiction,history, Holocaust, literary criticism, literary fiction, literature, literature salon, literaturesalon, mainstream fiction,Margaret Atwood, Myopia, photographer Alex Bustillo, photographer Dan St. Andrei, Ray Bradbury, Romanticism and Postromanticism, science fiction, speculative fiction, Story of the Eye, The Handmaid's Tale, utopia, Velvet Totalitarianism | URL: http://wp.me/p13NZL-fF http://twitter.com/alexmbustillo http://twitter.com/cmoscovici

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