A literary zombie thriller from Colson Whitehead?
I can’t think of better Halloween reading. Another fantastic choice would have been the thrilling and completely entertaining The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan, but I’ve already read it.
Who wants to be that the zombie theme is really commentary on the modern self-absorbed, aimless masses? I wonder of Whitehead’s read any Gurdjieff?
James Hillman, visionary, iconoclast, father of Archetypal Psychology and intellectual successor to Jung has died. Hillman’s writings on Soul and Psyche have been influential to how I approach writing.
He’ll be missed.
After just winning the Booker Prize, I had push a few other reads aside (Sorry Hermann Hesse and Philip K. Dick but you guys are up next. Promise.) and jump this one to the front of the literature que. More on this book after the brief, but expectedly dazzling read.
It’s to fiction that we regularly and gratefully turn for the truest picture of life.
– Julian Barnes, from The Art of Fiction #165, an interview in the Paris Review.
National Novel Writing Month is almost here and that means 30 days of writing madness if you take up the challenge to participate in the always fun NaNoWriMo.
The idea is simple: write a novel in a month.
No plot, no editing, no worries, just write. Because you can’t edit and refine the novel you haven’t yet written.
Way to go Julian Barnes. I just ordered your Booker Prize winning book, The Sense of An Ending. Can’t wait to read it.
The long awaited, oft written about and frequently speculated on Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is set for release November 7th.
His fiction is famous, but his philosophy has been somewhat controversial as he has been called a visionary, a prophet, a latter-day Gnostic Saint and a madman.
I’ve read bits of the Exegesis at the end of VALIS and it was fascinating. I’m sure the full volume will be mind-bending, dark and illuminating.
I can’t wait to read it.
Trailer for Melancholia, the newest film by Lars Von Trier. I’m already haunted by this film and I haven’t even seen it yet.
Mystic and esoteric teacher G.I. Gurdjieff wrote that,
Man such as we know him, is a machine.
I am too often reminded of this anytime I do something seemingly on auto-pilot. How did I get to work again? When did they build that new restaurant? Why did I just boil water for coffee?
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
- Hermann Hesse, from Demian
