Category: literary interpretation
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The Road — Cormac McCarthy’s Inferno
I have avoided reading McCarthy’s The Road since it came out in college predominately because, after reading All The Pretty Horses, I didn’t think I needed that kind of bleak post apocalypse in my mind. You remember what you want to forget and forget what you want to remember, after all. And frankly, knowing what…
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Science Fiction Fantasy Alliance AMA
The delightful mods of the Science Fiction Fantasy Alliance (SFFA) hosted their first AMA and invited me to come and talk. Here’s the recording of what went down:
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12 Years a Librarian
In June of 2019 I finished 12 years and begin my 13th year as a librarian at Queens Library, my eighth year serving as a supervisor. With this milestone I believe I am accomplishing one of the pillars of a human being’s life journey: finding meaningful work. We all know the game of information seeking…
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Sitting at the Feet of the Hogwarts Headmaster
Sgt. John Granger of the United States Marine Corps (stationed in Japan) was proud to say that he was perfectly normal, thank you very much. He was the last person you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious — especially invocational magic — and the last person you would expect to become a Hogwarts headmaster…
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The Birds in the Floo
Last year, I rescued three jackdaws from out of my chimney’s vault One of their brothers’ body lay chilled in the midst of ash I carried them in gloved hands upstairs and out the window to the roof above my laundry room, gable for the world away from indoors I set birds three upon the…
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Outtakes: My Alchemical Wedding
As promised last week, I’m putting up the best pictures from our wedding. Were I a photographer, it would frustrate me to take fantastic pictures only to watch a family order all the terrible ones. Here are Mark’s gems from our wedding:
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My Alchemical Wedding : Alchemy Symbols for a Wedding Planner
We crafted our wedding ceremony around alchemical imagery in order to change the audience from passive spectators into active participants in the drama unfolding onstage.
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Sitting at the feet of : a Medievalist
When he asked his Franciscan Father, “When did you become a Franciscan?” Alex Giltner’s Father answered, “When I was born.” Alex feels the same about medievalism—he can’t trace back the source. However, like most young boys, he drew close to stories and films of dragons and swords. Then at fourteen, he read The Lord of…
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Paradise Lost: Book One
Reading a Harvard Classic, journaling for an MIT open course, watching a Yale lecture. Buckle up, this is about to be the most literated fantastic point of ignorance yet. We’ll have a coffee shop version, an appetizer version and a full course meal for this puppy. Respond and dialog as soon as you want to jump…
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Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen
Yesterday was a weird day for me. Really weird. Emotional and weird–not like yesterday’s post or anything, just yesterday . Since I feel like writing, but don’t want to mess with any stories or editing or whatever on Saturday, let’s chat about the best film I saw recently. It’s like a digital bowl of comfort…
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Kvothe’s Sex Life Part 2: Felurian & The Adem
Well, gang, here we go again. Last time, I talked on Kvothe’s Sex Life, I had only finished NOTW and started WMF. Having finished WMF, I got a flurry of questions about sex and literature. Spoilers below. After a romp through the rainy tent-sheets, Kvothe comes out the other side of the enemy encampment saying…
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Kvothe and Felurian :: Felurian’s Metre
The following poem works backwards from the obvious rhyme schema on page 657 of Wise Man’s Fear. In the scenes between Kvothe and Felurian, Felurian speaks in a meter all her own …and Kvothe picks up on this practice later, as he grows his intimate “knowing” of Felurian’s world. I have cut it off before it spoils anything,…