Which loathsome character of English literature is thought to be partially based on a 19th century Jewish criminal named Ikey Solomon, who was once interviewed by Dickens?

Charles Dickens | Penny's poetry pages Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia File:Charles Dickens Signature.svg Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era , and he remains popular, responsible for some of English literature 's most iconic characters. [1] Many of his novels, with their recurrent concern for social reform, first appeared in magazines in serialised form, a popular format at the time. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialised. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next installment. [2] The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print. [3] Contents File:ChathamOrdnanceTerrCrop.jpg Dickens was born in 1812, and spent the first 3 years of his life, in Portsmouth, Hampshire , the family moved to London in 1815. His early years seem to have been idyllic, although he thought himself as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". [4] He spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, especially the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding . He spoke, later in life, of his poignant memories of childhood, and of his near-photographic memory of the people and events, which he used in his writing. His father's brief period as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded Charles a few years of private education at William Giles's School, in Chatham . [5] This period came to an abrupt end when John Dickens spent beyond his means and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor's prison in Southwark, London. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family joined him – except Charles, who boarded with family friend Elizabeth Roylance in Camden Town. [6] Mrs. Roylance was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey and Son . Later, he lived in a "back-attic...at the house of an insolvent-court agent...in Lant Street in The Borough ... a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman, with a quiet old wife" and a very innocent grown-up son; these three were the inspiration for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop . [7] On Sundays, Dickens and his sister Fanny were allowed out from the Royal Academy of Music and spent the day at the Marshalsea. [8] (Dickens later used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit ). Dickens at the Blacking Warehouse, by Fred Barnard (1846-1896), in The Leisure Hour, 1904. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons . To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens began working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on shoe polish. The strenuous – and often cruel – work conditions made a deep impression on Dickens, and later influenced his fiction and essays, forming foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigors of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. As told to John Forster (from The Life of Charles Dickens): The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper c


The slave girl Morgiana, the protagonist's elder brother Cassim and the cobbler Baba Mustafa are three prominent characters in what 'seedy' oriental story?

One Thousand and One Nights [Article] - Documents Documents Share One Thousand and One Nights [Article] Embed
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 size(px) One Thousand and One Nights [Article] by prajwalraov2146 Download One Thousand and One Nights [Article] Transcript One Thousand and One Nights PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:21:59 UTC  Contents Articles Overview One Thousand and One Nights New Arabian Nights Arabian Nights and Days 1 1 21 23 24 24 40 46 48 51 56 60 60 61 67 69 75 75 76 78 85 87 88 88 90 104 107 108 109 Stories and characters Stories Characters Scheherazade Abu Nuwas Aladdin Ali Baba Al-Mustazi Badoura Harun al-Rashid Ja'far Khosrau Mustensir Billah Old Man of the Sea Shirin the Armenian Sinbad the Sailor Widow Twankey The Fisherman and the Jinni Famous translators Antoine Galland Richard Francis Burton Edward William Lane Joseph Charles Mardrus John Payne Gustav Weil References Article Sources and Contributors 111  Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 114 Article Licenses License 115  1 Overview One Thousand and One Nights One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: ةليلو ةليل فلأ باتك Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla; Persian:  بش کی و رازهHezār-o yek šab) is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.[1] The work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially Queen Scheherazade tells her stories the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār to King Shahryār. Afsān (Persian:  ,ناسفا رازهlit. A Thousand Tales) which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.[2] Though the oldest Arabic manuscript dates from the 14th century, scholarship generally dates the collection's genesis to around the 9th century. What is common throughout all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryar (from Persian:  ,رايرهشmeaning "king" or "sovereign") and his wife Scheherazade (from Persian:  ,هدازرهشpossibly meaning "of noble lineage"[3] ) and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. Some of the best-known stories of The Nights, particularly "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", while almost certainly genuine Middle-Eastern folk tales, were not part of The Nights in Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators.[4]  One Thousand and One Nights 2 Synopsis The main frame story concerns a Persian king and his new bride. He is shocked to discover that his brother's wife is unfaithful; discovering his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her executed: but in his bitterness and grief decides that all women are the same. The king, Sh


What 1899 poem of Rudyard Kipling whose racist title alludes to Western aspirations to dominate the developing world was written after the American colonization of the Philippines?

Free Imperialism Essays and Papers | page 4 [preview] Western Imperialsim - Beginning in the 1700’s there was a drive of Western Imperialism that significantly changed not only the political landscape of Europe, but the whole world. In the quest for Imperialism new lands and cultures were found and explored. There is no single motive that can be viewed as the one and only reason that Imperialism was pursued. Upon looking into the motives of Europeans it is clearly evident that economic, the spread of Christianity, adventure and Social Darwinism all played their part in inspiring the quest to expand the influence of Europeans throughout the world....   [tags: World History ] :: 5 Works Cited [preview] Changes brought by the Age of Imperialsim - The Age of Imperialism brought many changes that caused suffering and improvements in countries. The domination of Europeans in Asia and Africa brought benefits and sufferings. When reading in between the lines, it is clear and obvious that the European?s domination gave Asia much to benefit from and Africa more to suffer from. Asia gained tons of economical power and was educated with Western ideas, but in the long run they turned Western literature it into Chinese matters. On the other hand, Africa lost economical independence....   [tags: essays research papers] 500 words [preview] Imperialists Climate after the Civil War - At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States emerged as a world power. Although Congress was reluctant to endorse expansionist schemes, during the end of the nineteenth century many others had become convinced that the United States had to adopt a more aggressive and forceful foreign policy. Some believed expansion would be good for American business. Others felt America had a duty to spread its way of life to less fortunate countries. Behind all the arguments, however; the United States was a great and important country, and it should start acting the part....   [tags: essays research papers] 1165 words [preview] The Use of Metaphors in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell - The Use of Metaphors in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell  In the essay ?Shooting an Elephant. by George Orwell, the author uses metaphors to represent his feelings on imperialism, the internal conflict between his personal morals, and his duty to his country. Orwell demonstrates his perspectives and feelings about imperialism.and its effects on his duty to the white man?s reputation. He seemingly blends his opinions and subjects into one, making the style of this essay generally very simple but also keeps it strong enough to merit numerous interpretations....   [tags: Shooting Elephant George Orwell Essays Papers] 878 words [preview] Imperialistic behavior of America during the late 19th Century - In the years following the Civil War, the United States turned to rebuilding and isolation. However, as the century approached its close there was a turn towards expansion and imperialism. The politics of the Gilded Age, tainted with corruption and weak leadership, led to Americans to attempt to show their strength. The first imperialistic opportunity was presented to President Grover Cleveland. With a small scale revolution of white planters in Hawaii led to a call for the US annexation, however this was spurned by the president....   [tags: Foreign Policy, United States] 814 words [preview] Microcredit: A Way to Self-Reliance - Microcredit has inspired countless imaginations on the possibilities of drastically reducing global poverty. This paper will attempt to deconstruct the norm, to displace popular discourse only pertaining to a few examples of the theory and practice of microcredit. “The sign of a successfully implanted norm is its silence” (Carter 2007:152). It is no longer questioned or scrutinized. The notion of the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ is both normalized and problematic. It dictates the global agenda, and pools the resources of power in some parts of the world and not others....   [tags: global poverty, microcredit, small loans] :: 17 Works Cit


"Fill in the missing word in this famous quote of Jorge Luis Borges that is very appropriate coming from a writer! ""I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of ___."""

Astrology: Jorge Luis Borges, date of birth: 1899/08/24, Horoscope, Astrological Portrait, Dominant Planets, Birth Data, Biography 1st Fire sign - 1st Cardinal sign (spring equinox) - Masculine In analogy with Mars, his ruler, and the 1st House Aries governs the head. His colour is red, his stone is the heliotrope, his day is Tuesday, and his professions are businessman, policeman, sportsman, surgeon... If your sign is Aries or your Ascendant is Aries: you are courageous, frank, enthusiastic, dynamic, fast, bold, expansive, warm, impulsive, adventurous, intrepid, warlike, competitive, but also naive, domineering, self-centred, impatient, rash, thoughtless, blundering, childish, quick-tempered, daring or primitive. Some traditional associations with Aries: Countries: England, France, Germany, Denmark. Cities: Marseille, Florence, Naples, Birmingham, Wroclaw, Leicester, Capua, Verona. Animals: Rams and sheeps. Food: Leeks, hops, onions, shallots, spices. Herbs and aromatics: mustard, capers, Cayenne pepper, chilli peppers. Flowers and plants: thistles, mint, bryonies, honeysuckles. Trees: hawthorns, thorny trees and bushes. Stones, Metals and Salts: diamonds, iron, potassium phosphate. Signs: Taurus 1st Earth sign - 1st Fixed sign - Feminine In analogy with Venus, his ruler, and the 2nd House Taurus governs the neck and the throat. Her colour is green or brown, her stone is the emerald, her day is Friday, her professions are cook, artist, estate agent, banker, singer... If your sign is Taurus or your Ascendant is Taurus: you are faithful, constant, sturdy, patient, tough, persevering, strong, focused, sensual, stable, concrete, realistic, steady, loyal, robust, constructive, tenacious. You need security, but you are also stubborn, rigid, possessive, spiteful, materialistic, fixed or slow. Some traditional associations with Taurus: Countries: Switzerland, Greek islands, Ireland, Cyprus, Iran. Cities: Dublin, Palermo, Parma, Luzern, Mantua, Leipzig, Saint Louis, Ischia, Capri. Animals: bovines. Food: apples, pears, berries, corn and other cereals, grapes, artichokes, asparagus, beans. Herbs and aromatics: sorrels, spearmint, cloves. Flowers and plants: poppies, roses, digitales, violets, primroses, aquilegia, daisies. Trees: apple trees, pear trees, fig-trees, cypresses, ash trees. Stones, Metals and Salts: copper, calcium and potassium sulphate, emeralds. Signs: Gemini 1st Air sign - 1st Mutable sign - Masculine In analogy with Mercury, his ruler, and the 3rd House Gemini governs the arms, the lungs and the thorax. His colour is green or silver, his stone is the crystal, his day is Wednesday, his professions are journalist, lawyer, presenter, dancer, salesman, travel agent, teacher... If your sign is Gemini or if your Ascendant is Gemini: you are expressive, lively, adaptable, quick-witted, humorous, sparkling, playful, sociable, clever, curious, whimsical, independent, polyvalent, brainy, flexible, ingenious, imaginative, charming, fanciful but also capricious, scattered, moody, shallow, inquisitive, opportunistic, unconcerned, selfish, fragile, ironical or changeable. Some traditional associations with Gemini: Countries: Belgium, Wales, United-States, Lower Egypt, Sardinia, Armenia. Cities: London, Plymouth, Cardiff, Melbourne, San Francisco, Nuremberg, Bruges, Versailles. Animals: monkeys, butterflies, parrots, budgerigars. Food: dried fruits, chestnuts, ground-level vegetables: peas, broad beans, etc. Herbs and aromatics: aniseed, marjoram, lemon balm, cumin. Flowers and plants: lilies of the valley, lavenders, myrtle, ferns, Venus-hair-ferns, bittersweets. Trees: nut trees such as chestnut trees. Stones, Metals and Salts: agates, mercury, silicas and potashes. Signs: Cancer 1st Water sign - 2nd Cardinal sign (summer solstice) - Feminine In analogy with the Moon, her ruler, and the 4th House Cancer governs the stomach and the breast. Her colour is white or black, her stone is the moonstone, her day is Monday, her professions are catering, the hotel trade, property, antique dealer, archaeologist... If your sign is Can


A museum outside Nairobi was donated by the Danish government in 1964 to the new Kenyan government as an independence gift. It was originally a residence of which writer?

Tamborine Mountain News by Tamborine Mountain-News - issuu Vol. 1316 Tuesday Nov 15, 2011 Compiled & edited by volunteers for the Tamborine Mountain Community TMAC: Keeping you posted T MAC, or Tamborine Mountain Arts Collective, has had some brief coverage recently in the Tamborine Times and a bit of promotion thanks to two helpful scarecrows (with a little help from Sue Morris and the potters from Creative Arts) during the Scarecrow Festival (hopefully imprinting the acronym subliminally in the brains of passing motorists and other community members). But I suspect that most of the community is unaware of TMAC’s existence. But not for long! This fledgling art advocacy group is only about six months old and right now the members’ brief is to spread the word. TMAC is all about artists and artisans on the Mountain seeking their own space. It is to be a most exciting space to be shared with other community members and visitors in many ways. We envisage an inclusive space where community members are welcome to present or participate in workshops; where visiting and local artists can demonstrate their skills; and where we can hold exhibitions throughout the year. And for this we need a permanent space. In the official spin TMAC’s vision is to establish a signature tourist destination that promotes community activities to educate, demonstrate and exhibit the skills of artists and artisans. The mission is to establish a working arts and artisans’ hub that inspires and transfers creative practices of excellence to the wider community. And if you are interested to see how a similar project works and what it can offer, Lorikeet feathers photographed by Joy and Richard Pratt you can do no better than to check out The Bribie Island Community Arts Centre and Matthew Flinders Bicentenary Gallery (http://www.bribieartcentre.com.au/). There already has been some confusion about where we fit with the Tamborine Mountain Creative Arts group. TMAC is not a subgroup of Creative Arts. However, at the moment we are meeting at the premises of Creative Arts as do many other groups. Creative Arts has an important function in this community as it affords a meeting place for many Mountain residents: artists, artisans, hobbyists and other social groups. With the Mountain’s expanding population and especially the considerable number of retired residents with the time to start up or continue artistic or leisure pursuits in the company of like-minded people, it is easy to see the significance of this group for the Mountain. At this point it is interesting to view this successful group and to reflect briefly on where and how it originated. The relevance for me is to look at beginnings and continuities and at the needs of the community and how they have been and are being met today. continues page 9 Acreage Mowing Extra Wide Cut Competitive Price TAMBORINE MOWER REPAIRS 5545 1892 Mobile: 0428 451 892 TAMBORINE MOUNTAIN NEWS VOL. 1316, NOVEMBER 15, 2011 – 1 HOUSE OF HAIR Letters to the Editor Dear Editor, The city has many charms but overcrowding becomes tedious & stressful – so one relocates to a beautiful scenic semi-rural location with great internet access & many wonderful country-wise citizens – open space, dead quiet nights, black or moonlit – only to be confronted with a development proposal which could cancel or degrade these valuable amenities: 20 large tourist ‘cabins’ on a high risk landslip precinct with a 24/7 loading dock / garbage collection / staff room etc – 16 metres from the nearest residence. The site in question is a natural amphitheatre magnifying every sound – site fire plan demands noisy constant ground maintenance for short grass – outside decks with bbqs etc on every ‘cabin’ – extra truck & trades traffic for construction, maintenance & servicing over a 6 year period causing noise & potentially dangerous situations for children walking to & from the bus stop because school buses will not navigate the steep & narrow roads adjoining the site. This site is rated high risk landslip and “Generally unsuitable for closer settlement’ by


What concocted 1903 text that asserts a Jewish plan to take over the world is sometimes cited as Hitler's justification for the Holocaust?

Is the Holocaust a Hoax? Is the Holocaust a Hoax? Within five     minutes, any intelligent, open-minded person can be     convinced that the Holocaust gassings of World War II are     a profitable hoax. Fred A. Leuchter is America's leading specialist on     the design and fabrication of execution equipment,     including homicidal gas chambers. In 1988, Leuchter     scraped samples from the alleged gas chamber walls in     Auschwitz, Birkenau and Lublin. Cyanide residue would be     clearly evident on all these walls if gassings did occur.     To his astonishment, Leuchter found no significant     cyanide traces in any one of these rooms. In 1991, the Polish government repeated these tests to     disprove Leuchter's findings, but they as well found no     evidence of any gassings ever occurring. The structural integrity of these "gas     chambers" is also extremely faulty. These rooms have     ordinary doors and windows which are not hermetically     sealed! There are large gaps between the floors and     doors. If the Germans had attempted to gas anyone in     these rooms, they would have died themselves, as the gas     would have leaked and contaminated the entire area. Also,     no equipment exists to exhaust the air-gas mixture from     these buildings. Nothing was made to introduce or     distribute the gas throughout the chambers. There are no     provisions to prevent condensation of gas on the walls,     floors or ceilings. No exhaust stacks have ever existed. Though six million Jews     supposedly died in the gas chambers, not one body has     ever been autopsied and found to have died of gas     poisoning. We have been shown piles of bodies from     World War II, but most of these persons died of typhus or     starvation or Allied bombings and a great many of those     were murdered Germans, not Jews. Roughly the equivalent     of ten football fields should be packed full of gassed     bodies to present as evidence, yet not one body has ever     been discovered. The Germans documented everything in meticulous detail     from shrubbery to arbors, but no pre-war or wartime plans     or documents exist that detail or even mention any gas     chambers for reasons of genocide. All documents ever     presented were drawn up AFTER the war. Even if we threw away all the     evidence and accounted for every so-called gas chamber,     it would have taken 68 YEARS to accomplish gassing six     million Jews! Even The Diary of Anne Frank is a hoax. Portions     of the diary were written with a ball point pen. These pens     were not in use at the time Anne Frank lived. It is not denied concentration camps existed.     Tragically, many died of typhus or starvation, as often     happens in such situations. There is, however, no     evidence that any gassings occurred for the reasons of     genocide. Israel continues to receive trillions of dollars     worldwide as retribution for Holocaust gassings. Our     country has donated more money to Israel than to any     other country in the history of the world -- over $35     billion per year, everything included. If not for our     extravagantly generous gifts to Israel, every family in     America could afford a brand new Mercedes Benz. Surely     the American people would be outraged if they realized     their hard-earned money is being squandered in these     difficult times. With all this money at stake for Israel, it is easy to     comprehend why this Holocaust hoax is so secretly     guarded. The Jewish name for Holocaust is "Shoah." In Zionist circles, it is known as "Shoah     Business." If nothing else, this unbelievable     coverup demonstrates the irrepressible Zionist influence     and control of our country. Their only defense against     the facts is to cry out "antisemitic," "Skinhead" or "Nazi," whereas the     majority of t


What term that is a mechanism for the disappearance of inconvenient documents comes from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in which it is a slot into which officials deposit records to be destroyed?

BLOGDIAL » 2009 » September And for those who do not know: Memory hole The memory hole generally refers to the alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive. The term is the name of one website, The Memory Hole, whose goal is to preserve those documents which are in danger of being lost, and there are a number of other websites with similar goals.[1] Origins of term The memory hole, as in the phrase “Going down the memory hole,” is a phrase in Newspeak which refers to a small chute leading to a large incinerator used for censorship in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four:[2] In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.(pp. 34-35) In the novel, the memory hole is a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents and records to be destroyed. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda interests of the government. For example, if the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below the current 30 grams per week, but in fact the ration is reduced to 20 grams per week, the historical record (e.g., an article from a back issue of the Times newspaper) is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, or that the ration, then 15 grams, would soon be increased to that number. The original copies of the historical record are deposited into the memory hole. A document placed in the memory hole is supposedly transported to an incinerator from which “not even the ash remains” However not all things tossed in make it to the incinerator. A picture Winston threw into one is produced during the torture session, if only to be thrown back in an instant later. […] BLOGDIAL August 2005 Clearly the Iranians do not play chess. Or they need to play chess more . They also need to understand money. If they played chess and understood money, they would be more safe from attack. If they understood what money really is they would abandon their own bankrupt fiat currency system and go to an all gold system, financed by their oil revenues. That does not mean that they only accept gold for their oil instead of dollars; that would be ‘aggressive’. Instead they should take dollars, and immediately convert them into gold, which would then be used to replace their fiat currency incrementally. Sound money is the foundation of freedom and prosperity; with a sound currency, their population would thrive economically, and Iran could become one of the great financial centres of the world. Adopting an all gold currency would force them to stop spending on insane boondoggles like Nuclear anything. They currently print their money to finance these operations, stealing the value of the people’s money through inflation. Gold money would install fiscal discipline on the government there, so that they wold not be able to engage in nonsense like Nuclear power which is a waste of money. Nuclear weapons are not only a waste of money, but are a threat to the existence of Iran, wether they have a moral ri


Who wrote the 1942 short story Runaround that lists three laws one of which is stated below? 'A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm'

The Three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov   Laws of Robotics What are the Laws of Robotics? The original Three Laws of Robotics were coined by Isaac Asimov in his 1942 short story Runaround. Eventually Runaround became only one of several similar stories published under the common name I, Robot. The three laws state that: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Asimov's three laws of robotics were designed to guide robots in their interaction with humans and provide a safe way for future robotic development, one that cannot threaten human existence. Yet in his own short stories Asimov's robots always happen to fall into all kinds of trouble while following the laws in reality. The main issue here is: Is it possible to create practical laws of robotics which can guarantee a safe, conflict free and peaceful co-existence between robots and humans? Do you want to sumbit your own singularity content? Do you agree or disagree with the content of this page? Do you want to improve it? Do you want to post some great singularity content of your own? Why not share it here at Singularity Symposium?! Enter Your Title


Michel de Montaigne of France is best known for popularizing what kind of writing as a literary genre?

Montaigne, Michel de | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Z Michel de Montaigne (1533—1592) Michel de Montaigne is widely appreciated as one of the most important figures in the late French Renaissance, both for his literary innovations as well as for his contributions to philosophy.  As a writer, he is credited with having developed a new form of literary expression, the essay, a brief and admittedly incomplete treatment of a topic germane to human life that blends philosophical insights with historical anecdotes and autobiographical details, all unapologetically presented from the author’s own personal perspective.  As a philosopher, he is best known for his skepticism , which profoundly influenced major figures in the history of philosophy such as Descartes and Pascal. All of his literary and philosophical work is contained in his Essays, which he began to write in 1572 and first published in 1580 in the form of two books.  Over the next twelve years leading up to his death, he made additions to the first two books and completed a third, bringing the work to a length of about one thousand pages.  While Montaigne made numerous additions to the books over the years, he never deleted or removed any material previously published, in an effort to represent accurately the changes that he underwent both as a thinker and as a person over the twenty years during which he wrote.  These additions add to the unsystematic character of the books, which Montaigne himself claimed included many contradictions.  It is no doubt due to the unsystematic nature of the Essays that Montaigne received relatively little attention from Anglo-American philosophers in the twentieth century.  Nonetheless, in recent years he has been held out by many as an important figure in the history of philosophy not only for his skepticism, but also for his treatment of topics such as the self, moral relativism, politics, and the nature of philosophy. Table of Contents Secondary Sources 1. Life Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born at the Château Montaigne, located thirty miles east of Bordeaux, in 1533.  His father, Pierre Eyquem, was a wealthy merchant of wine and fish whose grandfather had purchased in 1477 what was then known as the Montaigne estate.  Montaigne’s mother, Antoinette de Loupes de Villeneuve, came from a  wealthy marrano family that had settled in Toulouse at the end of the 15th century.  Montaigne describes Eyquem as “the best father that ever was,” and mentions him often in the Essays.  Montaigne’s mother, on the other hand, is almost totally absent from her son’s book.  Amidst the turbulent religious atmosphere of sixteenth century France, Eyquem and his wife raised their children Catholic.  Michel, the eldest of eight children, remained a member of the Catholic Church his entire life, though three of his siblings became Protestants. Eyquem, who had become enamored of novel pedagogical methods that he had discovered as a soldier in Italy, directed Montaigne’s unusual education.  As an infant, Montaigne was sent to live with a poor family in a nearby village so as to cultivate in him a natural devotion to “that class of men that needs our help.”  When Montaigne returned as a young child to live at the château, Eyquem arranged that Michel awake every morning to music.  He then hired a German tutor to teach Montaigne to speak Latin as his native tongue.  Members of the household were forbidden to speak to the young Michel in any language other than Latin, and, as a result, Montaigne reports that he was six years old before he learned any French.  It was at this time that Eyquem sent Montaigne to attend the prestigious Collège de Guyenne, where he studied under the Scottish humanist George Buchanan. The details of Montaigne’s life between his departure from the Collège at age thirteen and his appointment as a Bordeaux magistrate in his early twenties are largely unknown.  He is thought to have studied the law, perhaps at Toulouse.  In any case, by 1557 he had begun his career as a magistrate, first in the Co


In what story of Arthur C. Clarke do Tibetan monks seek to list all the names of God as they believe He will bring the Universe to an end once this is done?

VOICE_1 By       Monica Clark Voice editor The       Oakland Diocese’s new Cathedral of Christ the Light will be built at the corner of Grand Avenue and Harrison Street, overlooking       Lake Merritt, in downtown Oakland on property purchased Dec. 5 for       $31.5 million. An independently funded, non-profit organization overseeing       the cathedral project announced the purchase and said it was continuing       its efforts to raise the additional $48.5 million needed to construct       the church. Total cost of the cathedral complex, which includes several       other buildings, is $131 million. Oakland Bishop Allen Vigneron, in a statement to cathedral supporters,       reiterated the importance of having a central worship space. “We       need our cathedral for a strong diocese; a strong diocese means renewed       strength for building up our community, strength for supporting our       schools, and strength for serving people in need.” He said it was fitting that the new church would be built “opposite       the site of our first Mass, held on March 27, 1772, on a swamp that       is now Lake Merritt.” Major foundation grants, individual donations, and loans were used       to purchase the land. Jack Smith, former mayor of Hayward and chair       of the fundraising committee, said he is hopeful that additional donors       will come forward with pledges to cover construction costs. No funds from the diocese’s budget will be tapped for the project,       said Bishop Vigneron. This will “keep diocesan operations vigorous       during cathedral building.” San Francisco architect Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill       will design the cathedral and several other church-related buildings       on the 2.5 acre site, which currently serves as a parking lot for tenants in adjacent buildings. Hartman replaces Santiago Calatrava as the design architect. The cathedral       project ended its relationship with Calatrava this spring after the       committee determined that his design “could not be built within       the Cathedral project’s (budgetary) guidelines,” said       Lee Nordlund, spokesman for the project. Hartman’s design features a 17-story, 33,000-square-foot elliptical       structure made of native woods, stone, steel and glass, with permanent       seating for 1,500. It will be pillar free and conform to the liturgical       directives of the Second Vatican Council. It will be set at the northeast corner of the site opening on to a       public plaza that will be surrounded on the south and east by diocesan       (chancery) and parish offices, meeting rooms and a conference center,       a rectory for parish priests and a bishop’s residence, a library,       archive and exhibit area, café and bookstore. There will be a bell tower on the southwest corner, a mausoleum beneath       the cathedral, and underground parking for 225 cars. Revenue from       the mausoleum and parking garage will help pay off construction loans       and then be available for maintenance and upkeep of the cathedral       center, Nordlund said. The cathedral’s name, Christ the Light, is taken from “Lumen       Gentium” (Light of All People), the Vatican Council’s       Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. The document calls on Catholics       to “bring to all that light of Christ which shines out visibly       from the Church.” The new cathedral replaces St. Francis de Sales Cathedral which was       severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and razed in October       1993. Future of the site on 21st Street and San Pablo Avenue is still       to be determined, Nordlund said. In the fall of 1999, Bishop John Cummins formed a committee of volunteers,       headed by Oakland attorney John McDonnell, choir director


Similar to John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World, which influential 1930s book by Edgar Snow is an account of the Communist Party of China?

You Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About... The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future New collective farms, like the one pictured here, transformed the old, private exploitative system of agriculture that could not reliably feed the population. Collectivization in the late 1920s and early 1930s was also a great social upheaval that challenged old customs and brought the poorest of peasants into political life. New collective farms, like the one pictured here, transformed the old, private exploitative system of agriculture that could not reliably feed the population. Collectivization in the late 1920s and early 1930s was also a great social upheaval that challenged old customs and brought the poorest of peasants into political life. From Prison House of Nations to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 1956 After Stalin’s death in 1953, new bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) forces within the Communist Party maneuvered to seize power. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, a high official in the party and government, consolidated the rule of a new capitalist class and led in systematically restructuring the Soviet Union into a capitalist society, while calling itself socialist. This was the end of the first proletarian state. Communists worldwide were confronted with the necessity to sum up, learn from, and advance off this experience. This great challenge was taken up by Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Revolution. China Before the Revolution Before the 1949 revolution, major capitalist powers had carved up and dominated China economically and militarily. The great majority of Chinese people were destitute peasants, subjected to the cruel and arbitrary rule of all-powerful landowners. With frequent famines and savage exploitation, peasants often faced starvation and sometimes ended up selling their children so that others in the family could survive. Women were subjected to wife-beating, arranged marriages, forced prostitution, and foot binding where young girls' feet were brutally wrapped and bent to keep them small and "attractive" to men. The situation in the cities was desperate. In Shanghai before World War 2, 25,000 dead bodies were collected from streets each year. In a country of 500 million people, only 12,000 doctors were trained in Western medicine. Four million people died each year from infectious and parasitic diseases. Life expectancy was 32 years. There were 60 million drug addicts. This is the situation in which people made revolution. People line up for food, China, 1909. Starvation was common in China before the revolution. Chinese Revolution Triumphs Yichiao, commune member of Tai nationality, of poor peasant origin, reads from Mao's Red Book with her great-great granddaughter¸1970. Mao's Last Battle 1973-1976 Mao kept warning of the danger of capitalist restoration. The masses had state power under socialism, but the revolution had to continue. But socialism emerges with the scars of class society, and struggle must go on to overcome this—or else society will be dragged back to capitalism, as has happened today in China. The Cultural Revolution raged for 10 years, through complex twists and turns. When Mao died in September 1976... that was the signal to the reactionaries within the Party. In October of that year, they staged a military coup. They immediately moved against the revolutionary core at the top levels of the Party and deployed troops in key parts of the country. There was resistance, but the suppression was quick and harsh, with large numbers of arrests and executions. Socialism in China was defeated. The first stage of communist revolution came to an end. Bob Avakian Brings Forward a New Synthesis of Communism The defeat in China was a real turning point. There was confusion, shock, and disorientation among everyone in the world who had looked to China as an inspirational model. It was in these circumstances that Bob Avakian (BA), Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, rose to fill a great and historic need: to make an accounting both o


Which 1853 narrative poem of Matthew Arnold set in the orient tells the story of two feuding warrior-generals who, unknown to both, happen to be father and son?

Edward FitzGerald and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Chapter 1 – Introduction. The Rubaiyat is a strange phenomenon in the history of literature. Without Edward FitzGerald, few people would ever have heard of Omar Khayyam, and without Omar Khayyam, few people would ever have heard of Edward FitzGerald (1) , and yet, though they lived in different times and came from different cultures, between them they created one of the most famous works of literature in the western world, and one which, over the years, has been translated into many languages, including Irish, Esperanto, Russian, Swahili, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Thai, Chinese and Japanese! (2) Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 AD at Naishapur in Persia (in what is now north-eastern Iran.) He died and was buried there in 1131, his grave now being marked by an impressive monument. He was a mathematician – he wrote a treatise on Algebra, in which he detailed geometrical methods of solving cubic equations using intersecting circles, parabolas and hyperbolas – effectively the equivalent of today’s graphical methods using co-ordinate geometry. He was an astronomer – he was one of the eight learned men employed by Sultan Malik Shah to institute the so-called Jalali calendar reform (3a) ; he is also sometimes said to have advocated that the apparent rotation of the Heavens is actually a result of the rotation of the Earth ( 3b ), and even to have advocated a Sun-centred (Heliocentric) model of the Universe, as opposed to the more ‘obvious’ Earth-centred (Geocentric) one, though both of these claims are doubtful, particularly the latter. (3c) . He was a philosopher – in mathematics, he studied what ranks as axiomatic in geometry – in particular the fifth postulate of Euclid ( 3d ) – and the significance of Mathematical Order in Nature; in theology, he wrote treatises dealing with the existence of God, free will and determinism, the problem of evil, and life after death – all of which we shall return to later in connection with his poetry. It is tempting to suppose that he also engaged in debate with those who preached the orthodox dogmas of Islam, though in the religious climate of the time, that would probably have laid him open to charges of heresy. Finally, of course, he was a poet. Today, he is most famous for his poetry – his “Rubaiyat” (the word simply means “quatrains”, meaning verses with four lines.) Edward FitzGerald was born in the village of Bredfield, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England in 1809. He died in 1883, and was buried in the hamlet of Boulge (also near Woodbridge). At the head of his modest grave there is now a rose bush. It was originally grown from hips picked in 1884, by the artist-traveller William Simpson, a devotee of The Rubaiyat, from a rose bush next to the grave of Omar Khayyam at Naishapur. (Roses are a recurring symbolic feature of The Rubaiyat; see also the note on verse 75 .) FitzGerald was a man with inherited wealth and therefore had no need to work for a living. Consequently he spent much of his life indulging in his interests in gardening, literature, art and music, not to mention murder trials and sailing! Fortunately for us, too, he spent a considerable amount of time writing letters to his friends, which, as he himself once said, he wouldn’t have been able to do if he had had “a proper occupation” (IV.53-4). (4) It was in 1853 that he began to study Persian, mostly teaching himself from Sir William Jones’s Grammar of the Persian Language, backed up by John Richardson’s Dictionary of Persian, Arabic and English, both of which were first published in the 1770s. But he was also helped in his studies by his friend Edward Byles Cowell (5) whom he had first met in 1844, and who, surprisingly, was about 17 years his junior! Cowell was a brilliant linguist, who was at that time studying for a Classics degree at Oxford University. He gained a first class degree in 1854, after which, whilst waiting for a suitable academic post to turn up, he took a job cataloguing manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Th


Which 1902 short story by W. W. Jacobs is based on the premise of three wishes coming true but with an enormous price for interfering with fate?

Audience Reviews for The Monkey's Paw ½ I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, particularly considering the last Chiller movie I saw, Deep in the Darkness wasn't very good. I suppose the quality of each film has more to do with the content of the film as opposed to the budget, but I'm assuming that this movie had around or the same budget as DITD, but I thought the scripting was a little better here, as was the acting. Stephen Lang is an underrated actor and he was one of the few things that I liked about Avatar and he does a good enough job here in this movie as well. I liked the progression of the story. Not that it's anything that great or compelling, but you're at least invested enough in wanting to see how the film's narrative plays out. The problems come in the fact that the film is pretty much has one tone through and through. I mean, I guess someone coming back from the dead, due to a wish granted from the monkey's paw, completely different and homicidal as opposed to who they were before they died is interesting, but I think the movie needs a little something more than Stephen Lang, literally, going all over New Orleans to kill a ton of people. Though, at the very least, the film tries to give you a reason for Lang's character's actions. He was having issues with his ex-wife, who took out a restraining order on him to stay away from her son. We don't know what happened in their past, but it can't have been good if the restraining order got approved. Lang's character laments the fact that he isn't allowed to see his son before he dies and after he comes back, he's a little more, let's say, assertive about wanting to see his son again. So at least there's a motivation for why Lang's character is doing what he's doing, so that's always good to see. Like I said, the film doesn't really branch out much out of its initial tone, so it always ends up feeling the same, though I did think the climax was solid and there was some good acting involved here. I definitely think this is a movie that overachieves from, what some would describe, a limited scope. It's not that I would say that this is good or anything, because it isn't, and it doesn't really do anything wholly unique. But I did think the film told a story that had you invested in seeing it all the way to its conclusion and some solid acting to elevate its weaker elements. It's not a good movie, or anything like that, but I was pleasantly surprised by this. I wouldn't exactly recommend it, but it's not a terrible movie at all, it's average at best. Jesse Ortega


The murder of landlady Alena and the angst it causes in the psyche of the perpetrator is central to the plot of which 1866 literary classic?

Free crime and punishment Essays and Papers Color Rating   Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Slow slicing, or death by a thousand cuts, was a capital punishment in 900 A.D. China for those who committed brutal crimes, such as murder. In present day America, the use of lethal injection is one of many forms of capital punishment used to end the lives of an offender. It appears that people, throughout the centuries, have looked for a suitable way to punish a criminal. These punishments have a sole purpose, and that is to take the life of an offender. By taking the life of a wrong doer does not erase the crime nor does it help reform the criminal....   [tags: Crime and Punishment Essays] 765 words [preview] Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - In Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the theme of duality and the conflict between personal desires and morals is present throughout much of the novel. There are dual conflicts: one external between a disillusioned individual and his world, and the other internal between an isolated soul and his inner thoughts. It is the internal conflict in the main character, Raskolnikov, that is the focused on for much of the novel. The first of Rodya’s two sides is his intellectual side. This side of rodya is inhumane, and exhibiting extreme self-will and power....   [tags: Crime and Punishment Essays] :: 1 Works Cited [preview] Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Before the interactive oral, I noticed the numerous dreams and hallucinations in the novel Crime and Punishment, but I was not quite able to grasp the deeper meaning of some of the dreams and hallucinations. After this interactive oral, I see how important dreams are in this novel. They serve to illuminate the state of a character in a way that would not otherwise be clear. During this interactive oral, it was pointed out that the dreams in this novel are very influential to a character’s state of mind and actions....   [tags: Crime and Punishment Essays] :: 1 Works Cited [preview] Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky - In Fyodor Dostoevsky book Crime and Punishment, women at this time in Russia were not the equals of men in terms of education and power. In Crime and Punishment the women in the story were self-sacrificing in their actions, which in return paid off for the women. Majority of women, in Crime and Punishment, such as Sonya were selfless in their actions. The women in this story play a motherly role towards the men. Women in this story may have lived in a male dominated society, but it seemed that the words the women spoke in this story were very strong in influencing the men....   [tags: Crime and Punishment Essays] 1938 words [preview] Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky - Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was written in a regimented Russian society at a time when individuals were judged not by their character, but by their class and accordance with social institutions. The characters and foils in the novel vary in their social status as well as in their morals. Several characters that society respects for their position are shown to have little virtue, while others that are shunned are illustrated to be virtuous human beings. Thus Dostoevsky suggests that individuals must look beyond a person’s social status to value them as a person, in doing condemning the institutions that society holds dear....   [tags: Crime and Punishment Essays] :: 1 Works Cited [preview] Crime and Punishment: Avoiding Punishment is Futile - Avoiding punishment is futile. Whether in the form of proper trials or through guilt, every person will come face to face with the consequences of their actions. Avoiding suffering only causes it to intensify. This is mainly demonstrated through Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov in the end of Crime and Punishment. Both men had been eluding their various torments and they realize the vanity of their avoidance after receiving crushing mental blows. Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov realize that the time has come to recognize suffering and responsibility for previous actions....   [ta


William Golding's Lord of the Flies was written as a response to which 1857 adventure novel by R. M. Ballantyne because Golding disagreed with the views that the book held?

Lord of the Flies Chapter Two: Fire on the Mountain Summary and Analysis | GradeSaver Buy Study Guide Back with the group the same evening, Ralph blows the conch shell to call another meeting. The effects of abandonment are visible in the boys' attire: the sunburned children have put on clothing once more, while the choir is more disheveled, having abandoned their cloaks. When the group of boys give Ralph full attention, Ralph suffers a brief lapse in confidence and is unsure whether to stand or sit while conducting a meeting. He looks to Piggy for affirmation of his authority. Ralph announces to the boys the results of the morning's explorations. He explains that they are on an uninhabited island. At this point, Jack interjects and insists that they need an army to hunt the pigs. Ralph, Jack, and Simon excitedly describe to the others their encounter with the piglet, Jack insisting defensively that it "got away" before he had the chance to stab and kill it, and vowing again to kill it "next time." To demonstrate his sincerity, Jack dramatically plunges his knife into a tree trunk, and the children, made uneasy by Jack's boldness, fall into silence. Recognizing that the meeting has devolved into disorder, Ralph announces that they will have to establish rules, not only in meetings, but also to organize day-to-day life. He states that, in meetings, the boys will have to raise their hands, like in school, so as to ensure that they speak one at a time. The boy whose turn it is to speak will receive the conch shell, which he will hold while talking, and then will pass it along to the next speaker. Jack interrupts to approve of the imposition of rules, and he begins excitedly explaining the punishment that will result from breaking them. Piggy, grabbing the conch from Ralph, reprimands Jack for "hindering Ralph." He says that the most important thing is that nobody knows where they are and that they may be there a long time. The boys fall into an anxious silence. Ralph, taking the conch again from Piggy, reassures the other boys, explaining that the island is theirs-and until the grown-ups come they will have fun. He says that it will be like a novel, and the others, excited once more, begin shouting the names of their favorite island adventure novels: Treasure Island , Swallows and Amazons, and The Coral Island. Ralph quiets the assembly by waving the conch. A small six-year-old boy whose face is half-covered by a red birthmark stands hesitantly to request the conch. He appears as if he is about to cry; once he has possession of the conch, he asks Ralph what the group will do about a snake-thing, which he describes as a "beastie" that appeared to him in the forest. Ralph assures the group that such animals only live in large countries, like those in Africa, so the boy must have dreamt the beastie in the aftermath of the crash. The boys seem largely reassured, though Ralph notices some signs of doubt on the faces of the younger children. Ralph tells the boys that their goal while stranded shall be twofold: one, they should try to ensure their rescue, and two, they should try to have fun. He assures them that, as his Naval Commander father told him, there are no unknown islands on the planet, and thus they will be rescued. The others break into spontaneous applause at Ralph's confidence in their rescue. He then explains to the group the details of his rescue plan. Ralph suggests that they build a fire on the top of the mountain, for the smoke will signal their presence to passing ships. Jack summons the boys to come build a fire on the mountaintop, and they immediately follow, leaving Piggy and Ralph behind to discuss the outcome of the meeting. Piggy expresses disgust at the childish behavior of the boys as Ralph catches up to the group and helps them carry piles of wood to the mountaintop. Eventually, the task proves too difficult for some of the smaller boys, who lose interest and search for fruit to eat. When they have gathered enough wood, Ralph and Jack wonder how to start a fire. Piggy arrives, and Jack suggests that th


"Which recent literary Nobel laureate wrote in one of his memoirs ""Istanbul's fate is my fate""?"

Edmund S. Phelps - Biographical Edmund S. Phelps The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2006 Edmund S. Phelps Edmund S. Phelps - Biographical Becoming an economist: From early preparation to my new direction For decades, my research was driven by outstanding problems in macroeconomics: mainly growth theory and employment theory. Then, around 1990, my research turned to the study of economic systems and my development as an economist took on added dimensions. This biography will start with my student period and go on to my new direction. 1 The two periods seem to me to be linked and I will be drawing some of the connections. I will recount too the intervening period when macroeconomics was in revolution and I was one of the revolutionaries. So this biography gives my account of the battles that started in the 1960s between, on the one side, those economists who wanted macroeconomic models to have lifelike actors whose expectations and beliefs were causal forces and, on the other side, those who did not. A taste of creativity in Hastings I am not sure that growing up give full weight to the role of the early education of economists in determining their direction and ambition. When my Prize was announced last October the town in which I grew up, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., proudly claimed six Laureates! Newspaper writers asked whether there was "something in the water." 2 Most of those interviewed thought it was something in the school system. It turned out that four of those Nobels had been won by scientists who were not sons of Hastings, merely commuters to universities and research hospitals in New York City. The other two Nobel winners were genuine products of Hastings and its public school  the economist Robert Merton (son of Robert Merton, the Columbia sociologist, who was a dear friend) and me. I entered the school in 1939 and graduated in 1951. The best part of the high school in Hastings must have been the Music Department. Its orchestra and concert band did well in county competitions and the dance band formed by its students was the best in the region. I played lead trumpet in all of them. They were a gateway to appreciating the best professional musicians of the time. Music was always a part of my life. (One Sunday, at little more than age 8, I had been listening to the New York Philharmonic broadcast when programming was interrupted with news of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.) In the postwar years I marveled at the musical imagination in the big band hits and the outsized personality of the famous soloists. I wanted to play like Harry James. Later I discovered radio station WBAI and was awestruck by the innovativeness of the modern jazz giants Hawkins, Parker and Gillespie. At Carnegie Hall and the Lewisohn Stadium I listened to William Vacchiano's trumpet seeming to set the tone for the New York Philharmonic. 3 I grew up, then, with towers of creativity around me. So I tried to be creative too. A musicology course, I remember, required us to harmonize a C major scale. I don't suppose I did that very well but that I was able to do something interesting with it surprised me and made me believe that most of us sometimes find inspiration that we could not have imagined beforehand. The high school was also unusual in giving a course in "creative writing." The assignments were my first experience at inventing a fictional world  a kind of modeling. I reached the conclusion, though, that whatever my creativity in music or writing might have proved to be, it was not promising enough to warrant attempting a career as a performing artist or professional writer. My hunch was that I would be able to exercise the same or greater creativity in some other field. So I looked forward to the explorations of other fields in college. Humanities and philosophy at Amherst I attended Amherst College from 1951 to 1955. The first two years were a revelation. There were innumerable exchanges with brilliant classmates, among them the playwright Ralph Allen, the classics scholar Robert Fagles, and the


The 1987 nonfiction book And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts chronicles the discovery and spread of what modern horror?

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists Shelves: favorites This book brought back the early 80s in hallucinatory detail. I remember when we first heard about Gay Cancer, and how hard it was to get any decent information. I remember when the world got wobbly and my friends were dying and it seemed like nobody cared. I was quite certain that, given my penchant for fey boys, I wouldn't be around to see the turn of the century. I vividly remember making up file folders for 1989 for my job and thinking that the ones for 1990 would be in someone else's handwr This book brought back the early 80s in hallucinatory detail. I remember when we first heard about Gay Cancer, and how hard it was to get any decent information. I remember when the world got wobbly and my friends were dying and it seemed like nobody cared. I was quite certain that, given my penchant for fey boys, I wouldn't be around to see the turn of the century. I vividly remember making up file folders for 1989 for my job and thinking that the ones for 1990 would be in someone else's handwriting. It was a scary time that was made electric for me by Shilts and Larry Kramer. I bought this book the week it came out, and it changed my view of everything. Absolutely everything. Reading it again some 20-odd years later brought back the anger and the sadness and that helpless, blistering rage. This is the book that made me understand viscerally that me and mine mattered nothing to the government. It's also where I learned that the best intentions can get snarled in the weeds- that people passionately devoted to an idea will serve that idea beyond all reason, that profit comes before people, and that it always takes a movie star to catch the public's imagination. All the mistakes, all the missteps are herein laid out in letters of fire. The Cassandras, dismissed, reviled and hushed at the time, are sadly proven right. Reagan is illuminated in the harsh light of retrospect and found wanting. A whole generation vanished because the health officials didn't want to talk about anal sex, the blood banks didn't want to admit they should have tested the blood, the gay rights organizations couldn't conceive of closing the baths, the government couldn't fund the scientists, the scientists couldn't let go of their need to be the first, the medical journals couldn't suspend business-as-usual, the FDA couldn't understand that double blind studies were inappropriate in the face of an epidemic of this magnitude, and on and on and on. A monumental comedy of errors that could so easily have been prevented. This book should be required reading for anyone entering any sort of health care profession or who might be a health care consumer some day. Infuriating, well-written, and tragically still timely. It could happen again. This book changed my life. I wish it hadn't had to. ...more "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." -Jerry Falwell "In this respect our townfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away, and from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away ..." -Albert Camus, The Plague "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." -Jerry Falwell "In this respect our townfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away, and from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away ..." -Albert Camus, The Plague Perhaps the most astonishing factor in this book, more so than the wasting disease of AIDS, is the totally pervasive sense of callous indifference. How th


Which 1844 novel of William Makepeace Thackeray, later adapted into a movie by Stanley Kubrick, is based on the life of an Anglo-Irish fortune-hunter called Andrew Robinson Stoney?

The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Performing Arts Nonfiction "The Luck of Barry Lyndon" is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in serial form in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rake and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon.Stanley Kubrick later adapted the novel into the movie Barry Lyndon (1975). William Makepeace Thackeray (18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century.


The English novelist Sax Rohmer is best known for creating which prototypical ethnic villain who is now associated with a distinctive mustache?

IMDb: Most Popular People With Biographies Matching "The Prestige" Most Popular People With Biographies Matching "The Prestige" 1-50 of 200 names. Hugh Jackman Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is best known for his long-running role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his lead roles in the romantic-comedy fantasy Kate & Leopold (2001), the action-horror film Van Helsing (2004), the drama The Prestige and The Fountain (2006), the epic historical romantic drama Australia (2008), the film version of Les Misérables (2012), and the thriller Prisoners (2013). His work in Les Misérables earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in 2013. In Broadway theatre, Jackman won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz. A four-time host of the Tony Awards themselves, he won an Emmy Award for one of these appearances. Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009. Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Grace McNeil (Greenwood) and Christopher John Jackman, an accountant. He is the youngest of five children. His parents, both English, moved to Australia shortly before his birth. He also has Greek (from a great-grandfather) and Scottish (from a grandmother) ancestry. Jackman has a communications degree with a journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney. After graduating, he pursued drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, immediately after which he was offered a starring role in the ABC-TV prison drama Correlli , opposite his future wife Deborra-Lee Furness . Several TV guest roles followed, as an actor and variety compere. An accomplished singer, Jackman has starred as Gaston in the Australian production of "Beauty and the Beast." He appeared as Joe Gillis in the Australian production of "Sunset Boulevard." In 1998, he was cast as Curly in the Royal National Theatre's production of Trevor Nunn 's Oklahoma. Jackman has made two feature films, the second of which, Erskineville Kings , garnered him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actor in 1999. Recently, he won the part of Logan/Wolverine in the Bryan Singer - directed comic-book movie X-Men . In his spare time, Jackman plays piano, golf, and guitar, and likes to windsurf. Marlon Brando Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams ' A Streetcar Named Desire and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now , all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore , the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March . Only the luster of Spencer Tracy 's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando


The title of which 1959 play is the phrase that follows the lines 'What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like ...' in a Langston Hughes poem?

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Analysis and Activities:: Spotlight: E-News from Theatrefolk Written and Edited by Lindsay Price March, 2011 Issue 58 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Analysis and Activities Welcome! An Analysis and Activities Newsletter on A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry In This Issue Multimedia references for the play. Introduction A Raisin In the Sun is no more dated today than Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The surface issues may have changed but, like Salesman, this compassionate human drama still works its magic on our emotions. As told through the prism of one family's moment of crisis, it retains its pertinence." Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp Review, Broadway Revival I had a great time working on A Raisin in the Sun for this newsletter. It makes me sad to know that Lorraine Hansberry died so young and wonder what other plays were in her future. The story of this play is both epic and simple. A family living on the south side of Chicago struggles with poverty, struggles to maintain dignity, and dreams of a better life. What will they do to get this better life when a $10,000 insurance check arrives? A Raisin in the Sun is an excellent example of the relationship between character and conflict. When I teach playwriting, I speak about conflict being the obstacle in the way of a character getting what they want. These characters have defined wants which are incredibly important to them: Walter wants to be rich because that is an indication of success. Beneatha wants to be a doctor because she has a desire to heal. Mama and Ruth want to provide peace for their families. Mama wants Walter to stand up and be the man of the family. Hansberry then provides rich obstacles for her characters, most of which are inner obstacles. Inner conflict is always so much harder to address as the character is in conflict with himself or herself... Walter is his own obstacle to his dreams – he wants to be rich and successful, but only tries get-rich-quick schemes, which fail time and time again. Beneatha feels entitled to become a doctor. When that may be taken away from her, she has no response other than to give up on helping others. Ruth constantly fights with Walter. Her family's peace is further upended when she finds out she's pregnant. Mama makes a rash decision to prompt Walter to stand up and be a man, which proves unwise. Further, some of the characters willingly take some extraordinary measures to deal with the obstacles in their way to get what they want: Mama buys a house in an all-white neighbourhood to provide a home for her family. Walter takes his sister's school money in order to kickstart his business. He's also willing to grovel and act in a humiliating manner to get money from the Clybourne Park neighbourhood association. Ruth considers an abortion to maintain peace in the family she already has. What an excellent character and conflict study! I also find that the characters in A Raisin in the Sun are remarkably three-dimensional given the archetypal standards they represent. Each character is representation of something generational, a gender or race issue, and it's a testament to Hansberry's writing that the characters don't come across as mouthpieces for the story. They are living, breathing human beings. It's not impossible at all to imagine the Younger family crowded together in their tiny roach-infested apartment on the south side of Chicago struggling, striving, and dreaming. This newsletter will examine the characters, the historical context Hansberry was writing in, and offer a multitude of audio and visual clips you can use to bring the play alive for your class. Quick Facts “I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is.” Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930 and died in 1965 of cancer. She was 34 years old. A Raisin in the Sun was written in 1957 and first produced in 1959 The original production stared S


'The duke and the king' are characters that accompany the runaway lead pair in which classic American novel?

SparkNotes: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Character List The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Huckleberry Finn -  The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Frequently forced to survive on his own wits and always a bit of an outcast, Huck is thoughtful, intelligent (though formally uneducated), and willing to come to his own conclusions about important matters, even if these conclusions contradict society’s norms. Nevertheless, Huck is still a boy, and is influenced by others, particularly by his imaginative friend, Tom. Tom Sawyer -  Huck’s friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel to which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel. In Huckleberry Finn, Tom serves as a foil to Huck: imaginative, dominating, and given to wild plans taken from the plots of adventure novels, Tom is everything that Huck is not. Tom’s stubborn reliance on the “authorities” of romance novels leads him to acts of incredible stupidity and startling cruelty. His rigid adherence to society’s conventions aligns Tom with the “sivilizing” forces that Huck learns to see through and gradually abandons. Read an in-depth analysis of Tom Sawyer. Widow Douglas and Miss Watson -  Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house in St. Petersburg and who adopt Huck. The gaunt and severe Miss Watson is the most prominent representative of the hypocritical religious and ethical values Twain criticizes in the novel. The Widow Douglas is somewhat gentler in her beliefs and has more patience with the mischievous Huck. When Huck acts in a manner contrary to societal expectations, it is the Widow Douglas whom he fears disappointing. Jim -  One of Miss Watson’s household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than anyone else in the novel. Jim’s frequent acts of selflessness, his longing for his family, and his friendship with both Huck and Tom demonstrate to Huck that humanity has nothing to do with race. Because Jim is a black man and a runaway slave, he is at the mercy of almost all the other characters in the novel and is often forced into ridiculous and degrading situations. Read an in-depth analysis of Jim. Pap -  Huck’s father, the town drunk and ne’er-do-well. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel, with disgusting, ghostlike white skin and tattered clothes. The illiterate Pap disapproves of Huck’s education and beats him frequently. Pap represents both the general debasement of white society and the failure of family structures in the novel. The duke and the dauphin  -  A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims to be the “dauphin,” the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Although Huck quickly realizes the men are frauds, he and Jim remain at their mercy, as Huck is only a child and Jim is a runaway slave. The duke and the dauphin carry out a number of increasingly disturbing swindles as they travel down the river on the raft. Judge Thatcher  -  The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding the money that Huck and Tom found at the end of Tom Sawyer. When Huck discovers that Pap has returned to town, he wisely signs his fortune over to the Judge, who doesn’t really accept the money, but tries to comfort Huck. Judge Thatcher has a daughter, Becky, who was Tom’s girlfriend in Tom Sawyer and whom Huck calls “Bessie” in this novel. The Grangerfords -  A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft, separating him from Jim. The kindhearted Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons. Twain


"""Why is that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"" asked Yali.Which 1997 book is the author's attempt to answer this question?"

Real History versus Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond Contact Real History versus Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond In 1997, ten years after calling agriculture The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race , Jared Diamond came out with Guns, Germs, and Steel , a landmark book that would win the Pulitzer Prize, become a best-seller, and be filmed by National Geographic for PBS. It is surely the most widely read book about agriculture anyone has ever written. Jared Diamond’s ideas about human society continue to be enormously influential–for an update, check out the Gun Control Podcast . The key question is whether Diamond’s work is broadly correct about human history or a distortion of that history. I argue that although Diamond makes interesting points, his work from Guns, Germs, and Steel to Collapse is a distorting disservice to the real historical record. Diamond’s claim–that the differential success of the world’s nations is due to the accidents of agriculture, except when societies “choose to fail”–not only does not withstand scrutiny, it should not be promoted or taught. Guns, Germs, and Steel: Yali’s Question and Central Thesis In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond purports to answer “Yali’s Question.” Diamond had met Yali in New Guinea in 1972, and Yali asked: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” (1997:14). For Diamond, Yali’s question meant trying to explain why Europeans had become imperial powers, wealthy nations, whereas others had not. Diamond’s answer was that it had nothing to do with any innate European superiority, neither intellectual nor genetic. Rather, it was all about agriculture, a geographical accident. For Diamond, the differences in the agricultural complex that had arisen in the Middle East explained everything. Agriculture had been there longer, giving the Eurasians more time to develop technologies. Eurasian agriculture also included most of the large domesticated animals, which provided a crucial symbiotic resource for agricultural production. Domesticated animals also introduced diseases, and Eurasians developed some immunity to those diseases. Finally, agriculture in Eurasia spread along the lines of latitude, making trade and interconnection quicker than in Africa and the Americas, where spread along longitudinal lines is more difficult. *(see comment) After once labeling agriculture the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race , the idea that European superiority was all based in early agriculture seems curious. However, it was not entirely incongruous: Diamond here did not intend to comment on internal social and sexual inequality, or the ravages of disease and despotism for those who had adopted agriculture. Those factors remained true, but when such societies encountered others, the Europeans had the advantage of disease immunity as well as a longer experience with agriculture and agricultural technologies. A generous reading of Guns, Germs, and Steel could even be that ten years after his “Worst Mistake,” Diamond was now carefully considering the different forms of agriculture that had developed from diverse gathering and hunting societies. But Guns, Germs, and Steel is not about nuance or particularity. It is a one-note riff. Whatever there is to be explained–guns, germs, or steel, as well as writing, military power, and European imperialism–everything is about early adoption of agriculture, the big domestic animals, and the longitudinal gradient facilitating trade and interaction. Diamond has lots of cool stories and anecdotes, but it always goes back to the same factors. Guns, Germs, and Steel as Academic Porn Halfway through teaching Guns, Germs, and Steel, I blurted out that it was academic porn–the costumes change, the props change, but in the end it’s the same repeated theme. I don’t think I am entirely crazy, even about the porn. After all, Diamond published two books in 1997–the other was Why Is Sex Fun? It’s as if Diamond was going for a bestseller and put two


The most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death in 1985, whose best known works are the Our Ancestors trilogy and the Cosmicomics collection of short stories?

Amazon.com: Books Books Books Advanced Search New Releases Best Sellers The New York Times® Best Sellers Children's Books Textbooks Textbook Rentals Sell Us Your Books Best Books of the Month Kindle eBooks Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 - 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). Admired in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.


Which poetic drama that was first performed in 1935 draws on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was a witness to a killing in 1170?

Murder in the Cathedral - Dictionary definition of Murder in the Cathedral | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary Murder in the Cathedral Literature and Its Times Supplement 1 COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot THE LITERARY WORK A play set in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170; first performed in Canterbury, England, in June 1935. SYNOPSIS Archbishop Thomas Becket returns from exile abroad to face martyrdom—he must resist the temptations of King Henry ll’s agents and come to terms with his impending death. For More Information Although T. S. Eliot (Thomas Sternes Eliot) was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved to England in 1914 and officially became a British subject in 1927. The choice to leave America for England was one of many that reflect a conservative frame of mind. In 1929, Eliot described himself as an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics; all three look back to traditional forms of belief, literature, and government. Yet Eliot’s literary work was simultaneously revolutionary and conservative; he caught the spirit of his age by marrying modern language and classical allusion in his poetry. Eliot’s first major published poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), captured the spiritual paralysis of a world suddenly and radically changed by the First World War. In his later and perhaps most famous poem, “The Waste Land” (both also in Literature and Its Times), Eliot juxtaposed historical and literary allusions with the common speech of everyday people. When Eliot turned his attention to drama, he maintained his commitment to marrying the new to the old; for instance, he championed the writing of drama in verse, as Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks had done. Eliot’s first drama was The Rock (1934), a pageant play. Then came Murder in the Cathedral (1935), followed by plays such as The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1950). Eliot was also the editor of the publishing house Faber & Faber, and a major literary critic whose essays shaped two generations of scholars. By turning to the past in his poetry, drama, and criticism, Eliot defined the literary taste of the twentieth century. In Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot tells a story from the past in a style of the past to illuminate the brutality of his own 1930s world. Events in History at the Time of the Play Henry II vs. Becket: A historical overview Murder in the Cathedral is a play based on the real-life historical conflict between King Henry II of England and Archbishop Thomas Becket. Becket had risen from lowly origins to become King Henry’s close friend, loyal servant, advisor and ambassador. In 1154 Henry appointed Becket to the post of chancellor, arguably the most powerful secular post in England. King Henry (reigned 1154-89) was trying to consolidate England into a nation at the time, which involved his regaining control over its Catholic Church. But the Church had obligations to the Pope in Rome, and these obligations could conflict with loyalty to king and state. Henry decided to appoint his good friend and right-hand man, Thomas Becket, to the post of archbishop of Canterbury so that he would have an insider in the Church. But to everyone’s surprise, once Becket had been consecrated archbishop his attitudes changed entirely; he became a devout Catholic entirely devoted to Rome, which infuriated Henry. Further enraging the king, Becket began to excommunicate Henry’s supporters, to expel them from the Church, inflicting a very serious punishment on them for prioritizing the king’s will over what he saw as God’s will. The relationship between the former friends deteriorated rapidly, and in 1164, Becket was summoned to trial. Instead, he fled to France. There were many attempts to reconcile Henry and Becket, but all of them failed. Henry seized Becket’s property and exiled his relatives from England; Becket continued to excommunicate the king’s supporters. The dispute came to a head in 1170 when Henry had his eldest son crowned as co


What classic short story by the French writer Guy de Maupassant concerns an invisible malevolent spirit that aims to take control over the narrator?

Nikkhoo ----- A LITERARY WEBSITE: SHORT STORY WRITERS AND SHORT STORIES BY HAROLD BLOOM SHORT STORY WRITERS AND SHORT STORIES BY HAROLD BLOOM BLOOM’S LITERARY CRITICISM SHORT STORY WRITERS AND SHORT STORIES LITERARY BLOOM’S CRITICISM 20THANNIVERSARY COLLECTION Dramatists and Dramas Short Story Writers and Short Stories BLOOM’S LITERAR Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University ©2005 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications. Introduction © 2005 by Harold Bloom. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bloom, Harold. Short story writers and short stories / Harold Bloom. p. cm. — (Bloom’s 20th anniversary collection) ISBN 0-7910-8228-8 HC 0-7910-8367-5 PB 1. Short story. Cover designed by Takeshi Takahashi Cover illustration by David Levine Layout by EJB Publishing Services Table of Contents Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) 12 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) 19 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) 65 SHORT ST OR Y WRITERS AND SHORT ST ORIES Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) 108 F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) 121 Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) 130 Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) 159 SHORT ST OR Y WRITERS AND SHORT ST ORIES Preface I BEGAN EDITING ANTHOLOGIES OF LITERARY CRITICISM FOR CHELSEA House in early 1984, but the first volume, Edgar Allan Poe: Modern Critical Views, was published in January, 1985, so this is the twentieth anniversary of a somewhat Quixotic venture. If asked how many separate books have been issued in this project, I no longer have a precise answer, since in so long a span many volumes go out of print, and even whole series have been discontinued. A rough guess would be more than a thousand individual anthologies, a perhaps insane panoply to have been collected and introduced by a single critic. Some of these books have surfaced in unlikely places: hotel rooms in Bologna and Valencia, Coimbra and Oslo; used-book stalls in Frankfurt and Nice; on the shelves of writers wherever I have gone. A batch were sent by me in answer to a request from a university library in Macedonia, and I have donated some of them, also by request, to a number of prisoners serving life sentences in American jails. A thousand books across a score of years can touch many shores and many lives, and at seventy-four I am a little bewildered at the strangeness of the endeavor, particularly now that it has leaped between centuries. It cannot be said that I have endorsed every critical essay reprinted, as my editor’s notes have made clear. Yet the books have to be reasonably reflective of current critical modes and educational fashions, not all of them provoking my own enthusiasm. But then I am a dinosaur, cheerfully naming myself as “Bloom Brontosaurus Bardolator.” I accept only three criteria for greatness in imaginative literature: aesthetic splendor, cognitive power, wisdom. What is now called “relevance” will be in the dustbins in less than a generation, as our society (somewhat tardily) reforms prejudices ix and inequities. The fashionable in literature and criticism always ebbs away into Period Pieces. Old, well-made furniture survives as valuable antiques, which is not the destiny of badly constructed imaginings and ideological exhortings. Time, which decays and then destroys us, is even more merciless in obliterating weak novels, poems, dramas, and stories, however virtuous these may be. Wander into a library and regard the masterpieces of thirty years ago: a handful of forgotten books have value, but the iniquity of oblivion has rendered most bestsellers instances of time’s revenges. The other day a friend and former student told me that the first of the Poets Laureate of twentieth-century America had been Joseph Auslander, concerning whom even my still retentive memory is vacant. These days, Mrs. Felecia Hemans is studied and tau


Which 1961 non-fiction book by US journalist John Howard Griffin describes his six-week experience travelling on buses through racially segregated states while passing as a black man?

Black Like Me is a nonfiction book about a man who became a black man Black Like Me is a nonfiction book about a man who became a black man alearned Black Like Me in the 1950s a Texas white man went through extensive physical changes to become a black man and travel for six weeks on greyhound buses. After publishing his experiences, he was forced to move to Mexico for several years. Black Like Me is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. Griffin was a white native of Dallas, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia passing as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles. Griffin kept a journal of his experiences; the 188-page diary was the genesis of the book. In 1959, at the time of the book’s writing, race relations were particularly strained in America ; Griffin’s aim was to explain the difficulties facing black people in certain areas. Under the care of a doctor , Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a black man. In 1964, a film version of Black Like Me starring James Whitmore was produced.[1] Robert Bonazzi subsequently published the book Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me. The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes poem “ Dream Variations”: Account of the trip In the autumn of 1959, John Howard Griffin went to a friend’s house in New Orleans, Louisiana. Once there, under the care of a dermatologist, Griffin underwent a regimen of large oral doses of the anti-vitiligo drug Methoxsalen, trade name Oxsoralen, and spending up to fifteen hours daily under an ultraviolet lamp.[2] To complete the illusion, Griffin used dyes to cover uneven areas and closely cut his hair. During his trip, Griffin made it a rule that he would not change his name or alter his identity; if asked who he was or what he was doing, he would tell the truth.[3] In the beginning, he decided to talk as little as possible[4] to ease his transition into the “black world”, i.e., the social milieu of southern U.S. blacks . He became accustomed everywhere to the “hate stare” received from whites. After he disguised himself, many people who knew John Howard Griffin as a white man did not recognize him. A black shoeshine man named Sterling Williams in the French Quarter, a man whom Griffin regarded as a friend, made no connection with his looks now that he was black. Because Griffin wanted assistance in integrating with the black community, he decided to tell Sterling that he was in fact the white man he’d met before. He first hinted that he wore the same unusual shoes as somebody else,[5] but Sterling still did not recognize him until Griffin told him. In New Orleans, a black counterman at a small restaurant chatted with Griffin about the difficulties of finding a place to go to the bathroom. He turned a question about a Catholic church into a joke about “spending much of your time praying for a place to piss”. An episode on the bus reveals the climate of the times. Griffin began to give his seat to a white woman on the bus, but disapproving looks from black passengers stopped him. He thought he had a momentary breakthrough with the woman, but she insulted him and began talking with other white passengers about how sassy “they” were becoming.