The Valve2012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00ExpressionEngineAll posts and comments Copyright (c) their respective authorsRichard Petti on: Occupy Wall Street: America HAS a Ruling Classtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26512012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00The greatest myth that camoflages the ruling class is that, because we live in a democratic market society—we vote for our political leaders and rights of private property dominate the society—that Americans cannot be dominated by a ruling class.
Americans would do well to remember that the key ingredients in a feudal system are (1) concentrated ownership of the key productive assets, and (2) control of government by the snall group of dominant owners. Feudalism does not require an agricultural economy or estates, titles, or crowns.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Richard Petti{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: Whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat?tag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.6332012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00”...in animation drawing has very little to do with characterization: voice is everything”
Um, er, as a general statement, no. After all, in the Road Runner cartoons, there is no dialog at all. & classic Disney worked very hard at animated acting. Michael Barrier has a lot to say about animated acting (just google the name and look around).2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Nick J. on: The Valve - Closed For Renovationtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.27192012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Yes, please don’t wipe this site. It has a lot of rich material and discussions.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Nick J.{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: Encyclopedia Britannica to Shut Down Print Operationstag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.27162012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Ah, the fabled 11th edition. . . .2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Norma on: Encyclopedia Britannica to Shut Down Print Operationstag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.27162012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00I still have my grandfather’s 11th, 12th, and 13th editions of Britannica.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Norma{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: What’s an Object, Metaphysically Speaking?tag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26802012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Well, I HAVE written quite a bit about OOO, and while all of that is somewhere on The Valve, the easiest way to get it is to go to this link at my other blog, New Savanna. That’ll take you to all I’ve written on OOO so far.
As for whether or not a shadow counts as a object, I sent that post by some OOOers, including, as I recall, Harman, and have gotten no response. I’ve mostly finished The Quadruple Object and, on the basis of that reading I’d have to say that, no, a shadow is not a real object because it’s not autonomous. But if that’s so, then it’s not clear what it might be.
My impression is that OOO is still very much in process and these things are still being worked out. Tim Morton has a useful tutorial on OOO at his blog.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}john balwit on: What’s an Object, Metaphysically Speaking?tag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26802012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00I am hoping that you have had time to finish the The Quadruple Object and are now in a position to clarify this matter for us, your reading audience (a set of reading objects?). I think these questions have practical value in understanding aspects of human culture and social organization at various scales. At a very low level (perhaps not the lowest) humans are a collection of cooperation cells. We recognize the aggregate as perhaps the quintessential thing--a person. These “things” aggregate to make families, communities, political parties (tribes), and (if they are lucky) unified nations. Perhaps there is an upper bound represented by some global entity (but why stop there?).
In any event, I really like your brief exploration of the ontology of a “shadow"--I will be using that example (with vague attribution “something I saw on the Internet") in my future discussions :) . I would love to see anything else that you have written on this subject.
Perhaps you or someone else reading this could direct to the philosophical literature on this topic. I am interested in complex adaptive systems and understanding the evolution of cooperation. I am looking for formal and maybe, falsifiable examples of what constitutes an entity.
John Balwit balwit-at-gmale.com2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00john balwit{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}William Ray on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00To extol a single artist or group of artists as “the greatest” is of course a form of idolatry and separates the artist from the human context, his own and our own insofar as the universal touches the present. I kind of like the Bob Dylan line, “Each of us has his own special gift, and I believe that this is true, if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.”
It is also true that at the beginning of an era or an art form, we see the instinctive epitome of that type, which others are tempted to copy. Leo Tolstoy was thrilled by seeing a movie. He thought a new kind of novel could be possible by using the medium. He didn’t live long enough to try it. But in some ways, all movies have copied the story pattern established right at the beginning. Originality and Tradition are always dancing.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00William Ray{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Jose: It’s complicated, of course. And, while I stuck Shakespeare in the title, it’s not just about Shakespeare. The Stanley Kaufman quote states the issue well enough, in a way, and it doesn’t even mention Shakespeare. History and culture are such that we have been made by the great artists of the past and that is, of course, impossible for any present artist to do. After all, they’ve been made by those same artists.
But it’s one thing to recognize that, and another thing to allow that recognition to shade over into a belief that present artists can never ever be as good as the Old Guys. Why not? Have the Old Guys, in principle, given us everything we need from art?2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}William Ray on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00I don’t follow that jargon or what Francis Ford Coppola has to do with Shakespeare. That is a case of missing identity, with all the circumstantial evidence aligning with Edward de Vere--his life, his writing style, his station, his interests, his learning, his travel, his inner turmoil, his wife, his father-in-law, his autobiography paralleling Hamlet, all that and more, quite specific and verifiable. And the “lost” plays that are so mysteriously lost weren’t lost at all, simply re-written from his court plays, to which were added the more mature plays, adaptations of early works. The Sonnets read like a confession and testament of his son’s crisis during the Essex Rebellion aftermath. What kind of testament? To a never-crowned King, shunted out of power in favor of a more pliable person, James VI of Scotland.
Why does it matter now? The politically expedient lie at the very beginning of the English nation-state sacrificed the language’s most impressive writer because of his having written the works, told the story, on his class, time,
and peers. That wouldn’t do. Far too honest and tracable. Hence the fabrication that a similarly named figure, William Shakspere, who had been
in and out of the author’s life, was made into a sui generis genius. And I assume you still believe that. And the Big Lie tactic continues as an adjunct of state policy, such as three steel skyscrapers falling from being bumped by two passenger airplanes.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00William Ray{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}JoseAngel on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Dear Bill: I could agree less with what you say, but not much less. I must admit I’m a bit more on the Bloomian side here. The gist of the issue is that you’re ignoring historical distance. Coppola is great, sure, but he towers (if indeed tower he does) over other practitioners of his art much less (much- much- less) than Shakespeare did on anything early modern. He made lots of things up, as Bloom says, including in part our sensibility. And there is no way we can cut him out and let him drift away because he’s right here on our raft. There is a sense in which he wasn’t as great as people seem to think, ok, and that’s again an issue of historical distance. He’s a classic now, he wasn’t a classic then, but he can’t make himself into a classic without lots of people helping; that’s beyond his means. But now it’s happened and he’s there, and he’s there to stay. No way you’re going to discover his near equivalent, if only because it’s already a fact that people haven’t been pouring such a flood of commentary and attention and performance on anyone else, and that’s lots kilowatts of social energy. Attention now doesn’t hold, it’s Lady Gaga this year and Adele last year, or was it the other way round, but there’s nothing in sight with even a hundredth of Shakespeare’s staying power.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00JoseAngel{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: Objects and Graeber's Debttag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.27022012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Yes, mutual recognition. Now, just how one engineers that across a large group, I’m not sure we can do more than talk around that one.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: A Dirty Dozen Sneaking up on the Apocalypsetag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26972012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00”. . . it is after all a neat way of reappropriating them for the aims of the system and the plans of the generals . . . “
Yes. As criminals they have been thrust outside of (legitimate) society. By accempting this mission, however, they can become reintegrated into society. But, as you say, there are restrictions. There are ALWAYS restrictions. But in this situation, they’re glaringly obvious.
“Sounds like a pretty dose of authoritarianism and Cold War Era ideology, to me. One can can sense this ambivalence throughout the film.”
Yes, there’s a delicate balancing act going on. There’s enough rebellion in there that people can identify with that, if that’s what they want to do. But the legitimate order is never really threatened.
The Inglorious Bastards connection is interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. What I had thought of, though, was The Magnificient Seven and, thus, Seven Samurai. The thing about those bands of misfits is that they weren’t part of a larger military organization engaged in a larger war.
But now we’ve got a chain going from Seven Samurai to Inglorious Bastards. Sounds like job for a bit of Lévi-Straussian mythologizing.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}JoseAngel on: A Dirty Dozen Sneaking up on the Apocalypsetag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26972012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00"Dirty Dozen” was “Inglorious Basterds” before “Inglorious Basterds”, although I’m not saying that it can stand comparison with Tarantino, being somewhat more aimless in its narrative drive. There is, more than an anti-authoritarian, an anti-system strain in its apologetic use of criminals and outcasts as heroes, but this cuts both ways: it is after all a neat way of reappropriating them for the aims of the system and the plans of the generals, however maligned they are. And most of the outcasts are treated as free subjects exercising their subjectivity in the one compulsory direction of becoming tools, and accepting the risk of death, and they do die. Sounds like a pretty dose of authoritarianism and Cold War Era ideology, to me. One can can sense this ambivalence throughout the film.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00JoseAngel{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}JoseAngel on: Objects and Graeber's Debttag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.27022012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00I suppose it al boils down to social networks of mutual recognition. Mutual recognition of subjectivity (slaves are our) and of ownership (here you do expect the slave to recognize his own status a something owned, but that is secondary to the mutual recognition between those in power that you do have a right to own slaves, and specifically this one). It is the mutual recognition of property and obligations that makes money, and debt, possible, but that rests on previous protocols for reciprocal recognition and for the making of social identities.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00JoseAngel{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Bill Benzon on: The Sins of Steven Pinker: Or, Let’s Get on with Ittag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26402012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Pinker has created a FAQ about the book & the response to it:
http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Bill Benzon{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}Robert Sheppard on: Occupy Wall Street: America HAS a Ruling Classtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26512012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00With regard to Occupy Wall Street books, the novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard is already being serialized every week on the website of the Arts & Culture Working Group Occupy Wall Street movement as a contribution to the movement and reading resource for the occupiers, see: http://www.nycga.net/groups/arts-and-culture/forum/topic/introducing-the-new-novel-spiritus-mundi-by-robert-sheppard-featuring-the-occupy-movement-in-support-of-the-cause-and-for-the-enjoyment-of-those-in-the-movement/ This is the Occupy Wall Street novel, Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard. The novel also contains the Occupy Earth Manifesto, a key document of the OWS movement: http://occupytogether.com/forum/discussion/1293/the-occupy-earth-manifesto-from-the-general-assembly-ows-website-a-program-of-demands-#Item_2
The following is an introduction to this first Occupy Wall Street novel:
This is to introduce the new novel, Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, which features the events of the Occupy Movement and the “People’s Power” movement in support of establishing a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. It is reccomended as part of the common struggle. You can check it out at the following websites:
Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard
For Introduction and Overview of the Novel: https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/
For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/
For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/
To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/
To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/
To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/
To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/
To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/
To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/
To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/
For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
I write to introduce to your attention the double novel Spiritus Mundi, consisting of Spiritus Mundi, the Novel—Book I, and Spiritus Mundi, the Romance—Book II. Book I’s espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crosses the globe from Beijing to London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action, deep and realistic characters and surreal adventures, while Book II dialates the setting and scope into a fantasy (though still rooted in the real) adventure where the protagonists embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game and through a wormhole to the Council of the Immortals in the Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the crucial Silmaril Crystal, and to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III, all followed by a triple-somersault thriller ending in which a common garden-variety terrorist attack is first uncovered by MI6 and the CIA as the opening gambit a Greatpower Game of States threatening World War III and then, incredibly, as the nexus of a Time Travel conspiracy involving an attempt by fascist forces of the 23rd Century to alter a benign World History by a time-travelling raid on their past and our present to provoke that World War III, foiled by the heroic efforts of the democratic 23rd Century world government, the Senate of the United States of Earth, to hunt down the fascist interlopers before their history is irrevocably altered for evil.
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2011
When activist Robert Sartorius, leading a global campaign to create a European Parliament-style world-wide United Nations Parliamentary Assembly presses the proposal in New York on his old friend the UN Secretary-General and is rebuffed due to the hostile pressure of the conservative American administration, his Committee resolves to fight back by launching a celebrity-driven Bono-Geldof-Band Aid/Live 8-style “People Power” media campaign and telethon spearheaded by rock superstars Isis and Osiris and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to mobilize global public support and pressure. In New York he participates as part of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in its earliest days, joining the broader fight for social justice.The Blogs of Sartorius, activist Eva Strong and Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy reveal the campaign’s working struggle, their tangled love affairs, a loss of faith, attempted suicide, reconciliation of father and son after divorce, and recovery of personal love and faith.
Things fall apart as the idealists’ global crusade is infiltrated by a cell of jihadist terrorists using it as a cover, then counter-infiltrated by CIA agent Jack McKinsey and British MI6 agent Etienne Dearlove. A cat-and-mouse game of espionage and intrigue ensues pitting them against the Chinese MSS espionage network allied with the Iranian Quds Force crossing Beijing, London, Moscow, Washington and Jerusalem unleashing an uncontrollable series of events which sees the American Olympic Track and Field Team bombed on an airplane in London, uncovers a secret conspiracy of China, Russia and Iran to jointly seize the oil reserves of the Middle-East, and witnesses Presidents Clinton and Carter taken hostage with Sartorius, McKinsey, Eva and other activists at a Jerusalem telethon rally cut short by the explosion of a concealed atomic device in a loaned Chinese Terracotta Warrior, then flown by capturing terrorists to Qom, Iran as “human shields” to deter a retaliatory nuclear attack.
In Book II, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance they encounter Iran’s Supreme Leader in Qom as the world teeters on the brink of nuclear confrontation and World War III, while mysterious events unfold leading Sartorius and McKinsey from their captivity in the underground nuclear facilities of Qom into a hidden neo-mythic dimension that takes them to a vast ocean and land at the center of the world, Middle Earth, Inner Shambhala, and to involvement in a mysterious Castalian “Crystal Bead Game” linked to the destiny of the human race on earth. They then embark on a quest for the Silmaril, or Missing Seed Crystal to the central island of Omphalos in the Great Central Sea in the middle of the globe, aided by Goethe, the Chinese Monkey King, Captain Nemo, the African God-Hero Ogun, and a Sufi mystic they traverse a ‘wormhole’ at the center of the earth guarded by ‘The Mothers’ and the fallen angel tribe of the Grigori (Genesis 6:1-4) which leads the way to critical meeting of the “Council of the Immortals” at the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to determine the final fate of the human species. The heroes battle and overcome the treacherous opposition of Mephisto and his satanic subaltern Mundus through their Underworld and Otherworld adventures and successfully plead the cause of the continuation of the human species before the Immortals, returning with the critical Silmaril Crystal. resolving the Crystal Bead Game and thereby inspiring through the Archangel Gabriel a dream in the mind of Iran’s Supreme Leader which brings a new Revelation causing him to release the hostages and an end the crisis. China and Russia stand down from aiding Iran in seizing the Mid-East oil reserves, but in a treacherous blow the Chinese instead utilize their forward-positioned armies to attack their former ally Russia and seize Siberia with its large oil and gas reserves instead. President Barret Osama, America’s newly-elected first black President then invites Russia, Japan and South Korea to join NATO and together they succeed in expelling the Chinese from Siberia and usher in a new Eurasian and global balance of power and a New World Order.
Rock Superstar Osiris meanwhile, after undertaking a narcissistic Messianic mission in the wake of the Jerusalem atomic blast is dramatically assassinated on live world-wide television on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa by a disillusioned follower. His wife and rock-star partner Isis then leads a spiritual movement to reconcile and unite the clashing religions and catalyze a common global spiritual Renaissance through a Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance which seeks to construct an Inter-faith Temple on the ruins of the atomic blast in Jerusalem. In counter-reaction to the cataclysmic events the world finally implements Sartorius’ crusade for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but not before Sartorius has himself has died, Moses-like of a heart attack while helping to foil a metaconspiracy mediated by Time Travel in which a fascist agent from the 23rd Century who has time-transited back to our time to alter a benign history by causing WWIII and thus preventing the evolution of a democratic world government, the United States of Earth, which follows him through time and nabs him just in the “nick of time” to prevent Aramgeddon. The book ends with the opening ceremony of the UN Parliamentary Assembly which is attended in Sartorius’ name by his widow Eva Strong, whom Sartorius had fallen in love with and married in the course of the novel, and by their son Euphy, newborn after Sartorius’ death. They are joined in cinematic climax at the ceremony by newly chosen UN Secretary-General Clinton, President Osama and UN Parliamentary Assembly Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy who have just received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in creation of the world’s first world parliamentary assembly within the United Nations, bringing together the representative voices of the peoples of the world in face-to-face assembly and dialogue for the first time in world history.
Highlights:
All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:
1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament and to portray the Occupy Wall Street Movement an the Occupy Movement worldwide;
2.Spiritus Mundi is a prophetic geo-political WWIII novel of the near future forseeing a conflict and conspiratorial surprise attack by a resurgent “Axis” of China, Russia and Iran seeking by a decisive blow in jointly seizing the Middle-East oil fields to radically alter the global balance of power vis-a-vis the West in the world and Eurasia. Like Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon, it forsees the inclusion of Russia in NATO, and goes far beyond in forseeing the inclusion of South Korea and Japan, following a joint Chinese-Russian occupation of a collapsing North Korea and the Axis strike at the Middle-Eastern oil fields;
3. Spiritus Mundi is an exciting espionage thriller involving the American CIA. British MI6, the Chinese MSS, or Ministry of State Security and the Russian SVR contending in a deul of intrigue and espionage;
4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;
5. Features the romantic and sexual searching and encounters of dozens of idealist activists, rock-stars, CIA and MI6 agents, public-relations spinmeisters and billionaires with a detour into the bi-sexual and gay scenes of Beijing, New York, California, London and Tokyo:
6. Establishes and grounds the new genre of the Global Novel written in Global English, the international language of the world,
7. Spiritus Mundi is a novel of Spiritual Searching featuring the religious searching of Sufi mystic Mohammad ala Rushdie, as well as the loss of faith, depression, attempted suicide and recovery of faith in life of protagonist Sartorius. Follows bogus religious cult leaders and the Messiah-Complex megalomanic-narcissistic mission of rock superstar Osiris that leads to his dramatic assassination on worldwide television in Jerusalem, followed by the religious conversion of his wife and rock-star parner Isis;
8.Features the search for love and sexual fulfillment of Eva Strong, a deeply and realistically portrayed divorced single mother involved in the United Nations campaign, who reveals her tortured heart and soul in her Blog throughout several disastrous sexual affairs and ultimately through her final attainment of love and marriage to Sartorius;
9.Features Sartorius’ experience of a bitter divorce, alienation and reconciliation with his son, his loss of faith and attempted suicide, his battle against drugs and alcoholism, his surreal and sexual adventures in Mexico City, and his subsequent redeeming love and marriage to Eva Strong;
10.Contains the in–depth literary conversations of Sartorius and his best friend, Literature Nobel Laureate Günther Gross, as they conduct worldwide interviews and research for at book they are jointly writing on the emergence of the new institution of World Literature, building on Goethe’s original concept of “Weltliteratur” and its foundations and contributions from all the world’s traditions and cultures;
11.Predicts the emergence of the institution and quest of “The Great Global Novel” as a successor to the prior quest after “The Great American Novel” in the newer age of the globalization of literature in Global English and generally;
12.Features the cross-cultural experiences and search for roots, sexual and spiritual fulfillment and authenticity of Asian-American character Jennie Zheng, and Pari Kasiwar of India;
13.For the first time incorporates in the dramatic narrative flow of action the mythic traditions of all the cultures and literatures of the world, including such figures as Goethe, The Chinese Monkey King, the African God-Hero Ogun, surreal adventures in the ‘Theatro Magico’ in Mexico City bringing to life figures from the Mayan-Aztec Popul Vuh, Hanuman from the Indian classic the Ramayana, and many more;
14. Book Two, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance is a fantastic Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Rollercoaster Ride: The more mythic Book Two utilizes a Wellsian motif of Time Travel to explore the making of history and its attempted unmaking (a la Terminator) by a hositile raid from the future on the past, our present, and the foiling of the fascist attempt by an alliance of men and women of goodwill and courage from past, present and future generations united in a Commonwealth of Human Destiny; Like Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day and Welles’ Journey to the Center of the Earth it involves a journey to an interior realm of the “Middle Earth;” it also contains a futuristic travel through a wormhole to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy for a meeting with the “Council of the Immortals” where the fate of the human race will be decided;
15.Is a fantastic read on a roller-coaster ride of high adventure and self-exploration!2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00Robert Sheppard{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}John S Wilkins on: Occupy Wall Street: America HAS a Ruling Classtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.26512012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00To be honest, the bigness is the most interesting question to me. We live now in a time of corporateness - big government, big business and big unions (in Australia, anyway). All these go to form oligarchies. The rest of us are locked into fixed structures and exploited more or less as serfs.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00John S Wilkins{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}William Ray on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00Time will tell
Who has fell
And who’s been left behind
When you go your way
And I go MINE2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00William Ray{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}GeoX on: That Shakespeare Thingtag:thevalve.org,2012:go/valve/index/1.24872012-03-18T15:50:00-05:002012-03-18T16:18:11-05:00No, Dan’s right. Shakespeare conspiracy theorists are all very, very stupid.2012-03-18T15:50:00-05:00GeoX{categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories}