Each chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk” begins with an excerpt of verse and a few bars of music, begging the question why this song?
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Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” tells of her life in and escape from the ‘Demon Slavery,’ and its nonpareil powers of corruption.
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- 2021-02-28
- Reading Journal On Literature, Books
“Up From Slavery”: Booker T. Washington’s words
Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” promotes a vocational training for blacks imbued with Christian virtue. Is W.E.B. Du Bois’ critique of it justified?
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- 2021-02-18
- Reading Journal On Literature, Books
Coming to Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery”
The circumstances of my purchase and knowledge of “Up From Slavery,” Booker T. Washington’s most famous autobiography
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- 2021-02-10
- Reading Journal On Literature, Books
Reading Journal: Assembling Dinosaurs, “War and Peace”
A glorious night when I just wanted to keep reading: first, 25 pages of Lukas Rieppel’s “Assembling the Dinosaur”; then Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, concluding Volume III; a feast of the undeveloped imagination.
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- 2021-01-24
- Reading Journal On Literature, Books
Anna Seghers’ “Transit”: Profound Unknowing
In Anna Seghers’ novel “Transit,” no one really knows who the other is. The reader is never certain of who the narrator really is.
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- 2020-12-15
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
George Saunders’ “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”
George Saunders’ short story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was born in a minimum security prison in central Pennysylvania
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- 2020-09-17
- Reading Journal On Literature, Books
Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop”
A novel of religious devotion genuinely spiritual without falling into the mirthless repetition of ecclesiastical doctrine
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- 2020-06-11
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
Notes on Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard”
Idle reflections on The Leopard, by Giuseppe de Lampedusa, which narrates several events in the life and afterlife of a 19th-century Sicilian noble
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- 2020-04-23
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
Krasnahorkai’s “The Last Wolf”
A reading journal entry on Lázló Krasnahorkai’s “book” The Last Wolf, which is really two small books.
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- 2020-02-26
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
Captivating corruption: Single sentence exegesis
Single sentence exegesis.
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- 2020-02-11
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
William H. Gass’ “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country”
Reflections on the short story collection In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
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- 2020-01-26
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
200111: Reading Journal
Reading journal from early in the year 2020, when COVID was hitting China but just a dirty word in the mouth of an imbecile
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- 2020-01-11
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
200107: Reading Journal
The January 2010 reading journal addresses In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Our Idiot Brother, Filmed Thought, and Jamaica Inn
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- 2020-01-08
- On Literature, Books Reading Journal
Does Philosophy Do Film?
“Clearly you are not a bowler”: Can film do philosophy? Can philosophy do film?
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