Very Far From the Homeland

On contemporary readings from Etel Adnan, Mahmoud Darwish, and Alice Oswald exile in the Iliad

One of the cruelties of the Iliad is how alive each person is made to appear just before they are killed. That is the point of Homer's long, detailed lists of Greeks and Trojans: names, deeds, parents, brothers, spouses, children, lovers, skills, bad hair, swift feet, words, and weapons. The poem about ...
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Very Far From the Homeland

The Furies Reconsidered

A review of Elizabeth Flock’s new book on women and vengeance

Read as a book about how institutions disempower women, The Furies makes the kind of actions that the three characters take seem not only reasonable but necessary for their survival. ...

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The Furies Reconsidered

The Call

A jazz trumpeter recounts his time with the Sun Ra Arkestra

I would come to understand that there was a profound methodology at work. Sun Ra was a genius who allowed a person to exhibit the full breadth of his capabilities before he decided where that person would fit best for maximum impact. This was real leadership...

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The Call

From “Boring” to “Roaring” Banking

A review of Gerald Epstein’s Busting the Banker’s Club

Harder to measure, but no less crucial, is Epstein’s identification of the intellectual “capture” of both the academy and policymaking institutions—their infiltration by financial interests and the economic paradigms that prop them up. ...

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From “Boring” to “Roaring” Banking