The Air at the Top of the Bottle

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Entries Tagged as 'Literature'

Happy Birthday, John Keel

March 25th, 2009 · 3 Comments

Today is the birthday of John Keel, the author of Jadoo, The Mothman Prophecies, and many other books close to the heart of the Ullage Group.  For those of you who are counting, he’s now 79.  Anthony Matt and I visited him Sunday: we took him out to lunch, helped him shop for groceries, and […]

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Tags: Animals · Forteana · Literature · Mysteries

Moses Battles the Pterodactyls (1)

February 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment

[It’s the Darwin bicentennial; it’s time to party like primates.  I’ll tip my bit into the punchbowl by serializing, sip by sip, a talk I gave at the 2006 “Fortean Times” UnCon and the 2007 INFO (International Fortean Organization) FortFest.  It’s mostly about the confused interbreeding of evolution and American culture.  I’ll update it a bit as I post it; […]

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Tags: Ancient History · Animals · Belief Systems · Education · Forteana · Literature · Misconceptions

Casanova and the Spooklight

January 16th, 2009 · Comments Off on Casanova and the Spooklight

It was, perhaps, near the end of August, 1743, that Casanova encountered, of all things, a spooklight.  I say “perhaps” because scholars on the Casanova beat have found some hiccups in his chronology.  At any rate, he left this intriguing description in his memoirs (Volume 1, Chapter 8).  These odd lights — earth lights, will […]

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Tags: Belief Systems · Forteana · Literature

Henri Salvador

December 27th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Henri Salvador, the great Guyanese singer/songwriter, died this year (back in February), and we never marked his passing here.  I wanted to salute him, briefly, before this dismal year evaporated for good. He had a long and active career in Europe and South America, but never crossed that baffling cultural divide to win much of an […]

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Tags: 'pataphysics · Literature · Music

Pierre-Henri Cami (2)

December 20th, 2008 · 3 Comments

I’d like to add a couple of images to my earlier post about Cami, particularly since he’s now so obscure, and since so few images are available.  The first is a photo of the man himself, taken from a 1964 anthology of his work: And the second is one of his cheerfully naive illustrations, taken […]

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Tags: Literature

Pierre-Henri Cami (1)

December 13th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Pierre-Henri Cami (1884-1958) is all but forgotten today.  But in the ’20s, his work was popular in France; he was translated in Vanity Fair; Chaplin called him the “greatest humorist in the world.” His preferred form was the short and stupid play: an unstageable drama that moved swiftly from one gag to the next.  He’s […]

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Tags: Literature

Philosophy: A Shameful Sonnet

November 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment

The sonnet is a neglected form these days.  Verse of all stripes is unpopular — at least under that name, although it still defines popular music.  It’s all in the branding, I suppose. And current taste often brands the sonnet as precious, artificial, or old-fashioned.  Fair enough; although you could tar most American entertainment genres with […]

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Tags: Belief Systems · Education · Literature · Symbols · The Ineffable

Bill Nye on the Future of Punditry

October 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye (1850-1896) was, in his time, a popular humorist, both as journalist and lecturer.  He’s not much read now, but I suggest that he’s still worth a look.  Here, for example, is a slice from an essay on the future.  Edison, by the way, was indeed working on a thought-recording machine. “In fact, Mr. […]

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Tags: Belief Systems · Education · Literature · Technology

Back to School (4)

September 14th, 2008 · Comments Off on Back to School (4)

is an Abolitionist— A man who wants to free The wretched slave—and give to all An equal liberty. THE ANTI-SLAVERY ALPHABET Alphabets usually have a not-so-hidden agenda, aiming to do more than reinforce rather arbitrary connections between the names of letters and the words that demonstrate their forms and sounds. Some alphabets teach the names […]

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Tags: Belief Systems · Education · Literature · Uncategorized

Big and Little (3)

September 12th, 2008 · Comments Off on Big and Little (3)

We have for you another outpost on the extremes of literature, another specimen of the radically long or brief.  This one is on the short side. The output of the Italian Futurists is uneven: sometimes exuberantly imaginative, sometimes merely creepy and jejune (especially when the fascist strain predominates).  But I usually enjoy the sintesi: bits of […]

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Tags: Literature