I’m back and I’ve decided to drop the “Weekly” from the post’s title. At least until I hit a good, say, three months of regular weekly updates. Without further ado, here’s a few links for the fiction and poetry fans visiting the American Culture. To start things off, a few literary quotes concerning education: “Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic–Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland “At forty you stand upon the threshold of life, with values learned and rubbish cleared away.” - Algernon Blackwood, A Prisoner in Fairyland “There is no education like adversity.” - Benjamin Disreali, Endymion “So long…as we consider finance, industry, trade, agriculture merely as competing interests to be reconciled from time to time as best they may, so long as we consider ‘education’ as a good in itself of which everyone has a right to the utmost, without any ideal of the good life for society or for the individual, we shall move from one uneasy compromise to another.” - T. S. Eliot Short Fiction Shtetl Days by Harry Turtledove “Jakub Shlayfer opened the door and walked
Stephen King of the Massaged Cliché
Stephen King brings vampires to America’s Old West in a newly published comic book. Unfortunately, probably the most prolific author working today displays a penchant for clichéd dialog and a theme near and dear to Michael Moore. Stephen King’s properties have been adapted to comics before with The Gunslinger Born, The Long Road Home, The Stand Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and others. American Vampire, however, is the first time King produces his own comic book script. In an interview with King, The Daily Beast reports that the American Vampire’s arc will trace the origins of the first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, as he goes fang-to-fang with even nastier vamps, a group out to get rich by damming up a river to create a new town. If you’re still uncertain about the approach he’ll take, King make the book’s ideology perfectly clear: “It’s really the vampire as American capitalist gone totally wild.” And it takes “a real, undomesticated animal,” as King refers to his main character, to stop them. Not only is the theme a cliché in comics, but sadly so is King’s writing. That, however, should not be a surprise. In his Commentary magazine review of King’s latest doorstop
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