William Svelmoe – Page 2 – First of the Month

Talk is Cheap

April 3, 2022April 1, 2022 by William Svelmoe

“The new Faith in America” survey by Deseret News & Marist College highlights that the basic understanding of the role of religion in a secular democracy has become so polarized that 70% of Republicans believe that religion should influence a person’s political values, where as only 28% of Democrats and 45% of independents share that view.”

While there’s absolutely nothing surprising about this, I suspect you’d get a very different result if you asked the question this way.

“Do you believe that the life of Jesus Christ should influence a person’s political values?”

Into the Pit

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022 by William Svelmoe

A few days ago, I posted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video message to the Russian people, an example of thoughtful Republican rhetoric and action. Good to be reminded there are Arnold’s and Liz’s and Adam’s in the world. They are far too few. As we see below.

Today we return to the more typical universe of Republican thought. Something we might call Dispatches from Trumpworld.

The G.O.P. Platform, Putin’s Gambit & a Parasong (Pace C. W. McCall!)

March 10, 2022March 1, 2022 by William Svelmoe

Party Lines

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021 by William Svelmoe

What It Was (July 20)

One year ago today Trump outdid himself rhetorically, reaching astonishing heights of inspiration during a dark hour of American crisis. It was a stirring challenge to the better angels of our nature. Speaking of the pandemic’s rising death toll, Trump tugged at the heartstrings of America when he declared to Chris Wallace, “It is what it is.”

Nuts in May

June 2, 2021June 1, 2021 by William Svelmoe

Last Thursday night, in dueling sound bites, Paul Ryan and the tag team of Gaetz/Greene presented starkly different visions of the future of the Republican party.

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

May 2, 2021May 1, 2021 by William Svelmoe

The author has been keeping up with the Old Right’s angles on our time…

Optimism of the Bill (Thinking Through the Assault on the People’s House)

January 10, 2021January 9, 2021 by William Svelmoe

A Few Thoughts on Amy Coney Barrett, Our New Supreme Court Justice

October 2, 2020October 1, 2020 by William Svelmoe

As noted above, she’s a done deal. So Democrats should not waste time trying to besmirch her character, focusing on her religion, trying to box her into a corner on how she will vote on hypothetical cases.

Order from Dottir Press here.

“Laurie Stone’s Streaming Now is a book of journal-like entries, scraps of critical pieces, bits of memoir, and it is a delight. She calls these fragments postcards, which is charming and accurate up to a point, but the writing is better than any postcard you ever got unless you got one from Laurie Stone and she wrote it really small so all the wit and all the passing contemplations could fit. She writes about life during COVID, at home with ‘the man I live with’; about old friends and glancing love affairs; about books and films and television shows, with a deeply appealing combination of spitfire skepticism and a constant openness to pleasure and joy. One is reminded in multiple ways during the reading that Stone came of age and was politically, intellectually and emotionally shaped by the struggles and commitments of second wave feminism, and we’re further reminded that for feminists like Stone the movement was not only about rights, and not at all about protections for women, but about freedom for women, a much more dangerous thing, for women and for society at large. Freedom is a long lost idea. It had a specific erotic push and was battled back as eroticism always is. Autocracies are always puritanical. Everything about Stone’s writing is oriented toward freedom and much of her linguistic and literary sensibility specifically evokes erotic and intellectual freedom–the very sound of the sentences, their surprises, the quick adoption of new positions in relation to the thing looked at and engaged with. So, one recognizes that a simple seeming book of pensées is really the exploration of a distinct and valuable cultural point of view. We are lucky to have it.” –Vince Passaro, author of the novels Crazy Sorrow, and Violence, Nudity, Adult Content

Alison Stone’s New Book Available for Pre-Order!

From immigrants to insurrectionists, from Demeter to David Bowie, Stone gives us searing, moving poems filled with powerful imagery and an original music.

Order your copy at www.stonepoetry.org

Order from Bloomsbury here.

Expeditions to Kafka
Selected Essays
Stanley Corngold (Author)

In this new volume of Kafka studies, which is addressed to both beginning readers of Kafka as well as Kafka scholars, Stanley Corngold discusses Kafka’s work in a variety of novel perspectives, including Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther; Nietzsche’s conception of aphoristic form; bureaucratic organization; accident and risk; the logic of possession and inheritance; and myth, among others.Even as Corngold explores Kafka’s work across different fields and tangents, he does so in vivid, readable prose, free of jargon, and with an eye to Kafka’s ongoing relevance to the concerns of his day and ours. Taken together these linked essays reveal Kafka in his astonishing many-sidedness.

Read an extract here.

Published	Aug 10 2023
Format	Ebook (PDF)
Edition	1st
Extent	336
ISBN	9798765100448
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Reviews

With superb erudition and his inimitable flair, Stanley Corngold’s Expeditions offer a magisterial guide through the intricate and ambiguous terrain of Kafka’s texts. Insights abound, providing a comprehensive and consistently profound investigation that strikes the perfect balance between drawing interpretive conclusions and maintaining hermeneutic openness-a culminating accomplishment by Kafka’s most inspired and most inspiring reader.

John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA

You are not being introduced to Kafka – you fall into his stories as you fall into a trap, the bait emerging in the interstices between his words and your mind. That said, Corngold’s Expeditions are by far the best introduction to Kafka I have seen. He invites you to join him on his ventures into Continent Kafka, and he inspires you to stray off from his expeditions on your own terms, and risk.

Benno Wagner, Professor in German Studies, Siegen University, Germany

Stanley Corngold has been reading, reflecting, and commenting on Kafka and his writings for more than half a century. He has become our most penetrating and luminous guide to Kafka’s labyrinthine world. These essays, the distillate of a lifetime, manage both to reveal and to preserve the mystery of Kafka’s genius.

Robert Norton, Professor of German, University of Notre Dame, USA