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German artist Kurt Schwitters had already toyed with and discarded several methods of painting when, at the age of 23, he turned to what he called "Merz" -- artwork that combined both found and created objects. A card-carrying member of the Dada movement, Schwitters produced collages that somehow seem more inviting than many of the abstract pieces of his peers.
Ferris looks at the way man's scientific view of the universe has changed through history and how that view has altered religion, philosophy, and politics. Although full of theoretical astronomy and physics, it never gets bogged down with overly complex language and remains fascinating and readable throughout.
Double-album masterpiece Blonde on Blonde offers a couple of Dylan standards, such as "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and "Just Like a Woman," but the real gems here are the longer pieces. The rambling lyrical landscapes of "Visions of Johanna" and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" are powerful backdrops to Dylan's lightning-strike poetic brilliance.
Novelist E.L. Doctorow's work often crosses the blurred line between story and history. Here he offers a fictional account of real-life spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, focusing primarily on the couple's troubled children and how they deal with their parents' actions and eventual execution. The novel elegantly captures the essential culture of the American communist movement, from the innocuous gatherings of the fifties to the misguided violence of the sixties.
Subtitled "a set of stories, together with a group of oddments and diversions, all drawn from the universe of mathematics," this anthology is not aimed at the Ph.D. candidate, but rather the layman. As a result, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to enjoy these quirky tales and poems, from Robert Heinlein's "--And He Built a Crooked House," a story about the difficulties of 4-dimensional home design, to the classic limerick:
There was a young lady named Bright,
Who traveled much faster than light.
She started one day
In the relative way,
And returned on the previous night.
This novel of 19th-century Italy is stunning not only in its historical and psychological truth, but also in the sheer sensual beauty of Lampedusa's narrative. Of course, credit should be duly awarded to translator Archibald Colquhoun, although I'm sure he would convey most of it back to the original author. Of particular note is Lampedusa's infrequent (yet very affecting) use of distant "flash-forwards" -- never do you appreciate the fictive dream more than when it is jarringly interrupted.
Bragg burst onto the music scene in the early eighties with an electric guitar, a socialist agenda, and an uncanny knack for writing simple, narrative love songs. His first two albums offer several classics, such as "A New England" and "The Saturday Boy," but it's Talking With the Taxman... that is perhaps Bragg's most compelling musical creation. From the heartbreaking "Levi Stubbs' Tears" to the anthemic "Help Save the Youth of America," the entire album marries beautifully Bragg's lyrical gifts, musical energy, and philosophical soul.
Poet, playwright, philosopher, essayist, and all-around smart guy, W. B. Yeats' lines have been recycled by countless writers, singers, and politicians. How many can you recognize?
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somehwere in the sand of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twent centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"A curtain of glistening white flakes was falling ceaselessly towards the ground, blurring outlines and powdering every object with an icy coating. In the deep silence of the town, buried in a wintry calm, nothing could be heard but in that vague, indefinable, rustling whisper, felt rather than heard, of the falling snow, a mingling of airy particles which seemed to be filling the sky and covering the world."
-- from "Boule de Suif"
In The Moviegoer, perhaps the greatest American existential novel, Percy uses his trademark humor and pathos to tell the story of Binx Bolling, who finds comfort in the world of movies, where good and evil are clearly defined. Finally, it's Percy portrayal of the troubling and complex world outside the moviehouse that makes the novel resonate. It will stay with you long after the credits roll.
