Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s life story begins in Algeria in 1918, as part of the French colonial diaspora. It ends in Paris, with him as the murderer of his elderly wife Hélène, occasionally stalking the city streets (when not in mental hospitals) and disconcerting bystanders by bellowing, Je suis le
It was 1970 or thereabouts, and I was an undergraduate of middling achievements. On my own, not for a class, I had just read Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire—the whole mad thing: the forward, the poem, the commentary, and even the index, with its haunting coda, “A distant northern land.” I
Literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint . . . It is . . . necessary for Christian readers to scrutinize their reading, especially of works of imagination, with explicit ethical and theological standards. The “greatness” of literature cannot be determined solely by
The New Feminism is so much a part of my professional and personal and spiritual life—for over thirty years—that I have struggled to separate it out and hold it up for inspection. I even thought of naming this paper “Reflections and Confessions of a New Feminist Lab Rat.” But inspect
On May 1, 1931, Mount Aniakchak, situated on the Alaska Peninsula, erupted. A menacing black mushroom cloud rose nearly four miles into the air. Earthquakes rocked the surrounding area. In nearby Meshik, egg-sized pumice barraged the houses in which frightened families hid. Shafts of lightning lit the dark clouds, producing