Literary Nomads

It seems everything is politics these days. But at least can't we keep art pure? You know, art for art's sake? I offer my thoughts on the topic while we examine the classic silent film, Metropolis (1927).

We finish our side trail on the implications of Poe's horror by stepping more deeply into our own capacity to violence, reaching finally to Le Guin's own direction: look to our modern political scene and the impulse to annihilation.

We say Poe has influence the genre of horror, but have we really considered what that influence has revealed to us across the generations? What happens when we tell stories of a culture that has abandoned its moral foundations?

There really isn't that much to say about Poe, is there? He's just creepy. But wait. What if we could explain the supposed madness in all these stories?

Another Halloween treat from Poe, a reading of this lesser-known tale. And follow the podcast for some ways to think about it and "The Tell-Tale Heart"!

This story, a quintessential Poe classic, is perfect not only for its conception of the psychology of horror, but for our larger discussion in Le Guin's Journey 6. 

What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!

What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!

What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!

Now that we've wrestled in and with Omelas for a bit, what questions remain for us to take forward on our journey? We're walking away from Omelas, but let's have an idea where we're going.

Listeners offer their questions from narrator trust to activism to teaching controversy. I rant--or respond--back.

Can we pull this utopia dilemma together? Or will we add even more levels of complication?

Sure, the Omelas dilemma is tough, but at least we have our narrator as ally, right? Right? Perhaps the real horror in Omelas has less to do with the child at its center.

Is this story really about that suffering child? Or is it more about how we wall its suffering out, then invite it back in?

At last we settle in to think about Le Guin's Omelas story and set aside some common approaches to it. The first of several parts.

Let's niche down into a small sub-genre of fantasy and explore our desire for it, the classic utopia!

Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows! 

What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.

This is getting challenging. What are we to do with the Suffering Child question? And on which form of suffering do I plant my flag of resistance? Dostoevsky and Langston Hughes both offer clues.

Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia's most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.

Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It's about our blind spots and our privilege.

Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell's poetry--weren't we?--we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell's poem "The Garden" while we think green thoughts about it.

What does it mean to embrace "Other"? And how might we understand carpe diem if we truly had "world enough and time?" Le Guin shows us in her famous science fiction short story.

Where we've been and where we're going, and we take a pause in a museum gallery, too!

Looking ahead at Season 6: Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and all the wrestling we do with dilemmas of ethics.