Author Archive: Lesley Jakobsen
The Lathe of Heaven
Mt Hood, Portland, USA, in a good world
(by Ursula K. Le Guin) In his Aegypt cycle, John Crowley asks; what if the world was different once, but we don’t remember? What if it changed again, and we thought the new world was the way it had always been? In The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin asks the same questions but adds – what if you could control that change? If you could have whatever you wished for, how carefully would you have to word those wishes? When George Orr dreams “effectively”, the world changes to align with George’s dream and only George notices that there has been a…
Continue Reading →Bohemian Rhapsody
Songs in Our Heart # 11 Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) (Written by Freddie Mercury; released October 1975) [The Beatles brought the orchestra into pop music; Queen added operetta. This long song touches all bases, everyone wins a prize (and a solo).]
Continue Reading →Blinded by the Light
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Songs in Our Heart # 10 Blinded by the Light (Bruce Springsteen version) (Written by Bruce Springsteen; released February 1973) [Jersey enunciation and a rhyming dictionary makes for a strange brew…]*
Continue Reading →Bennie and the Jets
Songs in Our Heart # 8 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John) (Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin; released October 1973) [First chord – confected applause – stylish stuttering – electric boots.]*
Continue Reading →The Melancholy of Resistance
(By László Krasznahorkai) (Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes) Here at The Varnished Culture, we are pleased to review yet another excellent novel set in a small Hungarian Town*. Like Sárszeg from Skylark, or Czinkota, this town is a dot on a map but what map? Like the train which returns Skylark to Sárszeg from visiting relatives, the train which returns Mrs Plauf to her own town after the same errand is very late but in this book, it is a cobbled-together “emergency train”. Why? Well, that’s the thing: “To tell the truth, none of this really surprised anyone any more since rail travel, like…
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