AUDIO: Neither Men Nor Toadstools I’m inclined to think “teaching” and “instruction” in institutional contexts are only misguided industrial practice. The best that can be done (and one might admit it’s not nothing though suspect) is…
Posts Published by Douglas Storm
Douglas Storm is a host and producer for Interchange on Bloomington, Indiana's community radio station WFHB.
"Why then do you try to 'enlarge' your mind? Subtilize it..."
To Act, or Not to Act
The final section (XII) of Harold Goddard’s essay on Coriolanus found in his brilliant book The Meaning of Shakespeare screws a brilliant reading to the sticking place (to steal a line from Lady M.) compressed cellulose,…
Let No One Be Called (Updated: Audio)
Let No One Be Called (3:11) Perhaps it is better to have no legends. Let there be no letters composed into rigid words. Let no words be graven onto replicating presses. Let the forms be broken…
The Great American Anything
Here is a parody of the idea of “The Great American Anything” offered by the character Jerusalem Webster Stiles (who is the “devil” to John Shawnessy’s “Faust”) in Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s Raintree County. One should…
Bantling Psalms
Hard upon the last entry I remembered that Waldo penned his own “psalm” to the new nation commemorating a commemoration of the Battles of Lexington & Concord (April 19, 1775). I thought it would serve…
Law On Her Brow
One would guess that “The Portent” is far and away Herman Melville’s most well-known poem (perhaps the only poem of his remembered or read by anyone other than an academic). It opens his book Battle-Pieces…
Just a Kiss Away
In the post yesterday, admittedly a jumble, I began with “Gimmee Shelter” by the Rolling Stones from the album Let It Bleed, for several reasons. The first starts as a vulgar association–a shot and a…
Just a Shot Away
Oh, a storm is threat’ning My very life today If I don’t get some shelter Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away War, children, it’s just a shot away It’s just a shot away War, children,…
The Ungraspable (Extractable) Phantom
“But the list is artful…” (Harold Beaver) Melville opens Moby Dick, often considered the greatest book written by an American, with a list of extracts. That is, our greatest author offers as opening gambit the…
The Tatters of Pragmatism
I just reread the section of Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club where Chauncey Wright is introduced and his importance to the major thinkers of the time is noted. Menand begins this introduction with what seems…