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All posts for the month September, 2019

During October: 31 Days of Classic Horror

Published September 30, 2019 by Philip Ivory

From my earliest years, horror films have had a profound influence on my creativity and my writing, and it’s time I paid them proper tribute for their artistry and lingering cultural impact.

Starting tomorrow and continuing each day for the entire month of October, I’ll highlight a favorite horror film, one that’s particularly influential in the field, or that impacted me in a profound way. The choices are subjective and entirely mine. The list will proceed chronologically from the dawn of sound films to the present day. 

 

 

Please check in and help me celebrate the cinema of the macabre all this month. Like Dr. Septimus Pretorius in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), let’s hoist our glasses and toast the infernal, unholy, misbegotten and malign:

“To a new world of gods and monsters!”

 

 

 

WHAT TERRIBLE BOOK? Answer Revealed

Published September 27, 2019 by Philip Ivory

So a few days ago, I posed the question: Which book is being reviewed here by the editor of The London Sunday Express?

” … the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature … All the secret sewers of vice are canalized in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ — blasphemies hitherto associated with the most degraded orgies of Satanism and the Black Mass.”

That was a contemporary 1920s review of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

I came across that remarkable quote in the current (9/26/19) issue of The New York Review of Books. It reminds us that Ulysses, which among its other preoccupations details a variety of human sexual and excretory functions, repulsed many early readers, including Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats and even D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence, who celebrated lusty behavior in his own work, labeled Molly Bloom’s famous concluding soliloquy “the dirtiest,  most indecent, obscene thing ever written.” Other early readers such as T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway hailed the book as a masterpiece.

Take a look at “Ulysses on Trial,” The New York Review of Books‘ fascinating account of how publisher Bennet Cerf and ACLU lawyer Morris Ernst waged a brilliant and ultimately successful campaign to help Ulysses navigate its way around anti-obscenity laws so that Joyce’s master work could be published in the United States.

 

WHAT TERRIBLE BOOK IS THIS?

Published September 24, 2019 by Philip Ivory

Which book is being reviewed here by the editor of the London Sunday Express?

” … the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature … All the secret sewers of vice are canalized in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ — blasphemies hitherto associated with the most degraded orgies of Satanism and the Black Mass.”

I’ll post the answer in a few days.

 

Shout Out from Better Living Through Beowulf

Published September 20, 2019 by Philip Ivory

 

My thanks to Robin Bates at the excellent literary blog Better Living Through Beowulf. He penned a gracious shout out to my blog post of late last year in which I harnessed the brilliance of quotes by Lewis Carroll to try to make sense of the lunacy of Donald J. Trump’s administration. Click on the illustration above to read his review.

I’ve thought about doing a sequel to my post, since there are many more wonderful Lewis Carroll nuggets to highlight. But to be honest, the mindless anarchy and rampant corruption of the Trump administration has continued to reach such mind-boggling depths of venality and inhumanity that I’m not sure what else can be said. I think Carroll, the Oxford scholar and gentleman, might say: “Enough! Please leave me out of this!”

Let’s face it. There is no bandersnatch frumious enough to make sense of putting innocent children in cages. 

That depressing thought aside, please take time to explore Robin’s wonderful site. My thanks to him for his words of recognition. And if you want to revisit my original post, just click here: THE STUPIDEST TEA PARTY.

 

Fall Writing Classes Available Now at Writers Studio

Published September 11, 2019 by Philip Ivory

“Dynamic, Inspiring, invigorating, supportive. The Writers Studio seemed to me to have all the qualities one could possibly wish for in a writing school.”

JAMES LASDUN, poetry and fiction professor at Princeton University, New York University and Columbia University

 

Greetings Tucson writer friends! As a teacher and assistant director for the Tucson branch of The Writers Studio, I’m excited that our roster of fall classes is posted and students are already beginning to sign up for our fall session.

Check out our web site for a full listing of Tucson classes. Discover new voices and craft techniques to bring your personal material to life. Sharpen your feedback skills. Learn to identify and build upon your strengths as a writer

SPECIAL DISCOUNT CODE: Use Coupon Code: shine to get $15 off one of our 8-week classes. (Discount must be taken at time of registration online or by phone (212) 255-7075 and may not be combined with any other offer. Expires 9/19/19.)

BEGINNER’S LEVEL WORKSHOPS
Wednesday Evenings with Lela Scott MacNeil
Starts October 16 at 6:30 PM
Saturday Mornings with Richard Leis
Starting October 5 at 10 AM

INTERMEDIATE
Thursday Evenings with Philip Ivory
Starting October 17 at 6:30 PM

ADVANCED
Monday Evenings with Lela Scott MacNeil
Starting October 14 at 6:30 PM

MASTER CLASS
Tuesday Evenings with Reneé Bibby
Starting October 15 at 6:30 PM

If you’re too far away to take an in-person class, consider taking one online. 

Not sure what level you should be on? Contact Reneé Bibby at renee@writerstudio.com

 

“The Writers Studio has grown into one of the best creative writing programs I know, at once serving excellence and inspiring the individual. The ambiance is warm and invigorating, making it joyful to be there.”

GRACE SCHULMAN, author of Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems