Author: Michael Washburn

FILM 

Maybe Commodus Was the Good Guy

May 30, 2019 Michael Washburn 1 Comment Commodus, Gladiator, Joaquin Phoenix, Maximus, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe

A Look Back at Gladiator Through a 2020 Lens

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FICTION Politics 

The People Are Revolting

April 12, 2019April 12, 2019 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Balzac, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Orwell, Reign Of Terror

Beware the Modern Jacobins: a Warning From Balzac

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CREATORS FICTION Writers 

The Repressed Was Never Gone

March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Edgar Allen Poe, Freud, John Hawkes, The Frog

Reading ‘The Frog,’ by John Hawkes

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DOCUMENTARY FICTION FILM 

How Close Are We To Dystopia? Despite What Michael Moore Says, Not Very.

October 15, 2018October 15, 2018 Michael Washburn 1 Comment 1984, Christopher Hitchens, Donald Trump, dystopia, fascism, George Orwell, Hitler, Michael Moore, Odon von Horvath, The Age Of The Fish

A Novel By an Avant-Garde Genius Of The 1930s Offers Clarity

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FICTION NON-FICTION 

Mailer’s Fatal Flaw

September 19, 2018September 21, 2018 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Jack Henry Abbott, murder, Norman Mailer

By Championing a Violent Criminal, Norman Mailer Tarnished His Legacy

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Writers 

Margaret Drabble’s Incoherent, Superficial, Overwrought Style of Argumentation

September 3, 2018September 17, 2018 Michael Washburn 1 Comment Margaret Drabble, Telegraph, W.H. Auden

‘My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease’

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COMICS CREATORS FICTION Writers 

Robert E. Howard: Literary Artist or Pulp Hack?

August 20, 2018August 20, 2018 Michael Washburn 4 Comments Bran Mak Morn, Conan the Barbarian, H.P. Lovecraft, Kull, Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane

There’s more to the creator of Conan the Barbarian than can be contained by sword-and-sorcery

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FICTION Writers 

Vladimir Nabokov and the Struggles Within

August 15, 2018August 14, 2018 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Despair, Edmund Wilson, Lolita, Paul Miliukov, Pnin, The Defense, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Vladimir Nabokov

Father’s violent end informed the master’s depictions of warring internal factions

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