Speed of Life

I am posting an online readable copy of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel  Maus in response to the ridiculous decision by the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee who voted 10-0 to remove the book from the eighth-grade English language arts curriculum saying without realizing the horrible irony that the graphic novel should be replaced, if possible, with another book without content deemed objectionable. The Holocaust is arguably the most objectionable violence ever taken against fellow humans by a despotic regime.  Maus recounts the horrifying experiences of Art Spiegelman's father during the Holocaust, in which he depicts Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Spiegelman shakes us awake as he depicts the unspeakable through the language of cartoons and graphic novels. Maus is a story of survival and a study of the legacy of trauma. Maus is presented here for readers of all ages. Welcome.  1. The decision of a Tennes...

Really enjoying John Berger's new book which collects many of his perceptive pieces on art and artists. John Berger’s Portraits shows how art teaches us to see: http://www. slate.com/articles/arts/ books/2015/12/john_berger_s_portraits_reviewed.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top   … via @ slate

by Gregg Chadwick In his first work of fiction,  The Wandering Falcon , Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood. Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from  halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, p...