Mark Zero's Blog, page 5

Journey to the Alcarria

Camilo Jose Cela's Journey to the Alcarria captured a glimpse of Old World Spain just before it vanished and a peek into the coming struggles of everyday people under Franco's fascist regime. The record of a walking tour through the central Spanish countryside in 1948, Journey to the Alcarria is a sharply observed picaresque, [...:]

The Lawless Roads of Southern Mexico

The British publishing company Longman commissioned Graham Greene to travel to the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas in 1938, to investigate the anti-Catholic purges of President Plutarco Elias Calles. Greene's assignment, more specifically, was to write a report about the reactions of the Catholic people there to the assassination of some 40 priests [...:]

Around the World & Into the Past

For the last couple of centuries, our changing attitudes about travel have mirrored the effects of globalization: starting with the Industrial Revolution, as cultures worldwide became more technological, travel for average Western Europeans and Americans came to mean enrichment rather than danger. Travel once meant only hardship and adventure, the prospect of unpredictable and possibly [...:]

In the Catacomb of Dreams

After beginning a series of reviews of books concerned with sickness and death, my own rather routine head cold overwhelmed me and I spent more than two weeks lying in bed, sweating, sneezing and puffing like a melancholy penguin trapped in the Memphis Zoo. By the fourth day, I could no longer even think of [...:]

Rilke's Book of Hours

Last week, I caught a head cold at about the same time Obama and the Congress were hashing out health care reform, so I thought it an opportune time to review a series of books about sickness, death and the body. I then promptly became too ill to carry on and spent the rest of [...:]

Inside the Human Body: A Collection of Extraordinary Images

As President Obama and a deeply divided Congress wrangle over health care reform and Americans spend more and more money every year on insurance, the medical and scientific community continues to make extraordinary advances in medical technology. According to the New York Times, Americans' annual spending on health care has risen from approximately 5% of [...:]

The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

The only difference between diseases like cholera, malaria and the Bubonic plague and lesser-known ailments like Bone Leprosy and Inverted Drowning Syndrome is that the former actually exist. Western medicine, though, has rarely let a formality like actual existence get in the way of a good diagnosis.
The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and [...:]

Memories of Amnesia—or, Is Your Brain Out to Get You?

Today begins a week-long series I'm calling Sickness, Death and Other Inconveniences, whose theme you've no doubt already gathered. Since the body is our vehicle through this world, its splendid daily operation, occasional breakdowns and eventual and inevitable failure fascinate us. Even a common illness like a head cold (from which I'm now suffering, and [...:]

How to Live on Nothing

Since the collapse of the sub-prime market a year and a half ago, hand-wringing has become our nation's most popular parlor game. The rules are simple: just watch the news and worry.
It's still unclear if the government bailout of the banks, the economic stimulus package and the Fed's manipulation of interest rates have saved us [...:]

A Brief Yet Helpful Guide to Literary Suicide

The sheer wealth of material available for Dead Letters: The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides suggests that writers are an unnaturally melancholy bunch, but why? Do writers draw inspiration from the waters of some specially poisoned well that sculptors, composers or, for that matter, pastry chefs know not to taste? To be sure, there are [...:]