Jens Rosenkrantz illustrates the road-tripper’s world-view in “Small Towns and Long Views”
Road trips: an integral part of the ethos of modern man. If you haven’t taken a character-building, eye-opening road trip yourself, you’ve surely travelled — at least in spirit — with Jack Kerouac, Christopher McCandless, or Chevy Chase on their misadventures on the open road. There is a reason this story is played out over […]
Fotofolio – Audra J. Shields
“These are my words, essay 1” Audra’s statement: I am very comfortable in solitude and silence and have always been drawn to the more unfrequented, quiet places. My photographs are captured during the solitary moments at diverse set of places. Isolation can happen anywhere, on the prairies, in a cemetery or even a city street. […]
A Touching Tribute
When people pass away, there’s always a reverent sense of loss, thinking about how the world will never be the same without them in it. When a fashion designer dies, especially suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, many often think about the art that would have been created … what could have been. We saw […]
Film Review: "Gunshi Kanbei," A Saga of Power and Betrayal in Feudal Japan
You likely haven’t heard of taiga dramas, and even more likely, have never watched one. Let me employ my first contribution as AEQAI’s film critic towards attempting to remedy that, for these classic yearlong Japanese television programs deserve far more attention than they receive in the U.S. Taiga dramas: a brief introduction Not to be […]
Daniel Mason’s “The Winter Soldier”
World War I continues to inspire many a novelist, partly because both the social and political structures of Europe died in the trenches of that war, ushering in the modern era, the 20th century, the most barbaric recorded in human history. Daniel Mason’s “The Winter Soldier” is a superb addition to such literature. Reading either […]
Stephen Markley’s “Ohio”
The novelist Stephen Markley, author of the new book “Ohio”, is new to me. “Ohio” describes life in a small town in Northeastern Ohio, where all the industries have left, drugs are rampant and no one has much to do. Markley’s novel revolves around the lives of a number of high school students, mainly juniors […]
Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Unsheltered”
A new novel by Barbara Kingsolver, one of America’s finest writers, is a real literary event, so I ordered “The Unsheltered” the day it was released. (Her last two novels were first on my “best fiction of the year lists). “Unsheltered”, however, disappoints, more so because Kinsolver’s writing about some very important, topical themes. Things […]