Tag: literature
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Now Dig This
What I’ve been reading in 2024 As Desert Dispatch prepares to relocate its southwestern regional office to a new, more expansive suite (read: we’re moving into a townhouse), yours truly has been feeling a little more pressed for time. As such, your fearless writer has been scrambling for time to prepare each week’s pair of newsletters. So,…
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The Crime Wave at Saltburn
Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” and P.G. Wodehouse’s “Blandings” Saltburn, the recent film by Emerald Fennell, caused a stir when it debuted on Amazon Prime this past December. It’s been criticized, praised, and meme’d, while simultaneously re-popularizating Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s early-2000s hit song “Murder on the Dancefloor.” In short, the film has caused something of a sensation. As…
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Bureaucracy As Accidental Hero
Roberto Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City” and Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” Major Bergmann (right), played by Harry Feist, in Robert Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. Next to him is Ingrid, a German spy, played by Giovanna Galletti. Rome, Open City – the 1946 Italian neorealist film directed by Roberto Rossellini – is ostensibly about resistance fighters in The Eternal…
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Nothing Is As It Seems
Music, mysticism, and Peter Kingsley’s “Catafalque” Praise God, nothing is as it seems. The words above make up the final line “Keep Your Eyes Peeled,” a 2013 song by the desert-based rock band Queens of the Stone Age. It’s a sentiment that I find perfectly describes Peter Kingsley’s Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity. For…