God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

On the anniversary of the death of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, a comparative essay full of allusions and homages. Writing as Remembering, or On Vonnegut, Hemingway and Camus: A Duty Dance with Death In Howard’s End, E.M. Forster wrote that ”Death destroys a man, but it’s the idea of death that saves him.” Death is usually [...]

Of Mice and Men: The Death of the American Dream

Steinbeck was a Depression novelist, and he saw it as his duty to “set down his time as nearly as he can understand it.”   He does so in Of Mice and Men  which portrays the corruption of the American dream during the 1930′s. I have always thought Steinbeck tried to portray the American Dream simply [...]