Perhaps we don’t really hate Mondays. What we really hate, maybe, is the nagging sensation that we are not fully present in our own lives. Mondays nudge us to ask: In how much of this life am I truly free?
Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.” -- Charlie Chaplin:
Melville's tale describes the deep structures of a racism that was born in chattel slavery but didn't die with it. Racism, in the United States at least, was grafted onto slavery, while at the same time disguised by a potent kind of individualism, a cult of individual supremacy, based on the fantasy that some men were born natural slaves and that others could be absolutely free.
Spread the word