An Array of Utopian Flowers
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LA River Revitalization: The Story of Master Plan Gone Awry
Posted on April 2, 2021 | 1 Comment - Biotonomy: Designing Nature-Based Autonomous Buildings and Cities
Posted on March 26, 2021 | 1 Comment - Paul Bowles Documentary: ‘Let it Come Down’
Posted on March 26, 2021 | 1 Comment - Foray into Fungi: The Art of Farming
Posted on March 18, 2021 | 1 Comment - Trees Please: Saving and Serving the Urban Forest
Posted on February 25, 2021 | 2 Comments
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WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
Literary Archive
Paul Bowles Documentary: ‘Let it Come Down’
Posted on March 26, 2021 | 1 CommentExpatriate writer, composer, and traveler Paul Bowles (1910-1999) stepped away from it all and reported back to us through his novels and short stories and is featured here in a documentary 'Let it Come Down'. He lived 52 years in Tangier, Morocco, and wrote evocatively of the place and its peoples. His most famous for his influential 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, was filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci.Corridor of the Surreal: Silver Webb and Jack Eidt Talk ‘City of Illumination’
Posted on January 27, 2021 | 1 CommentJack Eidt talks with Silver Webb on his surreal trip to the Underworld story "City of Illumination," published by Borda Books in Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, curated by Max Talley. It includes fifteen tales of psychological suspense, altered states, noir crime, and the surreal.Courting Delirium: Max Talley and his Dark Zeitgeist
Posted on January 9, 2021 | 2 CommentsJack Eidt from WilderUtopia.com had a chat with novelist Max Talley about the recent book he curated and contributed two stories to, called Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, from Borda Books/Santa Barbara Literary Journal.Samuel Beckett, Confessions and the Human Condition
Posted on December 5, 2019 | 1 CommentSamuel Beckett’s legacy endures, and reaches far beyond the written word. Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition, dispensing with conventional plot and the unities of time and place in order to focus on essential components of the human condition.‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in Santa Barbara Literary Journal
Posted on June 3, 2019 | 4 CommentsSanta Barbara Literary Journal releases Bellatrix: Volume 3 this June, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt's psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Join us for readings and other entertainments in SB on June 14.Mild Satire, Outrage and Hostility, with Philip Roth
Posted on June 2, 2018 | No CommentsHis alter-ego Zuckerman, unconsciously frightened of success and of failure, frightened of being admired and also despised, frightened of being frightened, he unconsciously suppressed his talent, frightened of what it might do next. On the passing of Philip Roth, we look into his often black comic chronicles of an imagined life, his taking down and reshaping the meaning of 'Jewish American', and his play at historic re-creating the zeitgeist within the form of the novel.Stranger in Tangier: Paul Bowles Under The Sheltering Sky
Posted on November 14, 2017 | 3 CommentsPaul Bowles during his life (1910-1999) remained aloof from all the hipsters and hypesters of U.S. letters. Living in self-imposed exile in Tangier, he had cast a spell over such talents as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg. We revisit an essay penned by Jay McInerny in 1985, on how the inimitable expatriate writer-composer's dark arts retain their power, even more so 32 years later.La Belle et La Bête – Natural Surrealism of a Misunderstood Beast
Posted on November 6, 2017 | 1 CommentWe feature the popularized story version of the French fairy tale 'La Belle et La Bête' (Beauty and the Beast), which became a classic 1946 Jean Cocteau film accompanied by composer Philip Glass's mesmerizing 1994 score.Gogol’s Vision of Metaphysical Unraveling Amid the Dark Arts
Posted on August 9, 2017 | 1 CommentWatch the 1967 supernatural horror story "Viy" based on the 1835 novella by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, where a student philosopher from the Christian seminary encounters a young woman with dark powers who can summon the ogre, King of the Gnomes, which the author claims comes from Ukrainian folklore tradition.LA Poet Wanda Coleman on Smog Addiction and Angel Wings
Posted on July 7, 2017 | No CommentsIn "Angel Baby Blues," from Wanda Coleman's collection Heavy Daughter Blues, she offered a take on the failed promises of her home in Southern California. A prolific poet, fiction writer, and journalist, she was considered for a time Los Angeles' unofficial and controversial Poet Laureate.Poet Antonio López on the “Road Rage” of Clashing Histories
Posted on June 30, 2017 | No CommentsAntonio López won the Poetry Award at the 2017 Santa Barbara Writers Conference with 'Which Cobija Feels Most Comfy?: A Letter to Sister Nabra', about the murder of a teenage Muslim girl beaten and killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque.Bukowski’s ‘Born Into This’ – Treachery, Hatred, Violence, Absurdity
Posted on June 29, 2017 | 2 CommentsThe documentary, 'Bukowski: Born into This' rehashes stories of the inimitable misanthrope, poet, and author Charles Bukowski. Post features the poem, 'Dinosauria, we.'Jack Eidt’s ‘The Blue Basement’ on Luna Review
Posted on June 18, 2017 | No CommentsAn excerpt of Jack Eidt's recent novel 'Nowhere Beckons' was published in the Luna Review. Called 'The Blue Basement', it narrates the protagonist T.'s visionary descent into the urban underworld, where ideas, light, and color blend, and surviving on the journey to the end of the night is everything.Political Haiku: The Revolution Will Not Be Roboticized
Posted on January 12, 2017 | 1 CommentMark Morris lays down some poetic effulgence in the budding genre of political haiku, or as he endearingly calls it: Hacku. Let it flow in the Era of the Orange One.Max Talley Story: A Secret Utopia Called Devorah
Posted on July 28, 2016 | 1 CommentMax Talley's surreal and disturbing story posits a lone traveler who stumbles into an eerie alternative universe, a quiet utopia, or a slow death trap. Read the entire story for free online at Chantwood Magazine.Monte Schulz’s Beautiful Jazz Age Tragedy in ‘Crossing Eden’
Posted on June 14, 2016 | 1 CommentMonte Schulz's literary novel Crossing Eden (Fantagraphics Books), sweeps across the Midwestern U.S. landscape through the story of a family pulled apart in the Jazz Age summer of 1929. A failed businessman, seduced by city lights and the dream of wealth and power, divides himself from his wife and children, while a troubled farm boy runs away from home in the company of a gangster.Geo-Fauvism and Anthropocene: Altered Planet, Wild Literature
Posted on June 4, 2016 | 3 CommentsWelcome to the Anthropocene age, where humans have transmogrified the planet, its oceans and atmosphere, caused mass extinctions and wholesale contamination that will remain for millennia. Beyond the politicians and scientists, the way forward remains in the hands of writers, artists, and designers taking inspiration from wild earth in a movement called Geo-Fauvism.B. Traven: Underground Anarchist in the Mexican Jungle
Posted on March 27, 2016 | 4 CommentsB. Traven, German underground author, anarchist and writer of the Treasure of Sierra Madre, purposely obscured his origins to evade consequences from his revolutionary past in Germany and to stoke his literary mystery that hinged upon his words: "An author should have no other biography than his books."Jack Eidt and the Bison: Words to Save the World
Posted on March 20, 2016 | 1 CommentJack Eidt, reading from a literary vision quest called "Medicine Walk," Part of Environmental and Activist Poetry/Fiction at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA. 12/5/2015, from the Vision LA 2015 Climate Change Arts Festival.The Ambiguous Colors of Haruki Murakami
Posted on March 14, 2016 | No CommentsA documentary on Japanese literary postmodernist Haruki Murakami, as well as a folktale from his novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage." As the Guardian puts it: "Full of ambiguity and sex – all Murakami's signature flourishes are here."Death By Misadventure: Malcolm Lowry’s Gin-Sopped Volcano
Posted on October 22, 2015 | 1 CommentMalcolm Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece "Under the Volcano," about the fervid last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico, is set to the drumbeat of coming internal and external conflict. Autobiographical and reflective of the expatriated trust-funder in a futile search for an artistic home, the perpetually inebriated master got lost along the road toward his own abyss, and died under suspicious circumstances, out-of-print.Will Self: Talentless Hipsters and Commodification Culture
Posted on September 30, 2014 | 3 CommentsThis awful cult of talentless hipsters has its Mecca in Los Angeles, according to Will Self. He asserts his generation took the avant-garde and turned it into a successful rearguard action by the flying columns of capitalism’s blitzkrieg. What to make of the commodification and democratization of culture, and where to go from here?Charles Bukowski: Madness is Never Ordinary
Posted on September 25, 2014 | 2 Comments"In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of "sadism" it is because it exists, I didn't invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds." -- Charles BukowskiGoethe’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: Power Over Wisdom
Posted on August 13, 2014 | 1 Comment"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," an ages-old fairy tale interpreted as a poem by Goethe, made famous today by Disney's "Fantasia," illustrated the dangers of power over wisdom, and the risk of human creations getting out of control.Gabriel García Márquez on Latin American Dictatorship and Liberation
Posted on April 18, 2014 | No CommentsWe celebrate the late Colombian magical realist Gabriel García Marquez, exploring some of the highlights from his Nobel Prized Literary career.
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