We find a play within a play in Hamlet and a novel within a novel in many postmodern novels. But we don’t always find literary criticism within the novel. And when we do, the reader can take such criticism as a possible key to understanding the (main) novel. During a trip to Thailand with a […]

For some modern writers and artists, the cultivation of solitude and alienation are worthwhile pursuits.   They would claim that one should dedicate one’s writing to this project because it makes the modern writer unique. But it also makes us look at things that, in their view, are more definitive than the commonplace celebrations of progress […]

In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud asks his readers to think about the relationship of two drives that are completely opposed: Eros (life) and Thanatos (death).   When one thinks of death one does not think of sexuality and vice versa. To be sure, the act of thinking sexuality in terms of violence is disturbing. The […]

I love seeing new faces whether they are real or, as in reading a novel, virtual. What interests me most – in both reading faces and reading literature – is when glances are exchanged. When someone or something looks at you how do you look back? And what happens when the person you’re looking at, […]

Many cultural critics and artists have taken to the subject of what has happened to American culture (and Western culture) in the wake of the sexual and feminist revolution of the 1960s.   One of the most interesting – and recent – encounters with this topic can be found in a piece by A.O. Scott for […]

Come and visit the wonderful online journal, Berfrois today to read the first of a two part essay I wrote on Cynicism and Comedy.  Enjoy! http://www.berfrois.com/2015/09/menachem-feuer-cynical-clowns/

While the distinction between man and animal has, for millennia, been a concern for both monotheism and philosophy, the blurring of that distinction has been of interest to mythology and folklore. And as anyone who has read Franz Kafka knows, the distinction between man and animal is the subject of many of his stories.   As […]

We love the cynical comedy of comedians like Louis CK. He scratches and sometimes plunges into the depths of despair in his comedy routines. And from time to time his pieces have philosophical resonance. He appropriates what I would call a “phenomenology of aging.”  Although his work may resonate with the phenomenology of aging we […]