Category: James Livingston: Politics and Letters
Is Becomes Ought: The Mere Necessity of Socialism
We’re now caught between despair and hope, resignation and purpose, facts and values, between the worst and the best of times, between our historical circumstance–what simply is–and our ethical principles–what...
Read MoreBefore and After the Fall
50 years ago today, I fell 24 feet to my death. On that June 1st, I died to my old self, a lazy, drunken lout, an ex-jock frat boy who had recently been expelled from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the grounds that...
Read MoreThe Modern Decameron Book 3, rev. ed.
Filomena goes next, with another story of another Jew, Melchisadech, who also must reckon with Christianity as both a moral problem and an intellectual prospect. Filomena frames it as a story within a story within a story,...
Read MoreThe Modern Decameron, Book II, rev. ed.
Neifile goes next in The Decameron, Book/Novel 2. She tells the story of Abraham the Jew, a devout adherent of the faith, who, being a friend of Johannot de Chevigny, a fellow merchant, is constantly subject to...
Read MoreDreaming of Despair
Last night my dreams were soaked in the cold sweat of despair–a function, I believe, of two small waking events from the day before. First, I endured a remote session with the shrink (yeah, I know, I’m privileged, I don’t...
Read MoreThe Modern Decameron, Books IV-VII
Now we’re in the thick of it, now we know God himself is on trial, because his representatives on earth are so cunning, lustful, stupid, and wise. These four “novels” compose a suite, a kind of story within a story–within...
Read MoreOn Lenox Ave
My girlfriend and I are holed up in Harlem, just south of its epicenter at 125thand Lenox Ave, a.k.a. Malcom X Blvd. Since there are no delivery dates available from any purveyor until far into next week (I write on March 31),...
Read MoreThe Modern Decameron, Book 1
In Boccaccio’s Decameron, there were seven women and three men, self-quarantined in the time of plague, Florence, 1348. The women were Pampinea, elected queen by her peers because she was so decisive, insightful, and cheerful;...
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