ZETEO

Catch-22 in the 21st Century

January 30, 2015 by William Eaton

Although set on a US Air force base on a small island in the Mediterranean during World War Two, Catch-22 is a satirical attack on the workings of modern bureaucracy that is still relevant today. It points out very clearly, and with great accuracy, how organizational goals get diverted and perverted by the ferocious competition for power among those at the top. It shows how this competition wastes time, resources, and ultimately human lives, as ambition drives mediocre men to […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: literature

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Who are you?

January 29, 2015 by William Eaton

“Who are you?” is the question a pilgrimage demands of the pilgrim. In this case, well-known European comedic entertainer, Hape Kerkeling, author of I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago. Herr Kerkeling walked the Camino de Francés, the most popular of many “caminos” — roads in Spanish — to the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago de Campostela in the Province of Galicia. Kerkeling began his 775 km trek on June 9, 2001. The Camino […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR

New-Age Parenting Culture Invades the NFL

January 29, 2015 by fritztucker

With the Super Bowl just days away, the media is obsessing over Marshawn Lynch, the Seattle Seahawks running back who has accrued over $100,000 in fines by the NFL for his unwillingness to talk to the media. From an economic standpoint, it may be hard for some to empathize with a man working under a $30 million contract, especially considering that his salary depends on the footage-fueled idol-worship of everyday Americans. Empathy, however, should come from the fact that the average career for […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: civil rights, ethics

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A Funny Poem About the Pope

January 27, 2015 by William Eaton

If you read poetry, you probably know who Neruda is. However, there is a Chilean poet called Nicanor Parra who might be better. He is Neruda’s near-contemporary and is still living, aged 100. Parra said of Neruda: “let the birds sing, man talks.” Because I just encountered Parra’s “anti-poetry” and am in open-mouthed awe, I will be featuring his work for the next few weeks. Below is a funny poem about the pope that I liked for its humor, but also […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, poetry, reading, writing

Boko Haram: On lack of sympathy

January 26, 2015 by Alexia Raynal

Earlier this month, UK-based researcher Mark Hay wrote about the press’ lack of interest in Boko Haram’s most recent massacre. But rather than being downright condemning, Hay wrote analytically. While acknowledging the influence of racism and Western views of Africa on this matter, the writer points out to a much larger lack of sympathy for those with whom we fail to identify. Hay explains that to Westerners, the events at Baga seem distant, chaotic, and devoid of familiar faces. For many in the press, that murky […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: History, politics, reading, writing

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The American Splitting Experiment

January 24, 2015 by William Eaton

In The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, Rick Perlstein splits Americans of that recent period into two “tribes.” One comprised the suspicious circles, which had once been small, but now were exceptionally broad, who considered the self-evident lesson of the 1960s and the low, dishonest war that defined the decade to be the imperative to question authority, unsettle ossified norms, and expose dissembling leaders. The other tribe “found another lesson to be self-evident: never […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: American Dream, American history, class warfare, Declaration of Independence, History, Lewis Mumford, money, politics

Does Brokeback Mountain need a happy ending?

January 23, 2015 by William Eaton

In a recent interview in The Paris Review, Annie Proulx said that she regretted writing Brokeback Mountain. She said she wished she’d never written the story, and that it had “just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out.” This was because of the way readers — especially male ones — kept hassling her about the ending. It should’ve been a happy ending, they claim. Proulx says: “They all begin the same way – I’m […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: film, homosexuality, literature, writing

Those White Cliffs of Dover

January 20, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Last week, I wrote about a poem written by Randall Mann titled “Bernal Hill.” A discerning reader pointed at the near-obvious reference Mann’s poem makes to the classic “Dover Beach,” written in the mid-1800’s by English poet Matthew Arnold. I accept that the reference totally slipped my grasp, so I wanted to share Arnold’s poem this week. “Dover Beach” was inspired by the famous, white-chalk English cliffs of Dover, which carry symbolic significance for the British because they face the nation’s European neighbors […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, culture, Dover, England, love, poem, poetry, reading, writing

The Cheevers and the Baldwins

January 18, 2015 by William Eaton

[email_link] Found at the Y, in a New York Times Magazine piece about Mary Cheever: According to him [the fiction writer John Cheever], their issues [marital conflicts] are myriad: He wants to have sex all the time, for example, and she wants to have sex almost none of the time. He acknowledges, in fairness to Mary, that he is quite often impotent—ostensibly because he has a ferocious appetite for alcohol and perhaps because he finds himself lusting steadily, irrepressibly, after men. Here, in […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bette Davis, Freud, Hemingway, James Baldwin, John Cheever, New York Times, reading, sex

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