Dreams are a red flag for the danger-prone. Postwar van der Holts. Sophistication sticks to Head of Music Isabel – and so does new headmaster, the mysterious and semi-dictatorial Richard Schneider. Dissent from doctorly conventionality leads Anneliese into digressions deviant even for her as she squares off not just against Susanna but a serial offender of the law. Sparks fly between old flames; new fears prove equally exciting. Loyalties are switched and cravings itched in this compendium of the forbidden driven by foreboding: a mere taste of the temptations still to come. Treats are aplenty for the reader who prefers vicarious living in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 3: a world abundant in the traps of passion’s shackles. Into the higher stakes we go.
Curiosity can be a killer. The clock begins to tick on Anneliese’s moral compass as the sleuth-psychiatrist delves deeper into London’s social dregs – encountering a playbook too subversive for her tastes. While Isabel belittles the idea of jealousy Charles Anthony views his obsession as a Jezebel. Susanna’s (other) indiscretions are hard-pressed to rest in peace as torments old and new distort her life. Headmaster Richard on the other hand sparks strife when he reviles his troublesome subordinate… again. Repression treads with clumsy thumps on both the sisters’ souls in this suspicion-rousing feast of silent dreams: a gallery of scintillating scenes where passion and possessiveness lurk still beneath the surface. Envy, pride, wrath and desire light a fire in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 4: the part inviting you to pick your poison.
Mind the gap between youth’s pedestal and looming adulthood. Two years have passed since Anneliese and Isabel braved the bombardment of the Blitz. Risks are resumed and revelations rattle as the past begins to rear its ugly head. Suffering sends Isabel on downward spirals; Anneliese falls victim to society’s expectations. Skeletons come tumbling from Susanna’s closet and for some the sex-and-death divide grows thinner. Spying on the escapades of the sororal van der Holts, The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 2 invites you to encounter more of Anneliese and Isabel than they know of themselves. Self-recognition is discomfiting. And we have only just begun.
Coating opera's roles in opulence, Maria Callas (1923-1977) is a lyrical enigma. Seductress, villainess, and victor, queen and crouching slave, she is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer… made by a single voice. But while her craftsmanship has stood the test of time, Callas’ image has contested defamation at the hands of saboteurs of beauty. Twelve years in the making, this voluminous labour of love explores the singer with the reverence she dealt her heroines. The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography reaps never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents worldwide to illustrate the complex of their multi-faceted creator - closing in on her self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits with empathic scrutiny. It swivels readers through the singer's on- and offstage scenes and flux of fears and dreams... the double life of all performers. In its unveiling of the everyday it rolls a vivid film reel starring friends and foes and nobodies: vignettes that make up life. It's verity. It's meritable storytelling. Not unlike the Callas art.
Coating opera's roles in opulence, Maria Callas (1923-1977) is a lyrical enigma. Seductress, villainess, and victor, queen and crouching slave, she is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer… made by a single voice. But while her craftsmanship has stood the test of time, Callas’ image has contested defamation at the hands of saboteurs of beauty. Twelve years in the making, this voluminous labour of love explores the singer with the reverence she dealt her heroines. The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography reaps never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents worldwide to illustrate the complex of their multi-faceted creator - closing in on her self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits with empathic scrutiny. It swivels readers through the singer's on- and offstage scenes and flux of fears and dreams... the double life of all performers. In its unveiling of the everyday it rolls a vivid film reel starring friends and foes and nobodies: vignettes that make up life. It's verity. It's meritable storytelling. Not unlike the Callas art.
Curiosity can be a killer. The clock begins to tick on Anneliese’s moral compass as the sleuth-psychiatrist delves deeper into London’s social dregs – encountering a playbook too subversive for her tastes. While Isabel belittles the idea of jealousy Charles Anthony views his obsession as a Jezebel. Susanna’s (other) indiscretions are hard-pressed to rest in peace as torments old and new distort her life. Headmaster Richard on the other hand sparks strife when he reviles his troublesome subordinate… again. Repression treads with clumsy thumps on both the sisters’ souls in this suspicion-rousing feast of silent dreams: a gallery of scintillating scenes where passion and possessiveness lurk still beneath the surface. Envy, pride, wrath and desire light a fire in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 4: the part inviting you to pick your poison.
Dreams are a red flag for the danger-prone. Postwar van der Holts. Sophistication sticks to Head of Music Isabel – and so does new headmaster, the mysterious and semi-dictatorial Richard Schneider. Dissent from doctorly conventionality leads Anneliese into digressions deviant even for her as she squares off not just against Susanna but a serial offender of the law. Sparks fly between old flames; new fears prove equally exciting. Loyalties are switched and cravings itched in this compendium of the forbidden driven by foreboding: a mere taste of the temptations still to come. Treats are aplenty for the reader who prefers vicarious living in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 3: a world abundant in the traps of passion’s shackles. Into the higher stakes we go.
There are few ideals of character as distinctive and divisive as the ancient virtue of 'greatness of soul'. A larger-than-life virtue embodying nothing less than a vision of human greatness, it has often been seen as a relic of the Homeric world and its honour-loving heroes. In philosophy, it found its most celebrated expression in Aristotle's ethics, and it has lived on in the minds of philosophers and theologians in different forms ever since. Yet among the many lives this virtue has led in intellectual history, one remains conspicuously unwritten. This is the life it led in the Arabic tradition. A virtue of Greek warriors and their democratic epigones — what happened when this splendid virtue made landfall in the Islamic world? This world, too, had its native heroes, who bequeathed their conception of extraordinary virtue to posterity. Heroic virtue is above all expressed in a boundless aspiration to what is greatest. Could we admire such virtue enough to want it as our own? What can we learn from the Arabic tradition of the virtues? In answering these questions, Sophia Vasalou elucidates a larger family of virtues that are united by their preoccupation with all things great: the 'virtues of greatness'. An important constituent of the character ideals expounded within the Islamic world, this type of virtue tells us as much about the content of these ideals as about their kaleidoscopic genealogies.
Sophia will be entering into the 6th grade this year (2015) and has always been interested in words, phrases, analogies and idioms. One of her more quirky attributes is the ability to take an idiom and use it in an entirely new way that somehow actually fits the current situation. Sophia sees things differently than most people and this compliments her ability to churn out poetry that is sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes funny, and sometimes sad. When Sophia was a small child we read to her almost every night, mostly the same old children's books we have all come to love/hate, but occasionally we would read Shel Silverstein and of course Dr. Seuss, these she loved. I will never forget the time when Sophia was able to recite all of Shel Silverstein's "Hungry Mungry" after only hearing it twice. She has a gift, and while this current collection represents Sophia's efforts in its infancy, I do hope you will enjoy it. By the way if you are reading these poems out loud it helps if you imagine Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat" with a guitar singing Silverstein's "The Giving Tree." -Good Luck- John S. Fitch, Sophia's Dad
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