We All Live in Don DeLillo’s World. He’s Confused by It Too.

 

"A permeating paranoia. Profound absurdity. Conspiracy and terrorism. Technological alienation. Violence bubbling, ready to boil. This has long been the stuff of Don DeLillo’s masterly fiction. It’s now the air we breathe. For nearly 50 years and across 17 novels, among them classics like 'White Noise,' 'Libra' and 'Underworld,' DeLillo, who is 83, has summoned the darker currents of the American experience with maximum precision and uncanny imagination. His enduring sensitivity to the zeitgeist is such that words like 'prophetic' and 'oracular' figure frequently in discussion of his work. They will very likely figure again in regards to his new novel, 'The Silence,' in which a mysterious event on Super Bowl Sunday 2022 causes screens everywhere to go blank. ..."  

NY Times

2010 October: Pafko at the Wall, 2012 May: Underworld , 2012 July: The Body Artist, 2013 September: White Noise, 2013 November: The Art of Fiction No. 135, 2014 July: Don DeLillo: The Word, The Image, and The Gun, 2014 October: Falling Man (2007), 2016 December: Libra (1988)

A Guide to Sun Ra on Film

 

"You could devote your entire life to exploring Sun Ra’s galaxy of music, art, and writing and never reach an end. During his 79 years on this particular planet, the interstellar bandleader was a perpetual motion machine of creativity, releasing countless records, touring constantly, and penning works of Afrofuturist poetry and philosophy. Ra’s universe is still expanding, more than a quarter-century after he left this earthly plane; there’s a seemingly never-ending flow of releases and rediscoveries, and the Sun Ra Arkestra, still an ongoing concern under the direction of saxophonist Marshall Allen, will release its first album since 1999 this month. The sheer magnitude of Sun Ra’s output can be daunting. ..."

Pitchfork (Video)

‘The Story I’m Telling’: An Interview with Archie Shepp

Saxophonist Archie Shepp performing with the pianist Jason Moran at the Whitney Museum, New York City

"My father, the saxophonist Archie Shepp, has recorded more than 110 albums since 1962, performed all over the world, and received numerous honors, including the 2016 Jazz Master’s Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 1960s, he helped define “free jazz,” a new idiom in which the details of melody, harmony, and rhythm are all improvised to create a grand conversation: voices rise and fall, sometimes echoing one another, sometimes dissonant and discordant. In the 1970s and 1980s he wove the blues into his music, extending our understanding of this tradition. His cultural influence reaches far beyond the realm of jazz, touching artists as diverse as Ntozake Shange and Chuck D. ..."

 NYBooks

 2015 March: Attica Blues (1972), 2016 June: Archie Shepp - The Magic of Ju-Ju (1967), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More

King Tubby's ‎– Hometown Hi-Fi (Dubplate Specials 1975-1979)

"King Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi was one the great sound systems in Jamaica. It also proved a fantastic outlet for the Dub Plate Specials cut at Tubby's studio, providing exclusive cuts to be played out, enticing the dance's audience. The tracks at the time were mainly cut over producer Bunny 'Striker' Lee rhythms, that Bunny stored at Tubby's studio which was in fact his home, 18 Drumilly Avenue in Kingston, Jamaica. The versions were given exclusive plays at Tubby's before some finding their way on to vinyl, as the B-side version cut to its A-side vocal, proving so popular, that the records were often bought for its version side over its vocal counterpart. King Tubby and Producer Bunny 'Striker' Lee are intertwined in the birth of dub music. Tubby's vast knowledge of electronics and Bunny's vast catalog of rhythms would lay the foundations of what today is taken as a standard... the remix/version cuts to an existing vocal tune. ..."

Forced Exposure  

Discogs (Video)  

amazon  

YouTube: King Tubby's Hometown Hi Fi Dubplate Specials 1975-1979 1:01:21 

2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, 2015 April: Valley of Jehosaphat (1999), 2015 June: Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version), 2015 August: Hugh Mundell - Africa Must Be Free By 1983 + Dub (1978), 2015 November: King Tubby's Special 1973-1976 (1989)

The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship of Colleagues

 

"The New York Times Guild, the union of employees of the paper of record, tweeted a condemnation on Sunday of one of their own colleagues, op-ed columnist Bret Stephens. Their denunciation was marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company 'rules' against other journalists. To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists, of all people, is to woefully understate the case. What angered the union today was an op-ed by Stephens on Friday which voiced numerous criticisms of the Pulitzer Prize-winning '1619 Project,' published last year by the New York Times Magazine and spearheaded by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. ..." 

the intercept_

2019 August: The 1619 Project

Vitalina Varela - Pedro Costa (2019)

"If there is a cinema of the dispossessed, then its hero has to be the Portuguese film-maker Pedro Costa. His static, austere and often dreamlike movies – unfolding in a mysterious, forbidding semi-darkness – are about marginalised souls, often those in the impoverished (and now demolished) Fontaínhas shantytown in Lisbon. His new film once again reminded me of the pure Beckettian bleakness and starkness in his work: its characters are lonely unsmiling people living below the poverty line who have endured much. Their material wretchedness is not endowed with a condescending nobility but with a serenely laconic self-reliance. Costa and cinematographer Leonardo Simões have composed strangely compelling images of crumbling walls and shadowy, tatty interiors, picked out with fierce key lights to give them an almost modernist look, as if they were studio sets. ..."  

Guardian (Video) 

NY Times - ‘Vitalina Varela’ Review: A Widow Grieves in Endless Night (Video)  

Variety - Locarno Film Review: ‘Vitalina Varela’  

W - Vitalina Varela 

2010 May: Pedro Costa

The Working-Class Cinematic Legacy of Film Noir

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep (1946).

 "If you want to start an argument among film critics — and who wouldn’t? — ask any three of them to define film noir. You won’t get three answers; you’ll get nine or ten, punctuated by a great deal of exception-making, special pleading, and brow-furrowing. The very term is what Jean-François Lyotard referred to as a 'phrase in dispute': the people who made films noir did not call them that, preferring the prosaically descriptive term 'crime drama.' 'Film noir' was coined, decades after such films had stopped being made, by clever French critics like Lyotard, who seemed to understand American culture more than their American counterparts, and when the term became commonplace, arguments about what qualities such films must possess were immediate and vociferous. Many argued that noir was not even truly a style, but a period. ..."

Jacobin

A Dangerous Man in the Pantheon

Edmond O’Brien as Barney Nolan in Shield for Murder (1954).

Louis-Michel van Loo's portrait of Denis Diderot painted in 1767 - Source.

"This October marks 300 years since the birth of French Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot. Although perhaps best known for co-founding the Encylopédie, Philipp Blom argues for the importance of Diderot's philosophical writings and how they offer a pertinent alternative to the Enlightenment cult of reason spearheaded by his better remembered contemporaries Voltaire and Rousseau. ..."

The Public Domain Review  

W - Denis Diderot

The Swamp That Trump Built

 

"It was springtime at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and the favor-seekers were swarming. In a gold-adorned ballroom filled with Republican donors, an Indian-born industrialist from Illinois pressed Mr. Trump to tweet about easing immigration rules for highly skilled workers and their children. 'He gave a million dollars,' the president told his guests approvingly, according to a recording of the April 2018 event. Later that month, in the club’s dining room, the president wandered over to one of its newer members, an Australian cardboard magnate who had brought along a reporter to flaunt his access. Mr. Trump thanked him for taking out a newspaper ad hailing his role in the construction of an Ohio paper mill and box factory, whose grand opening the president would attend. ..."  

NY Times 

NY Times: Trump Engineered a Sudden Windfall in 2016 as Campaign Funds Dwindled  

NY Times: An Editor’s Note on the Trump Tax Investigation

O.A. Jensen of Nordland, Norway

 

"Deep swells. Soft shadows. Rhythmic elements buried under dense drones. A sense of motion in constant contrast with a sense of stillness. These are all shared elements of a certain type of ambient music, and they are in full effect in 'Ninas Garden' from the musician Havdis, aka O.A. Jensen of Nordland, Norway. Those aspects here are expertly executed. What distinguishes the work further arrives about halfway through, when it nudges ever so slightly to something song-like, as shifts between chords become apparent, lending structure to the gathered sounds. The change isn’t quite glacial, but it is subtle, excellently so. Track originally published at soundcloud.com/havdis."

disquiet (Audio)  

Discogs  

SoundCloud (Audio)

What Jacques Derrida Understood About Friendship

 

The intimacy of friendship, Jacques Derrida writes, lies in the sensation of recognizing oneself in the eyes of another.

 "... In the late nineteen-eighties, the philosopher Jacques Derrida delivered a series of seminar lectures on the subject of friendship. He was, at that point, one of the most famous philosophers in the world, having become more or less synonymous with the idea of deconstruction. Derrida wanted to disrupt our drive to generate meaning through dichotomies—speech versus writing, reason versus passion, masculinity versus femininity. These seeming opposites were mutually constitutive, he pointed out: just because one concept prevailed over the other didn’t mean that either was stable or self-defined. Straightness exists only by continually marginalizing queerness. ..."

New Yorker

2010 January: Jacques Derrida, 2014 August: Derrida (2002) 

Can Democracy Work in Soccer?

 

Ronald Koeman is the new Barcelona head coach

 "These may be the last days in office for Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barcelona’s embattled, unpopular president. An insurgent group, frustrated by the decline of the team and furious at how close the club came to losing the star forward Lionel Messi, has succeeded in collecting the signatures of more than 16,000 members required to call for a vote of no confidence in his board. The walls are closing in. Bartomeu must now choose an interim candidate to take his post while he awaits the results of a referendum on his leadership. ..."

NY Times  

NY Times: How Barcelona Lost Its Way (Feb. 25, 2020)

‘Maggie May’: Rod Stewart’s Epic Trek From Twickenham Station To No.1

 

"The gap between the first break for Rod Stewart, when Long John Baldry heard him playing harmonica on Twickenham railway station and the singer’s first British chart-topper, was just three months shy of eight years. Rod’s rocky road to No.1 was completed, when the chart for 9 October 1971 showed 'Maggie May' climbing to the top. Not bad for what was originally a B-side. Stewart’s long apprenticeship included his days with Baldry in the Hoochie Coochie Men and then Steampacket, Shotgun Express and then as lead vocalist with the Jeff Beck Group. ..."  

udiscover (Video)

2016 November: Gasoline Alley (1970), 2017 May: Every Picture Tells a Story (1971), 2019 July: Never A Dull Moment (1972)

Into Africa by Stanley Crouch (December 1985)

"Africa is one of the centerpieces of fantasy in our time. Its ambiguity and variety have always challenged the imagination, partly through dark and brutal acts, partly through a vitality that interweaves the subtle and the sizzling. Though Africa’s cooperation fueled the Atlantic slave trade, though its conquest stands as a repulsive record of colonial misjudgments and excesses, and though its periodic coups are usually the work of blue­-ribbon brutes, the continent’s people constitute a startling and inspiring catalogue of languages, customs, and physical types. ..."  

Voice  

NYBooks: The Stanley Crouch I Knew (Sep. 2020)

Zama - Lucrecia Martel (2017)

"Zama is a 2017 Argentine period drama film directed by Lucrecia Martel, based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Antonio di Benedetto. It premiered at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. It was also screened in the Masters section at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. ... In the late 18th century Don Diego de Zama is a functionary in a remote outpost in Argentina. His wife and children are far away from him and he longs to be assigned to a post in Lerma, a change he believes is imminent. The town is plagued by rumours of the feats of Vicuña Porto, a man who robs and rapes at will and who others are always claiming to have met and defeated. Uninterested by the gossip, Zama spends his time trying to seduce the wealthy, married, Spanish noblewoman Luciana Piñares de Luenga who rebuffs him. ..." 

Wikipedia,  NYBooks: The Crazed Euphoria of Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Zama’, Vanity Fair - Zama Review: This Surreal Period Piece Is 2018’s Best Film So Far  

YouTube: Zama, In conversation with... Lucrecia Martel on Zama 34:25

Director Lucrecia Martel, Venice, August 31, 2017

The Rings of Sebald - Daniel Mendelsohn

"... That odd youthful pastime of mine is no doubt why I was so strongly affected by a certain passage toward the end of a novel called The Rings of Saturn, originally published in 1995 as Die Ringe des Saturn, by the late W. G. Sebald, the German writer who had emigrated in the sixties to the United Kingdom, where he spent the rest of his life and which is the setting for much of his writing. It was in England that Sebald wrote his dissertation, in English, on another German writer, Alfred Döblin, author of the masterwork Berlin Alexanderplatz and a Jewish refugee from Hitler—just as was, for example, the great scholar Erich Auerbach, whose magisterial study Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature begins with an analysis of the looping, digressive style, known as ring composition, that is found in Homer’s Odyssey. Döblin and Auerbach, in fact, died within weeks of each other, in 1957: the kind of near-coincidence beloved of Sebald, as we shall see. ..."  

The Paris Review

2011 July: The Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald, 2015 February: ‘Drowned in a sea of salt’ Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast, 2015 April: Patience (After Sebald) - (2010)  

'Regard sur le passé': when Bembeya Jazz sang Samory Touré's epic anthem of resistance

"On October 2, 1958, Guinea became independent. Ten years later, the country paid tribute to the towering figure of Samory Touré, a hero of the anti-colonial struggle, in a masterful work, crafted by the Bembeya Jazz National. Today Guinea celebrates the 62nd anniversary of its independence. An opportunity for PAM to revisit the amazing Regard sur le passé ('Looking back at the past'), which tells the story of Samory Touré; the last great West African resistance fighter against French colonial invasion. Only Bembeya Jazz could put such a story into music, in the great griot tradition. The album; published in 1969, would go on to inspire many more orchestras including Rail Band, Super Mama Djombo and many more. ..."  

PAM (Video)

W - Samory Touré

The Wassoulou Empire at the end of the 19th century

At Liberalism’s Crossroads - The vexed legacy of Richard Hofstadter.

"In the famously long, hot summer of 1968, when Columbia University was coming apart like the rest of America, the historian Richard Hofstadter seemed like the one person who could hold the fraying school together. Anti-war militants were demanding that Columbia end its cozy relationship with the Pentagon. Other activists decried the university’s haughty disregard for its Harlem neighbors, most visible in the proposed building of a gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park—dubbed Gym Crow and leading to accusations of segregation because it would have separate entrances for Columbia students and the community in Harlem and unequal access to its facilities. After months of butting heads with Columbia’s administration, students occupied campus buildings, and the school threatened to call in the cops, which is what university president Grayson Kirk did that spring, resulting in more than 700 arrests and nearly 400 police brutality complaints. ..."  

The Nation 

2019 May: "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964)

The 100 Sequences That Shaped Animation

"All animation, whether it depicts a whistling mouse, a walking dinosaur, or a leaping superhero, is a kind of magic trick. It’s right there in the name of one of the earliest devices used to project slides: the magic lantern. If you take an image of an open hand and an image of a fist and project the two in sequence, you’ll convey the illusion of a clench. ..."  

Vulture (Video)

Women's March on Versailles

Women's March on Versailles, 5 October 1789

"The Women's March on Versailles, also known as the October March, the October Days or simply the March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries, who were seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their various allies grew into a mob of thousands. Encouraged by revolutionary agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace, and in a dramatic and violent confrontation, they successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd compelled the king, his family, and most of the French Assembly to return with them to Paris. ..."

Wikipedia

Map of Versailles in 1789

Leaf Peeping Is Not Canceled: 6 Drives and Hikes to Try This Fall

"A leafy drive in Nashville, hikes in the Appalachian wilderness, a spin on a scenic Colorado byway: There are many ways to savor autumn while being mindful of pandemic travel precautions. Below are six fall outings in Massachusetts, Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Tennessee and Colorado, replete with apple cider doughnuts, a highway ghost and sightings of otters, beavers and wild turkeys. ..." 

NY Times

A Guide to Chicano Soul on Bandcamp

 "Pioneered by artists from San Antonio, Texas like The Royal Jesters and Sunny & the Sunliners, 'Chicano Soul' refers to a specific fusion of mid-century Mexican-American and Black musical cultures. The music found an enthusiastic audience among Latino communities and sock-hopping youth throughout the southwestern United States. Over the course of the ‘60s, in places like El Paso, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and L.A., a growing crop of new bands gave the movement regional flavor, bookended by the conjunto-inflected deep soul of the San Antonio bands on one side, and the R&B- and jazz-heavier 'Eastside' L.A. sound on the other. These artists established a vital, DIY musical subculture that would pave the way for the Chicano cultural movement of the ’70s. ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)

At the Pershing: But Not for Me - Ahmad Jamal (1958)

"At the Pershing: But Not for Me is a 1958 jazz album by pianist Ahmad Jamal. According to the album jacket, the tapes were made on January 16, 1958, at the Pershing Lounge of Chicago's Pershing Hotel and each set played that night was recorded, a total of 43 tracks, of which 8 were selected by Jamal for the album. ...  The 1958 Down Beat review was mildly negative, referring to Jamal as playing 'cocktail music'; the reviewer acknowledged Jamal's skill and influence on other jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, but wrote, 'The trio's chief virtue is an excellent, smooth light but flexible beat', and 'Throughout the music is kept emotionally, melodically, and organizationally innocuous. In August 1958, Jet magazine referred to the album as 'a nationwide hit'. ..."

Wikipedia

“It Was Beyond My Wildest Dreams” Pianist Ahmad Jamal Recalls ‘At The Pershing’ (Audeio/Video)

YouTube: But Not for Me, Poinciana, Woody'n You

Hank Willis Thomas’s Colonialism and Abstract Art

"Hank Willis Thomas helps us reimagine the world we think we know. More than a decade ago he removed the brand references from magazine advertisements that targeted or featured Black Americans (such as the one above from 1979), drawing our attention to their underlying stereotypes and asking us to reflect critically on the construction of racially biased narratives. His installations and public art projects similarly invite questions, and creative civic participation—such as his work with For Freedoms and, most recently, the Wide Awakes 2020. ..."

MoMA  

[PDF] Hank Willis Thomas’s Colonialism and Abstract Art

Tracing Trump’s Contacts Before He Tested Positive for Coronavirus

"President Trump’s announcement Friday that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for the coronavirus sent government officials scrambling to determine who else might have been exposed. Two senators who attended a White House event last Saturday said they had tested positive, too, as did Chris Christie, who is advising Mr. Trump’s campaign. Several people who met with the president this week said they had since tested negative. But it can take days for someone who has been exposed to the virus to develop symptoms or to test positive. Here is a look at where Mr. Trump traveled and the people with whom he met in the days before his positive test. ..."  

NY Times

Quebec City and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Quebec City
"Quebec City officially Québec is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. ... The Algonquian people had originally named the area Kébec, an Algonquin word meaning 'where the river narrows', because the Saint Lawrence River narrows proximate to the promontory of Quebec and its Cape Diamant. ... The city's landmarks include the Château Frontenac hotel that dominates the skyline and the Citadelle of Quebec, an intact fortress that forms the centrepiece of the ramparts surrounding the old city and includes a secondary royal residence. The National Assembly of Quebec (provincial legislature), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), and the Musée de la civilisation (Museum of Civilization) are found within or near Vieux-Québec. ..." (Bill D. + Max B. 1986, Wesley D. 1991)
W - Quebec City
YouTube: Quebec City, Quebec

Culture of Quebec
""The Culture of Quebec emerged over the last few hundred years, resulting predominantly from the shared history of the French-speaking North Americans majority in Quebec. It is noteworthy in the Western World; Quebec is the only region in North America with a French-speaking majority, as well as one of only two provinces in Canada where French is a constitutionally-recognized official language. ..."
Battle of Quebec (NHL)

Kingsburg and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

"Kingsburg is a village in Nova Scotia, Canada. The community is approximately 130 kilometers from Halifax Regional Municipality, 30 kilometers from Bridgewater and 25 kilometers from Lunenburg and now primarily a summer vacation and weekend getaway destination. Kingsburg features two large beaches, Hirtle's Beach and Kingsburg Beach. There is also a protected cape which features hiking trails called Gaff Point. Kingsburg has three large and two smaller ponds that are used for swimming. ...  For many decades Kingsburg was mixed a fishing and farming community. By the mid twentieth century, with the widespread decline of small-scale Atlantic fishery, most fishing culture has disappeared. ..." (Bill D. + Max B. 2001, Wesley D., Renata D.)
W - Kingsburg, Nova Scotia
YouTube: Hirtle's Beach
"Lunenburg /ˈluːnənbɜːrɡ/ is a port town on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. Founded in 1753, the town was one of the first British attempts to settle Protestants in Nova Scotia in an effort to displace the French Roman Catholic Acadians and indigenous Mi'kmaq. The economy was traditionally based on the offshore fishery and today Lunenburg is the site of Canada's largest secondary fish-processing plant. The town flourished in the late 1800s, and much of the historic architecture dates from that period. ..."
W - Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
W - Bluenose II
YouTube: Lunenburg Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

What is Surrealism? - André Breton (1924)

 

"Four Surrealist Manifestos are known to exist. The first two manifestos, published in October 1924, were written by Yvan Goll and André Breton, the leaders of rivaling Surrealist groups. Breton published his second manifesto for the Surrealists in 1929, and wrote his third manifesto that was not issued during his lifetime. Leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll, consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot, Paul Dermée, Céline Arnauld, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Pierre Reverdy, Marcel Arland, Joseph Delteil, Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay, among others. ..."

Wikipedia

The Avantgarde Nature of Surrealist Manifesto

What is Surrealism? - André Breton

amazon

2016: DADA Companion, 2016: The Growing Charm of Dada, 2012 December: Impressionism and Fashion, 2017: How Baudelaire Revolutionized Modern Literature, 2017: The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology - Mary Ann Caws, 2018 May: Europe After the Rain: Watch the Vintage Documentary on the Two Great Art Movements, Dada & Surrealism (1978)

The Best Ambient Music on Bandcamp: September 2020

 

"The electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel celebrated her 75th birthday this past September, and her sage and scientific criticisms of contemporary music ring truer with each passing year. Spiegel, one of the first artists to create music with digital synthesizers, described the boundless possibilities of art with electronic instruments. Computerized music gave her 'the complete freedom to define any world you wanted and work within it.' The artists featured in this month’s column similarly found inspiration from the endless capabilities and combinations of digital instrumentation, whether Jonathan Fitoussi’s combined orchestras of Buchla, Moog, and Korg synthesizers or numün’s spellbinding loops of acoustic instrumentation. ..."

Bandcamp (Video)

Feminize Your Canon: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

"In April 1895, the up-and-coming poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whom Frederick Douglass had dubbed 'the most promising young colored man in America,' saw a poem by a young writer, Alice Ruth Moore, accompanied by a photograph in which she appeared stylish and beautiful. He wrote to her immediately at her home on Palmyra Street in New Orleans, expressing his admiration, and they began an intense epistolary courtship that lasted two years. ..."  

The Paris Review

QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic

"... Sociologists and journalists have struggled to precisely categorize the shambolic conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Is it a political movement? A new religion? A cult? It has elements of all these things. There is a basic set of beliefs: namely that President Trump is waging a holy war within the government against a secret cabal of pedophiles, whose members included top Democrats like Hillary Clinton and her advisers. There are accompanying behaviors and rituals: the serial viewing of YouTube videos that embed the watcher deeper into the world of QAnon; the frantic decoding of 'Q drops,' or tersely worded message-board posts, which now number more than 4,000. There is a prophet, Q, and a God-like figure, Trump. ..."
New Republic
NY Times: What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?
New Yorker: What’s New About Conspiracy Theories?
Scientific American: People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features
W - QAnon, W - Conspiracy theory

Crazy ideas have long been a fixture of American life. Now paranoia thrives at the center of power, not just the fringes.