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At an early stage in the Cold War, the governments of the Soviet Union and the United States formalized the cultural front as one of their primary theaters of conflict, embarking on a series of alternating cultural exchanges Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War
The words that jump off the page speak of joy and wonderment and reckless, inebriated fun, of characters as wild and colorful as fireworks.
The book, On the Road, became an overnight sensation, a trophy, mantra and manual for the Beat Generation The author was Jack Kerouac, who died 35 years ago. He was 47
[He died with $91 in his bank account. His death was from alcohol. He was known to consume 17 shots of Johnny Walker Red per hour, washed down with Colt malt liquor. He helped us understand legislatures in America and Australia. ]

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Soren Kierkegaard Period
That extraordinary writer of stories about the "Christ-haunted" American South, Flannery O’Connor, was frequently asked why her people and plots were so often outlandish, even grotesque. She answered, "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures." I expect Søren Kierkegaard, had he lived a century later, would have taken to Flannery O’Connor and would have relished her affirmation of the necessarily outlandish. But then he would immediately be on guard lest anyone think that he does not really mean what he says, that he is anything less than utterly, indeed deadly, serious. He exaggerates for effect and witheringly attacks his opponents who suggest that his exaggeration is anything less than the truth of the matter. He writes, as he repeatedly says, for that one reader—the singular individual who has the courage to understand him—while at the same time describing in detail, and often with hilarious parody, the many readers who refuse to take him at his word. Kierkegaard was keenly (some would say obsessively) attentive to the ways in which he was misunderstood, even as he persistently and defiantly courted misunderstanding. This, as readers beyond numbering have discovered, can be quite maddening. It is also at least part of the reason why Kierkegaard is so widely read.
• If Kierkegaard was not to be given the privilege of literally shedding his blood, he would bear witness in other ways. He welcomed the derision of those surrounding him, recognizing in them the same crowd that surrounded the cross of his contemporary, Jesus Christ Kierkegaard for Grownups [Here-within-inside is a memo designed to cheer up the human race
Rosemary Woodruff . Those who just barely, gasping, made it from the Spanish-American War through World War I were then asked, with no respite to deal with the Roaring Twenties, Communism, the Depression, Hitler, World War II, Hiroshima, Cold War, television, Lunar landings, drugs, Hustler, cloning. No one was permitted to stand still.]
• · Faiza Guene, the 19-year-old daughter of Algerians who moved to France before she was born, has taken her experiences Growing up in public housing projects outside Paris and whipped them into a confection that is tender, funny and even wise [Destiny is misery because you can do nothing about it. My mother, she says that if my father left us, it was because it was written.]
• · · Monsignor Ignazio Sanna Christians Will Need to Be Mystics, Says Theologian ; [Popieluszko was abducted and killed by secret police on Oct. 19, 1984 His body was stuffed in a sack weighed down with stones and thrown into the Vistula River ]
• · · · My Own Private Library: A love of books. Okay, it is a form of madness. But a pathology that combines history, the aesthetic, and a desire to preserve knowledge can’t be all bad These books represent the person I once aspired to be; [Manners and Morals at the Strangers Dining Room: Why You Should Not Eat the Person Sitting Next to You {PDF version}]
• · · · · It’s haunting to read through the yellowed news clippings of the 1960s. The clock was winding down and no one knew how the story would end The Other Sixties ; [ Nothing To Watch In The 210-Channel Universe]
• · · · · · Suspicion, distrust, backbiting, smear tactics, simple loathing and sometimes extremely unliterary abuse have come to characterise A struggle that has been waged until now behind the closed doors of London's literary salons
[The only thing that really changes is the writers. The profession can often be wrong about what the readers wants, but then someone will come up with something different]