The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

November 5, 2012

November 5, 2008

John Leonard (February 25, 1939 to November 5, 2008) was an American writer, a  critic,whose focus included various cultural manifestations. He became executive editor of the Times Book Review in 1971.

Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008 (2012) is a posthumous collection, and here we read about the  novel, A flag for sunrise by Robert Stone (1992). John Leonard writes--

The heresy here is Gnostic and Manichean. There is a "divine spark" and a "library in a jar". Culture and love are both secret. The demiurge is a tourist. ... In the absence of evil --to an anthropologist nothing is evil, including himself, we have history: snakes, feathers, lizards, jewels, a fanged cat, a wooden cross, a unicorn, and death without mercy.

Mr. Stone kicks the brain around; we live in heresy; Satan prevails;
A Flag for Sunrise is the best novel of ideas I've read since Dostoevsky escaped from Omsk.

John Leonard also wrote:

In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold. 

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