Emotional Responses to Fiction

1. The psychology of emotions about fiction Typically, if harm comes to someone I care about, I would feel a great deal of sorrow and concern for that person. I may also feel anger at whomever or whatever harmed them and would be motivated to act on their behalf. However, we generally won’t have such reactions during our emotional engagement with works of fiction. To borrow an example from Radford (1975: 70), I do not weep over Mercutio’s body after he is killed while watching a theat...

Letting the Unspoken Speak: A Reading List of Historical Trauma in Fiction

Craft and Criticism Fiction and Poetry News and Culture Lit Hub Radio Reading Lists Book Marks CrimeReads About Literary Hub ...

Notes on the Rituals of Insomniacs

A brief excerpt from Marie Darrieussecq’s memoir "Sleepless," a restless inquiry into the cultural and psychic sources of insomnia. Image source: Jp Valery, via Unsplash Plagued by insomnia for 20 years, in her book "Sleepless," Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications, and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines the next day. "Insomniac mornings are dead mornings," she observes. Pre...

Black Mirror makes us feel terrible for loving true crime

We are a society obsessed with murder most foul. From serial killers to kidnappers, mass murderers to family annihilators, true crime very much remains our genre du jour—so much so that a 2022 poll found that a whopping half of Americans enjoy blitzing through true-crime titles on streaming services, with another 13 percent going as far as to say it’s their favorite genre. Their favorite. Suck on that, drama, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, and romance.Dermot Mulroney on possible actors strike, "Sec...

Jordan Peele finally explains Nope moment that left viewers scratching their heads

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeJordan Peele has finally given fans an explanation for one of the most widely debated moments in his 2022 horror film Nope.The film focuses on two siblings, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, who encounter a strange UFO near their ranch in Agua Dulce, California.One of the other plot threads follows Ricky "Jupe" Park, a former child actor who once s...

Life-writing and why it matters

https://blog.oup.com/2022/11/what-is-life-writing-and-why-does-it-matter/Oxford University Press has recently launched its new seven-volume Oxford History of Life-Writing in English. Three of the volumes are already in print, with the latest being my own, which covers the period from 1945 to the present day. This is the first time a history of life-writing on anything like this scale has been published, which begs the question—what is life-writing, and why does it matter?Over the last few dec...

Is Mental Illness REAL?

Top 10 CRAZIEST characters from the Ancient World ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌Open in browserIs Mental Illness REAL?Top 10 CR...

Summari - Screens and our relationship with them

Screens - Mind Matters podcast episodeScreens - Mind Matters podcast episode ・ Apr 15, 2022Our obsession today with screens is often unintentionally taking us to places we regretWe use these windows into the world for hours every day, often unaware how intentional content creators and app designers are in shaping our decisions and forming harmful habits.Thankfully, we can begin to go from unintentional with our screen use to intentional flipping that imbalance back into our favor, reclaimin...

On Opacity - How Artists Resist Representation and Legibility – ARTnews.com

ARTnews.com HomeArt in AmericaFeatures On Opacity Simon Wu May 11, 2022 11:37AM EDT IN SANDRA MUJINGA’S VIDEO Worldview (2021), a chilly pastoral scene plays for eight hours across three framed screens. Are we looking through a window? A portal? Mujinga shot the footage at the innermost part of the Norwegian fjords at Gudvangen (from the Old Norse fo...

Story idea from Dream Log - 17 Aug 2000

Just an idea: make this into a real fiction story? Near Matches Ignore ExactFull Text Everything2 Dream Log: August 17, 2000 (thing) See all of Dream Log: August 17, 2000, there are 3 more in this node. (thing) by abiessu Thu Aug 17 2000 at 13:42:15 This dream was about coffee (thanks, knifegirl! no, I'm not mad about it, it was an interesting dream . . . [this reference is from a chatterbox conversation earlier in which knifegirl mentioned coffee in some way tha...

Poignant Photo Series Uses the Color Blue to Explore Depression

Home / Photography Melancholic Photo Series Uses the Color Blue To Capture Experiences With Depression By Margherita Cole on May 1, 2022 ...

Dwale - A Medieval Sleeping Drug in the Seventeenth-Century

Dwale was still known about in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By Dr. Elizabeth K. HunterWellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research FellowQueen Mary University of London As part of my research into early modern sleep disorders, I have been examining the wide variety of sleep remedies available in England at the time.  Browsing through the manuscript receipt collections at the Wellcome Library in London, I came across one with...

The Illusion Of Decentralisation - HXA7241

The Illusion Of Decentralisation Harrison Ainsworth http://www.hxa.name hxa7241+articles (ατ) googlemail (dοτ) com 2015-01-18 Decentralisation is not really what we want. 1000 words (5 minutes) Decentralisation gives individuals power to decide and act. But to act coherently there must always be something over which individuals do not have choice. That is the defining problem: the two things people want are opposed. Everyone wants freedom, with...

Haunted by the Other: Levinas, Derrida and the Persecutory Phantom | Film-Philosophy

Haunted by the Other: Levinas, Derrida and the Persecutory Phantom Abstract In this article, I explore what I call the persecutory trope – which underscores the alterity of the phantom and its relentless haunting and spectral oppression of the protagonists – in recent American ghost films, connecting it to the ethical thought of the continental philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Films like The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002), The ...

The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Discover the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard's Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes | Open Culture

The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Discover the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard's Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes | Open Culture Online Courses Certificates ...

Read Weird Dreams Train Our Brains to Be Better Learners Online

Weird Dreams Train Our Brains to Be Better Learners by Jim Davies Oct 13, 2021 6 minutes Neural networks need to "dream" of weird, senseless examples to learn well. Maybe we do, too.Photo Illustration by MDV Edwards / ShutterstockFor many of us over the last year and more, our waking experience has, you might say, lost a bit of its variety. We spend more time with the same people, in our homes, and go to fewer places. Our stimuli these days,...

Malignant (James Wan, 2021)

Malingering (Warning: plot twists and story discussed in explicit and gory detail) James Wan's Malignant promises more than it delivers: a Dario Argentoish giallo that morphs into Cronenbergian body horror that turns, rather wanly, into life-affirming feminism. Three-fourths of the way through there's a supposedly wild twist but really nothing we haven't seen before, from The X-Files' episode "Humbug" to George Romero's The Dark Half to Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall to--if we...

Fear of the Dark

Peter Tammer’s Fear of the Dark (1985) is partly a fictional exploration and re-enactment of the process of murder and violent intent. It is also part Cinéma vérité documentary of actor Robert Ratti’s daily life. We witness Ratti’s vicissitudes of searching and touting for work and his concerns about the scripted performances that bookend the film. These performances are the brutal shooting of a victim in his home and ends with the re-enacted murder of an abducted child. In light of the curre...

The Fine Line Between Reality and Imaginary - Issue 104: Harmony

We all live in two worlds: a world outside of ourselves containing things that others can also see and hear and touch, and a world inside consisting of our thoughts and imaginations, which only exist in our own mind. Usually, we effortlessly keep these two worlds apart. But a recent study I ran together with metacognition expert Steve Fleming at University College London’s Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, where I am a senior research fellow, affirms that the 18th-century Scottish philo...

Stored in the Body - and other TLS clips - 11 Jun 2021 Print Edition

Smellosophy - olfaction and philosophy

The Sky Was Blue the Sea Was Blue and the Boy Was Blue review – a monochrome marvel

The Sky Was Blue the Sea Was Blue and the Boy Was Blue review – a monochrome marvel The Guardian - Back to homeContribute Sign inNewsOpinionSportCultureLifestyleShow MoreFilmBooksMusicArt & designTV & radioStageClassicalGamesLockdown cultureThe Sky Was Blue the Sea Was Blue and the Boy Was Blue review – a monochrome marvel Victoria Miro, London; online on Vortic Collect from TuesdayCobalt, indigo, ultramarine; the colour of sadness and a summer’s day… in this uplifting virtual sh...

No Sense of Proportion

Attributions here:  No Sense of Proportion - direct from The-Solute web siteWhen I was a child, I was in a program called Reading Is Fundamental. In practical terms, this meant free books. One of the first cookbooks I owned was from that program, and I quite regret having at some point lost it, because it was another theme cookbook. Specifically, it was a cookie recipe for each month of the year, tied in to that month’s holiday. I forget what the August cookie was, but it pointed out that the...

Type Descriptions — The Enneagram Institute

The Nine Enneagram Type DescriptionsClick on any of the titles below to read detailed descriptions about each of the nine Enneagram types. 1 THE REFORMERThe Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic2 THE HELPERThe Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive3 THE ACHIEVERThe Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious4 THE INDIVIDUALISTThe Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Exp...

Spy Novel Meets The Twilight Zone - The standardization of demoralization procedures