Greater than 120 years after the top of the Victorian period, we’d assume that we retain a kind of accufee cultural memory of the Victorians themselves: of their social mores, their aesthetic sensibilities, their ambitions nice and small, their many and varied hang-ups. Among the most vivid representations of those qualities have come right down…
Born 196 years in the past, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense social, political, and technological change, paralleled in his personal life by his radical shift from hedonistic nobleman to theologian, anarchist, and vegetarian pacifist. Although he didn’t dwell to see the Russian Revolution, the novelist did see Tsar Alexander…
As a younger guitar player, perhaps nobody impressed me as a lot as Jimi Hendrix, although I never dreamed I’d attain even a fraction of his ability. However what appeal toed me to him was his near-total lack of ritual—he didn’t learn music, wasn’t educated in any classical sense, performed an upside-down right-handed guitar as…