The Furious Gazelle

Literary as hell.

Month: September 2018 (Page 2 of 2)

Book Review: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Johnson

September 8, 2018 /

Review by Mary Rose MacDonald

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, released in 2008, laments a societal loss of “attention” in the information age. Interpersonal relationships are increasingly impersonal between people tethered to their Blackberrys, iPods, PDAs, cell phones, etc. Author Maggie Johnson warns of a “Coming Dark Age” wherein “we are plunging into a culture of mistrust, skimming, and a perilous melding of man and machine.”

Ten years later, the second edition is enjoying an updated title, Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention. Her language of reclamation and revolution, a taking back of “what one app developer calls our ‘cognitive liberty,’” is refreshing as she cites recent public outcry over mass data breaches, and of popular endeavors to “detox” from devices and digital living. She cultivates a new sense of agency. Dark Age or not, we can constructively grapple with the challenges of the frenetic technological age.    Continue reading

“Foxhole,” a one act play by James Hale

September 7, 2018 /

Copyright © James Hale

All Rights Reserved

 

note: Space is of critical importance in this play. space between the characters, between the beats, even between the lines. All intimate spaces, whether physical or regarding delivery, should be taken as close to discomfort as possible without reaching it. Conversely, let there be an almost uncomfortably large space between beats, both in an immensity of physical distance between the characters, and in length. it is allowable for the play to speed up noticeably towards the end, if desired.

 

[The holding cell at a federal prison. A metal table, a couple metal chairs. Bare walls, bare floor, a single window overlooking the yard, presumably. A heavy, swinging door opens and PETER enters, getting his shackles removed by an unseen guard at the threshold before the door closes loudly behind him. PETER is in his mid-30s, handsome, with eyes that used to smile.]

PETER

Well.

[PAUL enters, 40s, a man of faith haunted by doubt, wearing a clergyman’s collar. The door again clanges, both opening and closing. Keys are heard, bell-like, locking them in.]

PETER

Well. Continue reading

Book Review: Spokes of an Uneven Wheel by Colin Dodds

September 1, 2018 /

In Spokes of an Uneven Wheel, Colin Dodds takes his reader through a journey of incoherence and monotony into a realm controlled by human desire and impulse. Dodds takes measured stabs at everything from corporate hierarchy to Abrahamic religion.

Dodds depicts scene after scene of routine monotony, illustrating that true terror can lie within the abstract systemic confines many of these poems attempt to escape. Dodds crafts narratives that breathe life into the overlooked, such as the subjects in “Hard Surfaces” or the inanimate like in “Landscape Mid-Consequence”: “An asymmetrical face/appears in the exhaust drift/between the taillight and license plate”. Continue reading

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