Marilyn Monroe

Genius and Addiction: Creative Fuel or Speedway to Self-Destruction?

Benjamin Wright

We, as a society, feel a certain loss when we lose prematurely great actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman, comic geniuses like John Belushi, music legends like Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon and Janis Joplin, and brilliant poets like Dylan Thomas who open up our understanding of our world. But, it is also very possible that these figures, all geniuses in their own right, may never have fully realized their potential if not for their use of mind-expanding substances. It is likely that their addictions fanned the flames of their creative genius. 

Manufacturing Identity: The Art Behind the Cult of Celebrity

Benjamin Wright

With the revolution in new technologies that was part of the larger revolution in industry more than just strong character and virtue was needed to be famous. In the age of television commercials, public relations and televised debates (as the Kennedy-Nixon debate amply demonstrated) it is questionable whether a man like George Washington could be elected president if he were to run for office today, when image has in so many ways supplanted substance. 

Palm Springs Weekend

Mark Bizzell

Driving along Bob Hope Drive, Gene Autry Trail or Frank Sinatra Drive in the California desert city of Palm Springs and the surrounding area, you understand why Hollywood legends once called this place home.  Situated along the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, this oasis seems out of a Hollywood studio backlot.  Lush, green golf courses and homes landscaped with pink and red bougainvillea contrast the looming mountains of rocks and boulders, sans any vegetation.  

Power and Style in Arthur Miller’s Middle Period

Trevor Laurence Jockims

“Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1964-1982,” edited by contemporary, award-winning playwright Tony Kushner, is the second volume of the planned three-volume Collected Arthur Miller from the Library of America. This is one of those instances in which the book as an object asserts its own importance, since the look, feel, and heft—this volume alone runs to 848 pages—of the high-quality Library of America series is itself testimony to the cultural prominence of the authors included in its series.

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