Category Archives: literature

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King Jr.)

My friends I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as ReinholdContinue reading “RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King Jr.)”

RKS Literature: Celebrating Non-Belongers (Salman Rushdie)

But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-believers, the different ones,Continue reading “RKS Literature: Celebrating Non-Belongers (Salman Rushdie)”

RKS Literature: Lurid Story Telling at a Party of Indian Intellectuals (Salman Rushdie)

 Clusters of intellectuals had formed around certain beautiful women – the starlet Pia Aziz, the artist Aurora Zogoiby – while most of the other women were sitting at the feet of a boozy but celebrated Muslim writer of low-life stories which was shocking them by providing, in the most exquisite and ornate Urdu Sir DariusContinue reading “RKS Literature: Lurid Story Telling at a Party of Indian Intellectuals (Salman Rushdie)”

RKS Literature: Emerging Rock n Roll in India as a Decadent Virus (Salman Rushdie)

He began to hold music responsible for the world’s ills and would even argue in his cups, that its practitioners should be wiped out, eradicated, like a disease. Music was a virus, an infection, and music lovers were comparable to those globe-trotting sexual immoralists whose nameless activities had resulted in the global spread of syphilis.Continue reading “RKS Literature: Emerging Rock n Roll in India as a Decadent Virus (Salman Rushdie)”

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Hymie’s Bull (Ralph Ellison)

Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you’re a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they’re always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit a bone to turn it into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backboneContinue reading “RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Hymie’s Bull (Ralph Ellison)”

RKS Literature: British Boarding Schools Creators of Psychopaths (Salman Rushdie)

Cyrus Cama was sent away to boarding school, still with murder in his eyes, banished to an implacable hill-station establishment which based its methods upon the tried and true British principles of cold baths, bad food, regular beatings and high-quality academic instruction, and which helped him to develop into the full-blooded psychopath he afterwards became.Continue reading “RKS Literature: British Boarding Schools Creators of Psychopaths (Salman Rushdie)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: The Chink of Gold Coins on the Roulette Table Drives the Gambler into Near Convulsions! (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

When I hear the cries of the croupiers – ‘Trente-et-un rouge, impair et passe’. ‘Quatre, noir, pair et manque’ it’s with a sort of apprehension, a sort of sinking feeling in my heart. How greedily I look at the gaming table, with its scattered louis d’or, gold friedrichs and thalers, at the streams of goldContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: The Chink of Gold Coins on the Roulette Table Drives the Gambler into Near Convulsions! (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: With Gambling You Have Renounced Everything! (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

‘You have not only renounced life, with its interest and social ties, but the duties of a citizen and a man. You have not only given up the friends I knew you had, and every aim in life except winning money, but you have also given up your memories. Although I can remember you duringContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: With Gambling You Have Renounced Everything! (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Always…The Next Spin of the Roulette Wheel (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

I have a feeling of expectation and it can’t be wrong. I’ve got 15 louis d’or now, though I only began with fifteen gulden. If I play carefully to start with…..But no! Surely I’m not such a fool as that. I’m a lost soul. But why should I not rise from the dead? All IContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Always…The Next Spin of the Roulette Wheel (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS Literature: What Does Song Show Us? (Salman Rushdie)

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world. Salman Rushdie, “The Ground BeneathContinue reading “RKS Literature: What Does Song Show Us? (Salman Rushdie)”