Acculturated: 23 Savvy Writers Find Hidden Virtue in Reality TV, Chic Lit, Video Games, and Other Pillars of Pop Culture
Contemporary popular culture, from books to film to television to music to the deepest corners of the internet, has provoked a great deal of criticism, some of it well deserved. Yet for many Americans, and particularly for younger Americans, popular culture is culture. It is the only kind of cultural experience they seek and the currency in which they trade.
The Pillars of Society is an 1877 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen had great trouble with the writing of this play which came before the series of masterpieces which made him famous throughout the world. The ending is the most criticised feature, since Bernick is clearly guilty of attempted murder but gets off unscathed, but successfully illustrates that the rich and powerful are often selfish and corrupt.
Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, has turned his hand to humour. The delightful result is a creation of comic genius. For in the unnaturally tall form of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, we are invited to meet a memorable character whose sublime insouciance is a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and of Inspecteur Clouseau’s hapless gaucherie.
In their highly selective and literal reading of Scripture, creationists champion a rigidly reductionistic view of creation in their fight against "soulless scientism." Conversely, many scientists find faith in God to be a dangerous impediment in the empirical quest for knowledge. As a result of this ongoing debate, many people of faith feel forced to choose between evolution and the Bible's story of creation.
Added by: annabelle_lee | Karma: 428.14 | Fiction literature | 4 June 2009
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In 1989 Follett published what was to become one of his most popular novels, The Pillars of the Earth, a historical epic about the construction of an English cathedral. 18 years later Follett presented his eager fans with a sequel to Pillars, World Without End. This an amazingly well-researched, intricately plotted and richly detailed novel, set in the same English cathedral town as Pillars. It has as its primary characters the descendants of the major characters that appeared in the previous book.
