Anarchist Fiction dot Net » Poet

Paul Goodman

Margaret — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:02:03 +0000

Paul Goodman (1911–1972), was a lot of things to a lot of different people. To the psychotherapy world, he is known as one of the co-founders of Gestalt theory. To the literary world, he was a novelist. Perhaps his most famous novel is The Empire City, a story that follows a ’50s rebel in New York City. But he’s also well known as the author of Growing Up Absurd, and his works were hugely influential on the ’60s student radical movement, a movement he later criticized as sometimes both too dogmatic and too fickle.

Wikipedia:

Paul Goodman

Fiction available through Amazon.com:

Non-fiction works available for online reading:

From the Preservation Institute

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Margaret — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:17:29 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–), the famous beat poet, has long identified as a philosophical anarchist and a pacifist—it was only two weeks after Nagasaki was bombed that he, as an American solider, visited the ruins. In the ‘50s he started the City Lights bookstore and publishing company in San Francisco, where he published Ginsberg’s Howl and was therefore arrested and charged with obscenity. With the help of the ACLU, he won and set a legal landmark for other publishers of sex and drug literature. In addition to his poetry, he wrote two novels: Her (1960), a surreal and semi-autobiographical novel, and Love in the Days of Rage (1988), about a bourgeois anarchist caught up in the May ‘68 uprisings in Paris.

Novel available from City Lights:

Novel available from Amazon.com:

Love in the Days of Rage

Wikipedia:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Max Ernst

Margaret — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:49:07 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Max Ernst (1891–1976) was an active participant in both Dada and Surrealism and was a visual artist who worked in collage, paintings, and sculpture. He was also one of the early creators of wordless novels, such as his Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness), a collaged dark piece that follows a bird-man in a dark and surreal world. It wasn’t hard to discover he was politically radical (as most dadaists and surrealists were), but it was from Conversing with Cage, a collection of interviews with anarchist composer John Cage edited by Richard Kostelanetz that I discovered Ernst as an anarchist. In one interview, Cage is talking about his own anarchist influences and mentions, “I said something about anarchy to the widow of Max Ernst and she said that Max was an anarchist.”

Wikipedia:

Max Ernst

Wordless novel available from Amazon.com:

Une Semaine De Bonte

Voltairine De Cleyre

Margaret — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:34:44 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Voltairine De Cleyre (1866–1912) was a poet and theorist who converted to anarchism in 1887 after the Haymarket trial shattered her faith in the American justice system. She was an early believer in “anarchism without adjectives,” which meant that she didn’t choose to identify specifically with communist, mutaualist, or individualist anarchism. She fought voraciously for the rights of women. The most famous piece of her fiction is “The Chain Gang,” a short story included in The Gates of Freedom.

Wikipedia:

Voltairine de Cleyre

Essays online:

From the Anarchist Archives

Audiobooks online:

From LibroVox

General fan site:

voltairine.org

Anthony Burgess

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:23:39 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) is famous today as the author of A Clockwork Orange, but it was only one of his over 30 novels. He said that he deeply regretted how the film adaptation seemed to glorify sexual violence, and how easily people misread that book. He was also an anarchist: “I’ve never had any money, therefore I’ve no sympathy for capitalists … I suppose I end up as an anarchist” (from Anthony Burgess, a biography by Roger Lewis, 2002). In his younger life, while serving in the British army, he was often in trouble for defying authority, including being arrested for insulting Spanish fascist Franco. In addition to being a novelist, he was an accomplished literary critic, linguist, composer.

From Ben Beck’s Anarchism and Science Fiction:

… the first part of Burgess’s 1985 – displays an extensive knowledge of the anarchist movement, its history and philosophy. References to the Spanish Civil War or to Sacco & Vanzetti are unusual but not unique in sf, but Burgess’s mention of an anarchist youth movement in China’s Yunan province almost certainly is. A chapter entitled ‘Bakunin’s Children’ actually incorporates a three-page biographical portrait of Bakunin, whom he describes as ‘the rank meat in a more rational anarchical sandwich, tastier than the dry bread of theory that Proudhon offered before him and Kropotkin after.’

Novels available on Amazon:

Short story collections from Amazon:

The Devil’s Mode

Screenplays on IMDB (all biblical):

Jorge Luis Borges

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:47:44 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was one of the most famous Spanish-language authors in the world and was often a contender for the Nobel prize for literature, but never received it. Some speculate that this was because of his anarcho-pacifist views. An Argentinean and a world citizen, he is known primarily for his short stories, of which he wrote an innumerable quantity.

Wikipedia:
Jorge Luis Borges

Novel in English, from Amazon:

Six Problems of Don Isidro

Short story collections in English, from Amazon:

A Universal History of Iniquity
A Universal History of Infamy
Ficciones
A Personal Anthology
Dreamtigers
Labyrinths
The Book of Imaginary Beings
Brodie’s Report
The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory
The Aleph
Everything & Nothing (a “best-of”)
Borges: Collected Fictions (apparently, all of his stories)

William Blake

Margaret — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:54:53 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

William Blake (1757–1827), poet and author of “Illuminated Manuscripts” (proto-graphic-novels), was an anarchist before the word was coined. He was also both a mystic and completely unrenowned in his time. He attacked organized religion fiercely, and published the heretical The Marriage of Heaven & Hell. One interesting quote from that book: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.”

Wikipedia:
William Blake

Many of his works are available online from The William Blake Archive. Others, including readings of his poetry, are available from Project Gutenberg.

William Blake as Visionary Anarchist, presentation by Peter Marshall:

Part II:

(thanks Gareth Branwyn for bringing these to my attention!)

Fabrizio De André

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:20:25 +0000

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Fabrizio De André (1940–1999), a renowned Italian songwriter, poet, and anarchist, was known for his epic and political music. He translated the works of Leonard Cohen (among others) into Italian, and he wrote a novel, Un destino ridicolo (A Ridiculous Fate). He made the island of Sardinia his home, and was once kidnapped and ransomed by Sardinian rebels (terrorists/freedom-fighters, take your pick). After his father—a wealthy industrialist who had once been an anti-fascist partisan—paid his ransom, and the kidnappers were brought to trial, Fabrizio reportedly told the court that the rebels “They were the real prisoners, not I.” (Although he did not offer sympathy to the higher-ups in the rebel group, who were wealthy already.)

Wikipedia:
Fabrizio De André

Un destino ridicolo:
Available from unilibro.it (no known English translations.) This book was also filmed as Amore che vieni, amore che vai in 2008.

Music: